Sun, Pi Day, NCAA Hoops, Pirates, First Track Meet

How about this weather!!! Beautiful!
PI
On Friday, we celebrated Pi Day (March 14 -> 3/14 -> 3.14 = pi) two days early (since we're not in school Sunday) and had good times. Even Google's webpage logo got in the mood with a bunch of pi's. We make a t-shirt and encourage the kids and staff to get one.


My personal highlight of the day is that I have the Calculus classes bring in pies or other sweets to celebrate the day as we put homework problems on the board. What could be better, right? Pies with Derivatives and Integrals!


The apple pie above was definitely the most creative. Others included peach, apple/berry, Oreo creme, Boston creme, brownie circle (like a pie), and (my favorite flavor) lemon meringue. The unfortunate thing about the LM was that, as I was getting it out of the refrigerator, the thin foil tin folded up like a book. Not on the ground mind you (although I still would have eaten it since it was Lemon Meringue--10 second rule), but just all slopped together.

Naturally, it didn't "look" appealing to the population. However, like the saying says, it still tastes the same. I hated to see such a scrumptious pie go to waste, so I MAY have eaten 2/3 (or so) of the pie myself after the period.

NCAA HOOPS
The Conference Tourneys and the NCAA Tourney sure snuck up on me. Maybe it was the Olympics, maybe it was the travelling for indoor track, maybe.....it was just that my three teams (Arizona, Penn State, Davidson) all had rough years. However, with the conference tournaments there comes that *slight* hope that my teams could make a magical run and win the league's automatic bid. Here's how that turned out:

*Arizona (seeded 4th in Pac-10 Tourney) - Lost in the first round to UCLA 75-69
*Penn State (seeded 11th out of 11 in Big Ten Tourney) - CLOBBERED by Minnesota 76-55 (after being in just about every game but coming up short by single-digits all season)
*Davidson (#3 south seed) - No Stephen Curry and no magic this year. 66-59 Elon.

So, that's that.

I set up my tourney brackets, but have to admit this may be the LEAST informed I am going in to a tournament. Looking forward to seeing how "guessing" compares to my deep analysis.

PIRATES
The Buccos are plugging along at spring training. Some people are looking good, others look like they're getting there. Ultimately, it doesn't matter until the records count on opening day. One thing that is really annoying me on the radio is that they will open the Pirates' coverage with the score and say something like "the Pirates couldn't continue yesterday's success and fell to the..." or "That's two in a row for the Buccos." RECORDS DON'T MATTER IN SPRING TRAINING!!!! Tell me how the guys who will be in the major leagues this year did in the game. I couldn't care less about the final score.

Okay. Got that off my chest. I was going through the Pirates' major league, AAA, and AA depth charts and I'm really encouraged. Again, this year probably will be a struggle to get to .500. However, the AAA in Indianapolis has 6 out of 8 positions with legitimate major league talent (not necessarily all-stars, mind you). There are 4 out of the 5 starting pitchers in Indianapolis who look like they're legitimate future major league starters. In years past, AAA and AA were littered with 28-34 year old minor league journeymen with no future and MAYBE one legitimate prospect. Things are looking up. A "system" that can replenish itself is being established (like the Twins, Rays, Marlins, and A's).

TRACK
While the last post was complaining about the snow somewhat, there hasn't been much to complain about lately. It's been really nice weather for practice. We've got our first meet/scrimmage on Wednesday. I'll be excited to see how everybody does. There's a handful of new jumping prospects, so we shall see.