To get in the March Madness spirit, here is a video vault from the NCAA that has full games and highlights from the past ten years of the final rounds (Sweet 16 through National Championship) of the NCAA Tournament.

For all you Syracuse fans out there, here is the video of the 2003 National Championship win for your viewing pleasure.

Today, Michael Jordan is being inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, along with C. Vivian Stringer, Jerry Sloan, John Stockton, and David Robinson. ESPN has put together a compilation of the 23 best moments of MJ’s career (Note: ESPN could have done a better job of this page by making the videos play continuously instead of the way they have it, which requires the user to click on every clip).

As a student and an alum, I’ve been watching my beloved Syracuse Orange(men) for close to 22 years now. I’ve never been bashful in my criticism of Jim Boeheim and I’ve also been one to acknowledge when he’s done a good job. I’ve witnessed some of the greatest games in the Carrier Dome, watched almost every big game on TV, enjoyed 3 runs to the NCAA Championship game, one National Championship in 2003, and have watched some of the program’s most painful defeats (Richmond Spiders anyone?).

But what has gone on at MSG during this week’s Big East Tournament has has made me even more proud to be an alum of Syracuse University. The effort and will to win that the team put forth this week in the 6 (!!!) Overtime epic against UConn was nothing short of spectacular (Yes, I stayed up to watch it against my better judgment). And then to turn around and go into another Overtime game and win against a very good West Virginia University team is just staggering.

All the accolades and hype for their effort are justified. Jonny Flynn is “the man”. He has played in all but maybe 5 minutes of the past two games. Andy Rautins has been “en fuego”. Eric Devendorf, not one of my favorites, has been clutch and mostly in control.

Tonight the Orange play a very, very good University of Louisville team. The cynic in my says it does not look promising. But at this point, nothing will surprise me.

Recently it was announced that the Seattle Supersonics have moved to, of all places, Oklahoma City. (I won’t even go into the shock that Keven Durant must be having, going from an energetic city like Seattle to, with all due respect, a sleepy plains city like OKC.) But come on, could they not have done a little bit of a better job with the new team name and logo? The Oklahoma City Thunder? Thunder? What Thunder?. The logo is terrible. The team name…eh…its up there with the Magic, Wild, and Thrashers as inanimate objects masquerading to be sports mascots. Come on folks of OKC, could you not have gone with Cowboys? Yes, its boring, but OKC is a cowboy town.

A lot has been made about Kobe Bryant and his drive to win a championship on his own, without the likes of Shaq at his side. And there is also his egotistical desire to elevate himself past Jordan.

Well, last night the Lakers blew a 24 point lead. And as Bill Simmons at ESPN put it:

The Kobe-MJ thing … done. Over. Jordan never would have let that happen in the Finals. Ever. Under any circumstances. Nobody is ever allowed to bring this up again.

As it was, last night’s game was one for the ages. If the Celts end up winning this thing (because as the Red Sox have proven in 2004, its not over until its over), the impact of this game will grow exponentially.

Agency Spy and several other websites have noted how Phoenix Suns guard Steve Nash has created, and produced his own spot for Nike depicting a day in his life during the off season from his regular job as a guard for the Phoenix Suns and a former NBA MVP.

This past summer I was walking to work in TriBeCa and happened to see Nash cruising on his skateboard down Chambers Street, in a very similar fashion to what is depicted in his video, and just days after an article in the NY Times talked about how he spends summers in NYC playing soccer in various leagues in the city.

I recently read a great article in this week’s Sports Illustrated about the art of “The Dunk”, how it has its own vernacular and culture and is still one of the most revered shots and experiences in sport. To praphrase the article, do we know another move in all of sports that can be collectively described as “boomshakalaka”, “dipsy doo dunakroo”, “windmill”, “throw down”, “360″ and, the mother of all dunk descriptions, the “Chocolate-Thunder-Flying, Robinzine-Crying, Teeth-Shaking, Glass-Breaking, Rump Roasting, Bun-Toasting, Wham-Bam-Glass-Breaker-I-Am-Jam”. And everyone would know what you are talking about!

