So through 12 games on the first day of the NCAA Tournament, I find myself with 6 wins and 6 losses on my bracket.

Wow. I’m not sure I’ve ever struggled so much. And with 4 close games going on as I type this  — although I can’t imagine Lehigh hanging with Kansas for much longer — it could wind up even worse.

Still, from a fan’s standpoint, this has been a great day of basketball. Robert Morris pushing No. 2 seed Villanova to overtime, Northern Iowa, Washington and Murray State hitting  last-second shots to pick up wins as underdogs and Florida and BYU starting the day with a double-overtime battle at the Ford Center. And don’t forget Ohio University, a week ago the ninth-place regular season finisher in the Mid-American Conference, now the slayers of Georgetown and headed to the second round.

Hopefully the best is yet to come. And maybe I’ll start to win some games.

While NCAA basketball and March Madness and filling out brackets are on the minds of everyone today, there is some serious professional basketball to talk about in Oklahoma City.
The next seven games will say a lot about the Oklahoma City Thunder’s NBA playoff hopes and their hopes of doing anything when they get there.
It’s perhaps the biggest stretch of the season — a three-game road eastern trip while their arena is used for the opening rounds of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, followed by four games against playoff contenders from the Western Conference.
First things first. Three seemingly innocent games at Indiana, Toronto and Charlotte. Indiana is nowhere near the playoffs while the Raptors and Bobcats are fighting for spots at the tail end of the east race. Charlotte has struggled away from home but has one of the best home records in the east.
Toronto was a victim of the Thunder in Oklahoma City just a couple of weeks ago, but it played without all-star Chris Bosh, who is expected back for this Friday’s contest.
Indiana has struggled. But they’re at home, and anyone can beat anyone on a given night in the NBA.

Then comes the homestand — and it’s a doozy. In a seven-day period, the Thunder will face San Antonio, Houston, the Los Angeles Lakers and Portland. All except Houston would make the postseason if it started today, and the Rockets are nipping at the heels of the Spurs and Blazers for the final playoff spot. All are tough and battle-tested teams, and the Thunder could just as easily go 0-4 on the homestand.

Just how will they do? A 5-2 record in these seven games would be huge — maybe enough to put the Thunder right there in the race to claim the No. 4 seed in the west and homecourt advantage in a first-round playoff series.
And even marks of 4-3 or 3-4 on this stretch wouldn’t be bad. It would hold the Thunder on pace to win 50 games this year, likely landing them about No. 6 for a first-round date with either Denver or the Dallas Mavericks.

For a couple of hours Sunday, much of the world, including much of this country and nearly everyone north of us in Canada, sat riveted, watching the action unfold.
In a hockey game.
Team Canada ultimately won gold, its collection of NHL stars defeating Team USA 3-2 in a game that required more than 7 minutes of overtime. It had a little of everything for the old or new hockey fan, great goaltending, physical play and perhaps today’s greatest hockey superstar, Sidney Crosby, scoring the game-winner for the Canadians.
Hockey never has been up with the big three pro sports in America, but it was making real progress until labor problems caused a season to be lost in the last decade.
That helped ruin a TV contract with ESPN and since it’s never really been the same.
So has Sunday’s game, as well as the American win last Sunday when the countries faced off, brought the sport to a new level?
As a longtime fan of hockey I sure hope it has. There is a lot of hockey further down the cable dial, but you still can’t find it on TV like you used to, even at playoff time.
Time will tell if it makes a move or ends up being like curling, a big thing during the two weeks of the Winter Olympics but otherwise sort of forgotten.

It’s been pretty much the in thing the last couple of days to make fun of Canada’s hockey team after its Sunday evening loss to the United States in the Olympics.

The Canadians may yet wind up with the last laugh. They made a tough decision with their goaltending situation, benching veteran Martin Brodeur for Roberto Luongo.

While Brodeur may be one of the best goalies ever, certainly one of the very best in the last 20 years, his play Sunday wasn’t what fans are used to seeing. Luongo may give Canada a better shot.

And they still have terrific talent, paced by one of the planet’s two best players, Sydney Crosby. If they get by a Tuesday night game against Germany (they lead 1-0 in the second period as I write this) then Canada gets a huge quarterfinal test with Russia.

Get through that one and they’re guaranteed a chance to play for a medal. And the only chance for a Canada-U.S. rematch would come in either the gold or bronze medal game. With as many people as were excited about Sunday’s game, the excitement for a rematch — especially if it’s for an Olympic championship — might be totally off the charts.

I’m sorry. I know I’m going to make a few people mad.
But I just cannot believe, as I watch the men’s short program for a few minutes during coverage of the Vancouver Olympics, that this is considered a sport.
I know these guys are tremendously athletic. I played hockey. I know how tricky it can be just to stay up on skates, much less make the graceful moves and amazing spins, turns and twists they make.
It is very athletic.
I don’t know, I just can’t get into it. I know it still will be perhaps the Olympics’ most popular event with or without me, but I’m sticking to hockey.
Sorry.

