Ankle, Hoops, & Baseball Update

First of all, thanks for all the kind thoughts with the ankle (and sorry about the ugly picture!!). It's to the point now where the swelling is down and I'm just about back to normal. I'm planning on running with Beth on Sunday.

HIGH SCHOOL HOOPS
The Lebo girls won the WPIAL (District 7) title in convincing fashion. On to the State playoffs Friday against the winner of a play-in game tonight.

The boys lost a tough one at the end by six or so points. They still qualified for the state playoffs and play Saturday against the top city league team.

The district where we live (boys team) is also alive in the state playoffs after making it to the AAA district finals.

The downside with the teams still in the playoffs is there's less indoor space for the next few weeks. It's a bummer that it's cold and there's nowhere to go, but good luck to the teams and I hope they keep playing until March 20th at the BJC.

COLLEGE HOOPS
Davidson played better this week and Stephen Curry looks like his ankle is healed (I now know a little something about that). He also became the all-time Davidson scoring leader this past week. Not bad for a junior! They're getting ready for the Southern Conference tournament that starts Friday and ends with hopefully a victory on Monday night on ESPN in the SoCon Tourney Final. I don't know that they would be in the NCAA tournament without the automatic berth.

Penn State is still keeping hope alive. In the most recent "bracketology" the Lions are listed in the "Last Four In" group and a 12 seed. We shall see. They've got a tough one Thursday at home against Illinois (need to validate that 38-33 ugly win) and then Saturday at Iowa (always tough to play on the road). I think they need to reach the semi's of the Big Ten tourney to feel secure about making it to the Big Dance.

Arizona has fallen flat on their face, losing 3 in a row after winning 7 in a row (business as usual for the streaky team). They've got Cal on Thursday and Stanford on Saturday and need to win both and make some noise in the Pac-10 tourney.

It should be an interesting next two weeks leading up to Selection Sunday on March 15.

One other note was I heard on ESPN radio this morning that Seth Davis (basketball guy for CBS) wrote a book about the 1979 NCAA Championship game (aka Magic Johnson & MSU vs Larry Bird & Indiana State). It sounds good. I may have to check it out.

PIRATES UPDATE
The Pirates are now 6-1 in spring training action for what it's worth. The interesting part will be to see how the starting rotation works out and how the regular season begins. Not that there's much of a chance, but the MUST get off to a good April. Adam & Andy LaRoche, Freddy Sanchez, and pretty much all the pitchers have to set the tone the first couple of weeks and the "franchise guys" (Nate McLouth, Ryan Doumit, and Paul Maholm--all signed to extensions) need to repeat what they did last year. We shall see.

More updates on the buccos as we get closer to the regular season.

In another note, I've become a follow of a blog written by 2007 Pirates 1st round draft pick Daniel Moskos. I'm hoping he has a good year this summer and works his way up through Altoona and hopefully Indianapolis.