Before I take a break...

from work that is, although now that I'm typing, I guess I am, I have a couple of sports-related issues to discuss.

First I'd like to thank Ohio St, Iowa, and North Carolina for screwing me over in the NCAA tournament. The odds of me winning anything at work basically depend on Connecticut beating Duke in the finals and even then, I don't have a great chance. Ah well, my first day of picks was great.

Volleyball is finished as far as the regular season. And for me, it could be done until next fall. We have next week off, which is when I will do a fantasy baseball draft in Lisle. And in 2 weeks, for those that don't know, I'M GOING TO WRESTLEMANIA! When I tell people that I'm going, I'm getting every reaction from "Why?" to "There's nothing wrong with that." I guess some people just aren't as sophisticated as me.

Anyway, we went 3-0 against a lousy team yesterday to close the season. What we want is the second place team to lose one of the three games they have next week against the team we just thrashed. The odds of that are not good. Now if they lose just one of the three, we finished tied with them at 17-10, we take first place via tiebreaker, and play the team we just beat in the first round of the playoffs. If the second place team sweeps, we're second and play another team.

Regardless, I will miss the semifinals, so I hope they can get a win with me gone. I think they have a good chance to win no matter who they play in the first round, but in all honesty, I think they lack speed and agility without me on the floor. If they win on April 2, I come back for the championship match on April 9.

In the same professional organization, you now have Jerry Jones, Bill Parcells, Terrell Owens, Drew Rosenhaus. Forget Barry Bonds, let's watch a reality show on this!

Fantasy sports update: I moved into sixth place in basketball with one week to go before the playoffs, which means I'm in position to make the championship tournament. I haven't been this high since Christmas. I'm playing a pretty decent 5th place team this week and leading the 7th place team by 2 games. If I win this week by 4 of 9 categories or more, I tie him and pass him in the standings. I don't think that's likely though. Seriously, I just want to qualify and with a team that has just recently gotten healthy, I think I can make a run.

Hockey playoffs start this week. I finished 3rd out of 12 teams with a record of 120-67-33. I needed 2 more points to finish second outright as I would have lost the tiebreaker. So I don't get a first round bye, but that's fine. This week, I take on a team that I should not have much trouble beating. I have plenty of powerplay points, goals, assists and those sort of stats. They key for me is goaltending. I need Peter Budaj (supposedly you don't pronounce the "j") of Colorado to step up. I like Kari Lehtonen, the ex-Chicago Wolf. And Robert Esche seems to be getting better. My penalty minutes is not good, and +/- hasn't been great lately. So if I can just keep winning 2 of the 4 goaltending categories, I think I'll keep winning.

Now here's who this guy has. His centers are Mike Comrie and Daymon Langkow. (Yawn.) His left wingers are Erik Cole and somebody named Frolov from LA, both of whom are injured. His right wingers are Mikael Samuelsson from Detroit (day to day) and Hemsky from Edmonton. Supposedly, the latter is good. The defense is okay with Spacek (FLA), Van Ryn (FLA), Heward (WAS), and Campbell (BUF). I don't think they compare to my lineup of Pitkanen, Zubov, Lidstrom, Souray, and Tomas Kaberle. On his bench, I repeat, his bench: Darcy Tucker, Marek Svatos (excellent player, but injured for the year), and Joe Sakic. Joe Sakic on the bench! This idiot won't put his best healthy offensive player in his lineup.

His goaltending is tough with Tomas Vokoun, Dominik Hasek, and Ray Emery (both Ottawa). Can you see where this is going? Emery is on the bench so I only need to deal with Vokoun this week!

I expect a 5-3 win and a semifinal meeting with RDU Snipers.

And to my boyhood hockey idol, tonight, welcome home Leetchie.