Oregon St. loses in first round of Pac-10 tournament...

… nation spared countless puff pieces on head-coach-is-President-Obama’s-brother-in-law (and isn’t that just awesome?) connection during March Madness.

Granted, the Beavers (13-17) would had to have won 4 straight games to qualify for the big dance as the Pac-10 tournament champion – highly unlikely - but its nice to nip these sort of things in the bud right out of the gate.

Here’s Joe Lunardi’s latest bracket. It was updated this morning so it hasn’t taken into account today’s conference tournament games.

Top 4 seeds remain UNC, Louisville, Connecticut and Pitt, though, as of this posting Pitt is having some trouble with West Virginia in the 1st half.

Mongo’s San Diego St. Aztecs are still on life support and still on Lunardi’s First Four Out, though, they took a big step towards getting to the dance by beating UNLV this afternoon 71-57. We think they can secure a bid with a win against BYU tomorrow in the Mountain West tourney semis. In fact, its pretty much a play-in game: win and they’re in – lose and go home.