The NCAA men’s basketball tournament and the Washington Redskins trading for the number two pick in this year’s NFL draft (Robert Griffin, III) have been competing for time at the water cooler over the past couple of weeks in D.C. Before the Indiana Pacers game last week, I first asked several Washington Wizards players how their brackets were doing, here are some of their responses:
Shelvin Mack:
“I don’t wanna talk about my bracket. It is awful right now.”
My column last week in the DCist got delayed due to my account, so it was posted this morning for you to kindly read. It’s all about how the “Our Time” motto worked out for the Virginia Commonwealth Rams, but not so much for the Washington Wizards. And as evident by the posters above from the crowd seen on television at VCU’s big win over Kansas yesterday, it was clearly a theme that resonated from when Rams coach Shaka Smart outlined it for his team at the beginning of their season. So a big congrats goes to VCU … go check out my DCist column … and the below screen shot captures how the ticket that I purchased in Las Vegas last July (while I was out there for the NBA Summer League) for the Kansas Jayhawks to win the NCAA national title feels.
As previously mentioned, Cedric Jackson, who signed with the Washington Wizards from the D-League on March 31st, went to Cleveland State. The Vikings are in the same conference as the Butler Bulldogs, whom they beat for the Horizon League title in 2009 to advance to the NCAA Tournament; as a 13-seed, Cleveland State won its first round game against 4-seed Wake Forest. But in that ’09 Horizon championship game, Butler’s Gordon Hayward had seven points, Matt Howard had 14 and Shelvin Mack had 18. Meanwhile, Cedric Jackson threw up 19 points, eight assists and seven rebounds … and got the 57-54 win.
His opinion being qualified, I briefly chatted with Cedric about Butler and the 2010 NCAA championship before Tuesday’s game against the Golden State Warriors.