Through the article, there are several seminal dunks that are described so in honor of them, here they are in all their glory:

Baron Davis dunking over Andrei Kirilenko

John Starks over Horace Grant and the Bulls

Tom Chambers over Mark Jackson

Dominique Wilkins

Henry Bekkering

Vince Carter over Fredric Weis

Dwight Howard Superman Dunk

Chocolate Thunder

A couple of nights ago, Duke beat Clemson at Cameron Indoor on a last second play that was very controversial because the refs screwed up the clock management at the end of the game, giving Duke additional time to score (which of course they did) and win the game.

So watching ESPN this evening, as always, they over analyzed the play and asked Jay Bilas, a Dookie from the late 1980′s and their college basketball analyst, to provide commentary. And what did he do? He defended the refs! He had the audacity to imply that Duke would have won no matter how many seconds were on the clock and that Clemson never could have won the game.

Are you kidding me? How can you imply that? The ref’s screwed up. Duke got away with one. Just admit it.

Naaah, no bias towards Duke from that journalist.

I don’t usually post about my alma mater’s basketball team, but their performance this week at the Big East tournament was just too spectacular to let go without some recognition. Maybe its the Garden and its amazing ability to bring the best out of certain players and teams. Maybe its cheezy coaches polls that are critical of the team’s star player. No matter what the motivator, the run that my Syracuse Orange(men) just pulled off was one of the best I’ve seen for this program, and (at risk of dating myself) I’ve been actively following them for close to 20 years now.

While its not as good as the 2003 National Championship, the 1996 run to the National Finals, and the 1987 run to the National Finals, its in the same ball park. The reason is that when this week started, the Syracuse basketball team was on life support. They had a 19-11 record with some really ugly losses (by 39 points to DePaul…yikes!), and few strong wins. Without a doubt, they were a team on the wrong side of the NCAA Tournament fence as they entered this week’s Big East tournament. For Gerry McNamara, Syracuse’s senior shooting guard, the week started with a couple of polls stating that he was the most overrated player in the Big East. But by the end of this week, he is the king of NYC and the Big East.

So as I sit here after just witnessing the amazing 4 game run that my Orange(men) just pulled off to claim their 5th Big East Tournament Championship, and 2nd title in a row, it just leaves this SU alum speechless. They essentially took themselves from being an NIT team to somewhere between a #6-8 seed in the NCAA tournament. Its not as much the fact that they won the Big East Tournament, but its the manner in which they won, and the teams they beat along the way. They beat two of their biggest rivals in UConn and Georgetown (Beating UConn, especially when they are #1 in the country, is sweet, but beating Georgetown in the Big East tournament always makes the basketball season that much sweeter), and, arguably, their 3rd biggest rival in the University of Pittsburgh. For Gerry McNamara, he essentially put the team on his shoulders, making clutch shot after clutch shot, and single handedly beating Cincinnati in the first round and UConn (#1 in the country) in the 2nd round. Now lets hope that they do not have a let down after this amazing run and replicate their un-ceremonious 1st round loss in last year’s NCAA’s.

Random thoughts….Did anyone notice that for all the frivolous expansion that the Big East did this year, and all the changes, that the league went through, that the final four teams were all original members of the league – SU, Georgetown, Villanova and U of Pittsburgh….Loved the fact that Derrick Coleman and “Pearl” Washington was on hand at MSG rooting on the Orange….While Boeheim has at least a 10 year pass now for winning the National Championship in 2003, his game coaching did not make these wins any easier…I love the way that ESPN dregs up fossils like Bucky Waters to analyze the WAC tournament, like he is going to know anything about the teams in that league…

Carmelo vs. LeBron this evening for the first time in the NBA. Should be an interesting game. I am obviously partial to Carmelo since he brought a National Championship to my alma mater Syracuse.