1. Robert Ojemann has passed away… From boston.com
Dr. Ojemann came to Massachusetts General Hospital in 1957 as a resident in neurosurgery, was named professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School in 1979, and remained on the staff of MGH and the faculty of Harvard for the remainder of his career.
Brain tumors and cerebrovascular disease were Dr. Ojemann’s clinical and research focus. He published more than 200 articles and chapters on these and other topics and coauthored several books, including “Surgical Management of Cerebrovascular Disease,’’ one of the first books on the subject.
2. Ryan Westmoreland, a minor league outfielder in the Boston RedSox organization will be undergoing brain surgery for a cavernoma tomorrow (Tuesday, March 16).
3. March madness is here. I have never had such trouble picking the bracket; not that I ever spent that much time on it before. However, much of my angst arises from the fact that three of my final four favorites are all in the same bracket. I wonder what the committee was thinking putting Georgetown, Kansas, and Ohio State together. I’m not the only one. Gary Parrish, you took the words right out of my mouth. And don’t even let me get started on the treatment of the “mid-majors.”
1. Being the No. 1 overall seed kind of sucks: Kansas spent four months assembling the nation’s best body of work, and for that Bill Self was rewarded with a region featuring the CBSSports.com National Player of the Year (Ohio State’s Evan Turner), three prospects expected to go in the top 10 of June’s NBA Draft (Turner, Georgia Tech’s Derrick Favors, and Georgetown’s Greg Monroe), eight other conference tournament champions (Ohio State, San Diego State, Northern Iowa, New Mexico State, Houston, Ohio, UC Santa Barbara, Lehigh), seven other Final Four coaches (UNLV’s Lon Kruger, Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, Maryland’s Gary Williams, San Diego State’s Steve Fischer, Georgetown’s John Thompson III, Georgia Tech’s Paul Hewitt and Ohio State’s Thad Matta), and five teams that own wins over top seeds (Tennessee beat Kentucky and Kansas, Georgetown beat Duke and Syracuse, Georgia Tech beat Duke, Maryland beat Duke, and Oklahoma State beat Kansas). Seriously, only two schools beat KU this season, and the committee stuck both of those schools with KU in the Midwest. So congrats on the overall No. 1, Jayhawks. And good luck trying to navigate through what is clearly the most difficult region (more on this later).
2. The plan is to make the good non-BCS teams eliminate the other good non-BCS teams: I suppose (or at least I hope) it’s a coincidence, but it seems every year one of the non-BCS teams most likely to make a run in this event gets paired with another non-BCS team that’s likely to make a run in this event. This year’s best example is a first-round game in the West between Butler and UTEP. I said last week that the three non-BCS schools with the best chance to make the Sweet 16 were New Mexico, Butler and UTEP, and now either Butler or UTEP is guaranteed to have its season end Thursday because of an unfortunate pairing.
3. Duke should be tested in the second round: I had West Virginia as a one seed instead of Duke, but it’s not like the Blue Devils didn’t have a reasonable claim. They won the ACC regular-season title and tournament title, finished with an RPI rated third and a schedule rated eighth. In other words, I’m OK with it. But I won’t be surprised if Duke gets challenged in the second round, because the Blue Devils will play either California (the Pac-10 regular-season champs that were a preseason top 15 team) or Louisville (a 20-win team that played a schedule rated seventh and beat top seed Syracuse twice).
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