Times staff writer Sam Farmer will be writing about the people he meets and things he sees this week at the NCAA regional in Anaheim:

Jim Harbaugh might not be a psychic, but he already knows the result of Saturday's game between Stanford and Marquette -- at least as far as he's concerned.

It will be a win.

And a loss.

Harbaugh is Stanford's football coach, but his sister is married to Tom Crean, Marquette's basketball coach.

So when Crean's team played Kentucky in the first game Thursday at the Honda Center, Harbaugh sat in the Marquette cheering section wearing a Golden Eagles T-shirt. Then he changed into a Stanford shirt for the Cardinal's game against Cornell.

"I feel like Cooper Manning," said Harbaugh, referring to the older brother of competing NFL quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning. "Now I know why people wear two shirts, the half and half."

Harbaugh feels loyal to both schools, so he plans to find a neutral spot to watch Saturday's game, away from the cheering sections of either school, and joked that he just might wear, say, green.

"Honestly, the NCAA has put me in a tough predicament," he said. "But I'm really happy that Stanford and Marquette have reached this point."

Harbaugh is similarly split when it comes to his thoughts on which team might win.

"Marquette, I'll tell you what, when they're shooting well, they can win by 10 or 15 over whoever they're playing," he said. "They play such good defense."

But he believes the game will hinge on the play of 7-foot Stanford twins Brook and Robin Lopez.

"Marquette has to find an answer for the Lopezes," he said. "That will be huge."

Crean, who says he feels just like one of the Harbaugh boys, doesn't seem too concerned about which way his brother-in-law is leaning.

"I understand if Jim's loyalties are with his school," he said.

Then, he jokingly dropped the gauntlet.

"I guess I'll just have to get Pete Carroll to come root for us."

------

Seeing as Stanford beat Cornell by 24 points, a more competitive matchup would have been a battle of the bands.

In one corner, the Cornell Big Red Pep Band, the one that refers to itself as the only "real band" in the Ivy League and has deep military roots.