Be a Master!

With the Masters, the best of the four majors, coming up this weekend, I have created a private group for espn.com’s Masters best Ball tournament. It’s totally free. All you need is an ESPN profile, which is free as well. Join up today.

Go here
Our group name is Herald Masters
Password: sanfordherald

No prizes will be awarded other than the satisfaction you will get from defeating a bunch of newspaper people. Good luck!

NCAA tournament: Final thoughts

Here are a few thoughts I had while watching last night’s game. It was a great game, even though I still can’t get over the Heels’ loss…

— Mario Chalmers will never pay for a meal in Lawrence, Kan., again after making the biggest shot in the program’s history. And good for him. As Saturday’s Herald pointed out, Chalmers has ties to the area. His father has people in western Harnett County. He was also highly recruited by both Carolina and Duke. Oh, the one’s that get away…

— What the hell, Roy? If you didn’t see, Roy Williams watched the game wearing a Kansas shirt, less than 48 hours after the Jayhawks broke his team’s heart. That’s really not the message you want to send to 18-22 year olds who are deciding on whether or not to come back to school the next year.
I love Roy. But damn. He acts like we made him come back to Carolina sometimes. If he really had such a love of Kansas, why did he come back? We would have found a coach, probably not one as good as Roy. But at least he wouldn’t have worn the opposition’s colors just after his team got their heart ripped out by them.
If I were Tyler Hansbrough, who almost risks his life every night on the court for Roy, my coach would have a lot of explaining to do. I’d say last night went a long way toward losing him, Ty Lawson and probably even Wayne Ellington. Thanks, Roy. I hope showing love for the Jayhawks was worth it.

— In hindsight, maybe the Heels weren’t as good as I thought. I still believe they were one of the four best teams in the country, but after watching the two star-studded casts that played last night I realize that we were lacking several key aspects. True, we were deep enough to beat up on Virginia and State, but Kansas and Memphis proved to be at least eight solid players deep in the final game.
Even though Thomas came on at the end of the year and even Will Graves looked good in spots, we were really only about 6-7 players deep, depending on your thoughts on Alex Stepheson.

— Thank God Kansas won. Now may KU fans can quit being such babies about us stealing their coach. You got your title. Let it go. Of course, they’ll likely have a new enemy in a few weeks when Bill Self takes the job at his alma mater, Oklahoma State. Apparently they are offering him a $10 million signing bonus, which will be hard to pass on.

— Memphis’ collapse last night should be proof to every aspiring baller in America that foul shots are important. Get in the gym and work on the line. It will pay off in the end. Look at Hansbrough, who got more than 300 points from the line this year, which helped him compile all those double-doubles and national player of the year awards.

— There is always next year. The Dude abides. I think we can all take comfort in that. And at least we made it farther than Duke this year.