Anybody Can Make a Splash in This Pool

Gene Frenette of the Florida Times-Union on the daunting task of handicapping the NCAA basketball tournament: “There’s no fail-proof method of picking which unheralded school possibly makes a Final Four run from which No. 1 seed might tank in the second round.

“It’s like trying to figure out between Kentucky and UCLA who gets the Jerry Springer guest spot as Dysfunctional Team of the Year.

“You break it down. You analyze. Then you realize that Aunt Millie, who thinks Gonzaga is the highest mountain in China, probably has a good a shot as anybody to pick the 15 games in the brutal West bracket.”

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Trivia time: Who holds the Final Four record for rebounds?

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Rack-man: Grady Little, the new manager of the Boston Red Sox, has a self-deprecating sense of humor. As a player, he never got beyond the double-A level and his career batting average in the minors was only .207.

“I had a manager one time who told ‘em that I had the quickest bat in baseball,” he said. “I looked at him like he was crazy. He said, ‘You can get the bat out of the rack and make an out and get it back in the rack quicker than anybody in baseball.’”

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Small consolation: Filip Bondy of the New York Daily News on the image problem of the New Jersey Nets: “The Nets never will replace the Knicks on the back pages, or in the hearts of area fans.

“For the first time in 26 NBA seasons, though, they will advance further in the playoffs than the Knicks, merely by appearing in them.”

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Discrimination: William C. Rhoden in the New York Times: “You know the sinking feeling you get when your child comes home in tears because of not receiving an invitation to a classmate’s party? That mixture of anger and hurt that comes over you?

“That’s how 259 teams and roughly 3,100 players feel about not being invited to the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament.

“There are few noble priorities in life: eliminating poverty, feeding the hungry and allowing every university that plays Division I basketball into the NCAA tournament.

“Of the three, the last may be the most impossible to achieve.”

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Wrong Bowie: During Sunday’s 1-0 U.S. victory against Ecuador, an ABC announcer compared a U.S. player surrounded by Ecuadorean opponents with “Sam Bowie at the Alamo.”

“If Sam Bowie ever was there,” says Richard Burkard of LaughLine.com, “he was on a tour with the Kentucky basketball team.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1974, UCLA defeated Dayton, 111-100, in three overtimes in a West Regional semifinal in Tucson.

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Trivia answer: Bill Russell of the University of San Francisco, 50 in 1956.

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And finally: The Yankees released outfielder Ruben Rivera after he allegedly stole a glove and bat belonging to Derek Jeter and tried to sell them as sports collectibles.

“It’s a good thing the Giants let Rivera go in the off-season,” San Francisco Chronicle reader Jim Downey of Palo Alto said.

“Otherwise, he might have pulled a muscle hauling Barry Bonds’ recliner to a memorabilia dealer.”