The 13th seed University of Vermont effected a stunning upset victory last night in the first round of the NCAA Basketball tournament, beating the #4 seeded Syracuse Orangemen 60-57 in overtime. This is the first time UVM has won an NCAA tournament game ever.
So these Catamounts slayed the Big East champions and busted up plenty of brackets in the process. They were fearless....
They play 5th seeded Michigan on Sunday. Coach and local radio personality Tom Brennen, in classic and classy style gave all the credit to the team:
"It's the biggest win in the history of our school and no one deserves it more than these fellows," Brennan said, his smile as wide as a foul line.
And while it is true that the boys did a great job, a lot of the credit goes to Coach Brennan, a guy who I have met on several occasions. He's the kind of coach you want for your kid; moral, compassionate, witty, and tough but more interested in building quality people than winning games.
But he wins games too.
And despite the fact that he has composed hundreds of awful poems, which he regularly reads on the air, he is a great guy and a great coach and this is a fitting end to a terrific career. For after this tournament, Coach Brennan is retiring.
A bomb exploded in a Christian neighborhood in Beirut, Lebanon. Who did it? Hard to say, but I know who is being blamed: Syria. Certainly it is true that Syria's justification for being in Lebanon in the first place is to control religious warfare in Lebanon, a role they did play during the civil war that took place in the '80s. But now it looks like political opportunism; a way to justify not leaving Lebanon. It's a familiar strategy, one al Qaeda is attempting in Iraq. Attempting with the help of ..... Syria. The pro-Syrian Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has reasonably called for peace, but the Lebanese Nationalist forces are suspicious and one of those leaders, a Christian, has called for Lahoud to resign.
"If a new president is not chosen....the future might be unknown," Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt told followers gathered at his mountain home.
And they have reason to be suspicious. Just recently pro-Syrian political leaders have talked about delaying the elections because they oppose international election supervisors.
The fact of the matter is that only free, fair and transparent elections are going to settle the issue.
The two countries most responsible for Iran's nuclear weapons program, Russia and China, are planning to have joint military exercises. Some see this as practice for an invasion of Taiwan. Moscow and Beijing put a different face on their motives
According to a source in the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Sino-Russian exercises would have an “anti-terrorist orientation” and would be held on the Shandong peninsula.
Uh huh.
Well I say look at this: China, Russia, Iran.
Not good.
