A lot of ground to cover today, so I'll skip the excessively wordy introduction.

Deb Patterson's women's basketball team is a five-seed in the New Orleans Regional.  I guess that's the good news.  The bad news: the team plays its opening round games in Brigdeport, Conn., against a Chattanooga team that went undefeated (18-0) in its conference and 29-3 overall.

On top of that, the women will be playing without leading-scorer Kimberly Dietz, who is out for the year with a knee injury.  We'll be cheering you on from afar, ladies!

It's been a good week for good sports writing.  Today, the Wichita Eagle's Jeffrey Martin has a piece about bowling with Michael Beasley (and family).  Martin has rapidly become the preeminent reporter in K-State circles, and I am happy to recant my previous criticisms of some of his work.

Also, I've been taking note of the many Google searches that lead to this site, and have linked his blog permanently on the right sidebar, under the K-State Links section.

When I mentioned good sportswriting in the previous bit, I was of course referring to Joe Posnanski's column Sunday about what's next for the Sprint Center.  Today, thanks to the excellent blog, Houston's Clear Thinkers, I have an article that expands on some of the issues in Posnanski's article and in my commentary from Sunday.

First, a warning.  It's a long article from the magazine "The American."  It's not short, light reading.  But author Joel Kotkin does an excellent job of explaining why an "opportunity city" like Houston has positioned itself to become one of the world's great cities.  If I had to boil it down to its essence, the difference is that Houston says, 'Of course we can do that' whereas too often Kansas City says, 'That probably isn't going to work.'

OK, that's enough soapbox for the day.

A few quick-hitters about the NCAA Tournament: Omaha is apparently going to be a tough ticket, which shouldn't be all that surprising considering the host screwed the residents who paid for the Qwest Center...Frank Martin and the Cats hope the NCAA is a fresh start...the Cats leave for Omaha today.

This is long overdue, but here's what's going on around the blogosphere:

Heath over at KC Sports Report implores K-State and KU fans to help each other out in Omaha, for the greater good of the conference.  In general, I'm all for cheering on other conference teams in postseason play, because it improves the conference's image.

Over at Corn Nation, corn blight has a piece that should be required reading for anyone who is at the dawn of his/her partying career (read: undergraduates).  Of particular poignancy is his recommendation to keep the political science scholars in the basement when the police show up.

Hildy over at 12th Manchild has his final thoughts on the Big 12 Championship in Kansas City.  Sounds like he had a good time.

That's the news for today.  I'm meeting up with Chris, the Chiefs' blogger, this afternoon for happy hour and what will be a long discussion of who the Chiefs should draft.  Actually, it will be more like him telling me who they should draft, but if you're a Chiefs fan I encourage you to check out his site.