Dumb Names? Hoyas, Tar Heels Are Real Championship Caliber

Gene Collier of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote that teams with “stupid nicknames” seldom win the NCAA basketball championship.

His list included the Southern Illinois Salukis, Manhattan Jaspers, Xavier Musketeers and Delaware Blue Hens.

“You have to go all the way back to a team named for Marlo Thomas’ boyfriend in the ‘That Girl’ series, the San Francisco Dons of 1955 and 1956, for the exception,” Collier wrote. “This just proves a pet theory of mine, namely that teams with stupid nicknames are doomed for all time.”

Hey, Gene, you’re overlooking the Georgetown Hoyas and North Carolina Tar Heels, who won in 1984 and 1982, respectively.

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Trivia time: Who is the only Heisman Trophy winner to play in the Final Four?

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Old Bruin nemesis: It has been reported that CBS television analyst Billy Packer played in the Final Four for Wake Forest in 1962.

He scored 22 points to help beat UCLA, 82-80, in a third-place game. Starting in 1964, the Bruins won 10 of the next 12 national championships.

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Dome critic: Columnist Scott Ostler of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the Superdome, site of the Final Four, “looks like a nuclear power plant, but without the charm.

“The NCAA, for some reason, used to play its basketball tournaments in basketball arenas.”

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Every angle covered: Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post, on Kentucky Coach Rick Pitino:

“What I love most about him is how he gives the impression that there’s nothing that can happen in a basketball game--going back to Dr. Naismith--he and his coaches didn’t prepare for.

“If a guy throws a last-second shot blind backward off the guide wire, and it goes in, after the game Pitino will say, ‘You know, it’s funny, but at breakfast this morning, my coaches and I were saying that if we could just get the ball to glance off the guide wire. . . .’ ”

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$1-million prayer: Here’s a real longshot: Bobby Shivar, a 45-year-old pipefitter from Beauville, N.C., has come to New Orleans “under much more pressure than the players.”

Chosen from among 1.9 million entries, Shivar will shoot one shot from collegiate three-point distance for $1 million.

A finalist in a nationwide “Three-Point Challenge,” sponsored by the Gillette Co., Shivar has been shooting 100 times each night in his driveway since the NCAA tournament began. His wife, Vicki, has been keeping count and says he is sinking 30 to 40 shots a night.

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Sophomore snobs? Curry Kirkpatrick, writing for USA Today, doesn’t have much tolerance for Michigan’s “Fab Five.”

“Last year as freshmen, Michigan was a team of boundless joy and effervescence,” he wrote. “Now the Woe-is-us-Wolves are smug, haughty, paranoid, too good to block out or cut and screen or focus or respect anybody or play hard for 40 minutes against some chump change college kids.”

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Trivia answer: Terry Baker of Oregon State in 1963.

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Quotebook: Seton Hall Coach P.J. Carlesimo, to ESPN’s Dick Vitale: “The Michigan players saw you and decided to grow back their hair.”