The Hlog

Live from Tampa - it's the NCAA Tournament

It's the eve of the Drake-Western Kentucky game, I signed a piece of paper allowing me to blog from the NCAA tournament, and so I will.

Except that I'm plagued with a nasty cold clouding my brain, not to mention other areas of my head and chest.

I had the cold before I left Cedar Rapids Wednesday, but it couldn't have been helped from being in a packed flight of people going from Detroit to Tampa.

At the gate in the Detroit airport, one woman was coughing and coughing among the hundred or so people waiting to board. She'll probably sit next to me, I thought.

She did.

But the rest of the plane was filled with other kinds of sickness like people arguing over whose seat was whose before the flight departed.

There was someone who couldn't stop reaching across the aisle in front of me to point out things in the in-flight magazine to a traveling companion.

And, of course, there was the mandatory screaming baby in the back of the plane.

But then, who was the clown who accidentally knocked a glass of soda onto the coughing woman? That would be moi. I apologized profusely, and she couldn't have been more gracious. Which made me feel even smaller, because I'd singled her out as a bad seatmate before even boarding the plane.

Now then, I see Drake in for a very difficult game today, perhaps as hard a game as it would have Sunday against Connecticut should it get past Western Kentucky.

Western Kentucky isn't some cute, boutique basketball program. This is the school's 20th - count 'em, 20th - NCAA appearance, and it has 15 wins. It has four straight 20-win seasons. Guard Courtney Lee, by all indications, is a possible first-round NBA draft pick come June.

Drake, in 32 games, has come across few future NBA players this season. The season reaches a higher level today. If the Bulldogs' came doesn't do likewise, it will have a brief stay in this tourney.

Nyquil time. Seacrest out.

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