For the weekend after the Super Bowl, it sure was a great weekend to be a sports fan. Even if it did mess some of us up on getting our Valentine’s plans together quite as well as we should have.
Usually it’s kind of sad the week after the final meaningful football game for about seven months. But this year, we bounced back in a big way.
From the Daytona 500, to the start of the Olympics to the NBA’s All-Star festivities, Bedlam basketball and even a few big college basketball upsets mixed in, there was seemingly something for everyone.
The Oklahoma City Thunder was well-represented in Dallas. Russell Westbrook was the leading scorer in Friday’s Rookie-Sophomore Challenge (scoring 40 points) but teammate Kevin Durant won his coaching debut, leading the rookies to their first win in the game in eight years.
Durant later went on to capture the HORSE challenge, and as of this writing was in double figures in the All-Star game.
The Olympics leave us watching a lot of sports we don’t watch all year. I think I spent a good 45 minutes on the biathlon today, successfully getting a child to fall asleep. I actually was pretty interested. Perhaps moreso than watching Team USA devour China in women’s hockey. The period I watched, the Chinese never even got the puck across our blue line.
I didn’t even make it to the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, won for the second year in a row by up-and-coming player Dustin Johnson, who’s taking advantage of the Tiger-less tour early in the golf season. He also had a strong outing last week in San Diego.
Two Big East powers lost Sunday, No. 2 Syracuse at home to Louisville, and No. 7 Georgetown at Rutgers. And then there was that Bedlam game, which  was a nice boost for the struggling Cowboys against an undermanned Sooner squad.
What was your favorite moment of the weekend?

Danica Patrick has established herself during the last several seasons as a talented and capable driver in the IndyCar Series. And she seems to be hoping her learning curve in NASCAR is even quicker.
Patrick ran an ARCA series event Saturday at Daytona, finishing sixth place despite a spinout in the early part of the race. As a result, she and team owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. have decided to push up her debut on NASCAR’s Nationwide Series from Feb. 20 to Saturday, when she will run in the DRIVE4COPD 300 at Daytona.
“Racing in the Nationwide Series race was my goal during this entire two-month preparation process, but we wanted to make sure it was the right thing to do,” Patrick said Monday as the decision was announced. “The ARCA race was a blast, and I’m not ready for my first Daytona Speedweeks to end just yet.  I want more racing.”
As if it wasn’t a big enough weekend of racing anyway, Patrick just made things that much more interesting, especially for the casual race fan.
No woman has ever made her Nationwide Series debut at Daytona, and she may actually be one of two to do so Saturday, Chrissy Wallace, daughter of veteran driver Mike Wallace, is attempting to qualify as well. They could be the first father-daughter duo ever to compete on the series.
But the focus squarely is on Danica. Will she be a novelty or prove, as she has been for several years in open-wheel racing, that she can be competitive?

It’s quite a jumble in the middle of the pack in the Big 12 men’s basketball standings, and several teams are hoping the conference’s overall strength leads to the league getting a higher number of bids to the NCAA Tournament next month.
The top is easy to figure. Kansas is unbeaten and may stay that way if the Jayhawks can get past Texas next Monday. Texas, Kansas State and probably Baylor are another notch below, the Bears strengthened by their huge win in Austin last weekend.
From there it gets pretty interesting. Oklahoma State has a huge win at K State but got thumped in back-to-back games at Missouri and at home to Texas.
The Tigers were looking solid until a home loss Wednesday to Texas A&M, the best moment of the Big 12 season for the Aggies.
Texas Tech and Oklahoma have held up at home but haven’t been able to do much away from home, and rough nonconference seasons put both those teams in a bit of a hole.
And it’s never easy. As good as KU has looked, the Jayhawks have two overtime wins on the road in the last week, one at K State and Wednesday’s against conference cellar dwellar Colorado.
No matter where you go, going on the road will be a challenge.
Experts are predicting anywhere from five to seven bids for the Big 12, and those teams in the pack are sure hoping that number is the higher one. All are still in position to secure places, but a losing streak could take any of them out of it just as easily.

So how good a story is this year’s Super Bowl?
It’s always a good story in football’s biggest game. But this year’s edition may be lacking the huge storyline.
Yes, you have the New Orleans Saints, fighting back five years after their city was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina to get to their first Super Bowl. They’ll face the Indianapolis Colts and Peyton Manning, son of former Saints’ favorite son Archie.
Decent story. But some of the excitement level died when Brett Favre and the Vikings were unable to get to the big game. Not to mention it took running back Adrian Peterson of OU fame out of the equation.
These two teams were the league’s best most of the season, before each had some setbacks in the final month, some self-inflicted by resting starters before the playoffs began.
And this game may have been more interesting with the Vikings there, as they had the better of the Saints much of the day in the NFC Championship, only to see turnovers — including a rash of fumbles by Peterson — cost them.
It looks like the Colts are even better than the four-point favorites they’ve been established as. One thing is for sure, we’ve got two weeks to hear all the hype from every possible angle. Maybe that good story will be found after all.

It lives. Especially as far as NFL playoff picks so far. If I think you’re going to win, you’re not. Period. Here are your examples just through two rounds of the playoffs.
My Super Bowl pick of Philadelphia vs. New England was wiped out almost immediately.
Cincinnati over the Jets? Nope.
Green Bay … well you get the idea.
So this past weekend I managed to pick one game correctly, the seemingly easiest of the four, the Colts over the Ravens. I thought Dallas would blast Minnesota and that the Cardinals were way too hot for a Saints team that hasn’t looked good for more than a month.
Wrong again. And again.
The best pick of the weekend came from my son, who made a steadfast guarantee the Jets would take care of the Chargers in what I thought would be a whopping upset.
So this weekend, just so you can make your plans, I’m going with the home teams, the Colts and the Saints.