Women's Hoops Guru

By Mel Greenberg

PHILADELPHIA - March Madness took off in a frenzy Saturday as soon as the calendar paid adieu to a rare leap day in February by getting on with the business at hand.

How crazy was it? Welcome to a little "Inside Guru."

Don't credit Ketia Swanier's last-second heroics for rescuing No. 1 Connecticut at DePaul Saturday night without knowing a stand-by scramble by yours truly and the AP's Doug Feinberg created the waves of karma that traveled to the Midwest in time for her to keep the luster on Monday night's Big East and national showdown between her Huskies and Rutgers in Hartford.

The Guru's long day into night into morning went like this.

Stephen, who has done an outstanding job on our behalf at Rutgers, kept the scene under control up north on senior day -- read his report below -- in a win over Syracuse while we were here in town at Temple tracking the Atlantic Ten scramble at the finish and the Owls' bid for a No. 1 seed in the conference tourney.

At the same time, we were keeping tabs on St. Joseph's across town in terms of their seed and La Salle's bid for a berth that would have been the Explorers' out of a potential five-way tie if they would have beaten Duquesne at Pittsburgh.

Oh yes, and out in the suburbs Villanova was trying to land a Big East berth. All of those is addressed in previous posts along with a print story at Philly.com.

And by the way, congratulations to fourth-ranked Holy Family for staying unbeaten and moving past the quarterfinals in the Division II Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference quarterfinals. Likewise to Cabrini, who followed up on their big victory at Madison Square Garden during the season by upsetting Gwynedd Mercy to win the Pennsylvania Athletic Conference crown in Division III.

And guess who the men's champion of the PAC is? -- That would be Immaculata in its third or fourth season as a program and also the first that saw the return of famous alum Theresa Grentz as an advisor to the president.

Anyhow, so having taking care of afternoon affairs, the Guru remained in the Liacouras Center technological catacombs housing the media room, where cell phone and blackberry transmission don't work very well.

At the same time, we continued to work on the software migration to the new laptop. It's going well. We even did our routine file of the print story into the office on our own.

Suddenly, an urgent message from Doug snook into the Guru's unit requesting an urgent return call.

"UConn's down at the half to DePaul, when was the last time an unranked team beat a ranked team?" he asked. "We better get ready."

Unfortunately, the Guru's poll data had not yet made it into the new laptop and was a mile down the street in the home office and since we were trying to install the device that will allow us to watch TV -- really -- we could not scramble out of Temple fast enough to help Doug.

However, he had a copy and the Guru kind of remembered Villanova the year after "the year" and thought something had occurred since. We were able to nail that and the Guru gave him Rachel's number at the Big East to confirm tie-breakers in terms of Monday night.

Having gotten all that under control, we parted with the idea that now that we ran the info fire drill, UConn would find a way to win.

So Erin (who will be with us in Hartford), we know you're happy Ketia came through, but only because we got prepared for her to do otherwise.

Conference Brackets are Getting Set

Next weekend is the first mega-wave and small ripple, too, of conference tournaments determining automatic seeds.

Marist, which earned its first AP ranking, finished the MAAC unbeaten and will be obviously the top seed. You know about the Atlantic Ten with the info in a previous post below.

American will be the top seed in the Patriot League at Army.

UTEP, which earned its first AP ranking this season, became the first C-USA team to go unbeaten in the regular season and will be the top seed, having byes with SMU, UAB, and Houston.

On Sunday, the Big Ten draw will be set with Ohio State and Iowa tied going into the last day of the season and Penn State trying to stop a nine-game losing streak. The same goes for the Atlantic Coast, where Maryland meets North Carolina State, while North Carolina and Duke clash.

Ivy Changes Leader

Two narrow losses by Cornell at the finish at Dartmouth, Friday, in the last seconds, and at Harvard, Saturday, has moved the Crimson a game ahead of the Big Red with one weekend left in the Ivy League -- the lone conference out of 31 that does not hold a postseason tournament..

Penn, incidentally, beat Brown, Saturday night in the Palestra to make it a sweep of the Bears and the Quakers' only two conference wins.

Bubbles Weary of Upsets

We'll run another list Sunday night, but for teams on the so-called NCAA bubble, and there are not many, here are the places to cheer for top conference seeds to win and avoid joining the deliberations as at-large candidates:

America East - Hartford

Atlantic Ten - Avoid the NCAA monkey wrench we were given at the mock brackets by making sure some one other than Temple, George Washington, or Xavier doesn't win the tournament.

Big South - Liberty.

CAA - Old Dominion (the following weekend)

C-USA -- UTEP

Horizon - Wis.-Green Bay

MAAC - Marist -- They go no matter what.

Missouri Valley -- Illinois State

Mountain West -- Utah and Wyoming to play for the title.

PAC-10 - Stanford, or Cal, or Arizona State to win. USC has faded quickly.

SEC - No Cinderellas

Southern -- Chattanooga. (Not that they'd make an impact but they'd be on the table.)

WAC - Fresno State or Boise State, which is not to say the other is a lock to get an at-large

West Coast --Gonzaga

Drexel Stays in Postseason Hunt

Guru get out of here. You have to cover senior day and the Dragons' hunt for third or second or, at fourth, fourth place at 1 p.m. when George Mason visits.

Rutgers' NCAA Situation

Just testing if you're still with us this deep in the post.OK, now that the Scarlet Knights have taken care of almost all their business by beating Syracuse, here's the good and bad news at what's ahead, assuming they'll get to the Big East title game, with one or two UConn games the only potential losses remaining that wouldn't be damaging.

The good news is that it is now almost impossible for Rutgers to get anything but a No. 1 seed. And that honor would at least keep last season's NCAA runnersups free and clear of Tennessee, Connecticut, and either Maryland or North Carolina until the Final Four if they run the table.

So when the TV gets to that moment a big cheer is going to go up all over Central New Jersey and alumni land. And then it will be short-lived, which is not to say the team couldn't get its job done if everyone involved avoids hysterics.

But thanks to the coaches' association's request for geography over seed in terms of the bracket, which we learned in Indy, and the way teams are coming into the finish line and where the regionals are located, and whatever regional balancing is done after the initial top of the bracket is drawn by the committee, here's the option, and it doesn't make a difference which No. 1 Rutgers is given.

If the Scarlet Knights are in Greensboro, they stand a chance of dealing with Duke or Maryland or both or, if they stumble Sunday and in the ACC tourney, North Carolina as a barrier to Tampa.

A placement in New Orelans means a likely rematch with LSU. And a trip to Oklahoma City is going to involve one or more of Oklahoma, Baylor, or in the earlier game -- Oklahoma State.

And to avoid all that means a trip to Spokane, Wash., bringing the travel coast-to-coast nightmare repeat into play, and a most likely clash with Stanford to advance.

So there it is. You can start the debate for the next two weeks at what is the least poison. But then, that's what modified parity does, it removes all those easy regional semifinals and finals of the past.

And now we will remove ourselves from the office until late Sunday afternoon.

-- Mel