This Week in Balls – March 19

Not everyone has the time or the inclination to follow sports full-time, or even real-time. Thankfully, we combed the latest, greatest, and worst stories from the world of sports this past week—college hoops, and plenty of it, Spring Training—so you can hobnob with the weird regular people at the office, your doorman, or your minions, if you have minions.

NCAA Hoops:

-Is the college tourney the best or the worst weekend on the sports calendar? David Roth contends it’s somewhere in between. To be sure, the first four days had plenty of action: Norfolk State, by one measure the second-worst-rated team in the tourney, beat Mizzou, owners of the best offense in the country, and shocked the world, though not Olive the Hairless Cat. Lehigh, which had never won in the tournament but boasts a tiny overlooked guard, beat Duke that day as well, making Duke fans unhappy, which made everyone else happy.

-Still, barring a few upsets, the Sweet 16 is mostly good-on-paper teams. For instance, UNC, whose point guard Kendall Marshall broke his hand in the second-round win over Creighton, still maintains four of the region’s top five NBA prospects. This week’s action will be mostly high seeds, excepting Xavier and North Carolina State’s Wolfpack—sadly, not N.Y.’s Wolfpack—but the deep analysis will have to wait until Olive wakes up from her nap.

NFL:

-Football free agency began in earnest Tuesday afternoon and several teams reloaded. Tampa Bay signed Hakeem Nicks’ Italian brother Carl, despite his well-documented Giants fandom. Mario Williams, also Italian (“Mario,” duh), signed with the all-Italian Buffalo Bills; the $100-million deal was the most lucrative contract ever awarded to a defensive player.

-No. 1 free-agent and neck-surgery veteran Peyton Manning signed to the Broncos; San Francisco’s quarterback Alex Smith, eternal bust who’s had one OK season, but may actually be good, met with Miami’s front office for five-plus hours and has says he’s “unhappy,” which is what your girlfriend says a week before she’s no longer your girlfriend. Smith and Manning share an agent, Tom Condon; this has been seen as a conflict of interest, which is not a word agents understand.

-One-game wonder Matt Flynn, meanwhile, has signed with the Seahawks. While some might think it’s a little premature to give $26 million to a guy who’s thrown 132 career passes, the last time the Seahawks got a Packer backup QB, it went pretty well.

MLB:

-Lovable scamp/spoiled brat/once-in-a-generation talent Bryce Harper was optioned to Triple-A, where he will play center field and will likely get called up mid-season. Nats manager Davey Johnson said earlier in the spring he’d like him to open the season in the Majors—that idea was taken seriously for a few minutes but now we’re back to the basics. He’ll likely come up around June, which will save the Nats a year of service time.

-Harper, the No. 1 overall pick in 2010, shut down his Twitter a while back, but this year’s crop of amateur prospects have not, and it is only a matter of time until they will be tweeting about Chipotle. (Or they’ll take after J.R. Smith and tweet photos of a big-assed woman they’ve just had sex with.)

-On the other side of the age spectrum, but keeping with the lower levels of baseball, Andy Pettitte, Yankees hero, signed a minor-league deal with the club. The Yankees rotation, which got a boost this offseason, is in even better shape: You can never have too much pitching, even if the insurance in question was born during the Nixon administration. YES’s Jack Curry broke the news, which became a topic of discussion/an insider media slap-fight Friday. The Yankees are going to be real good this year.

NBA:

-The NBA trade deadline came and went, and Dwight Howard, the 7-foot dorky prize, exercised his option to stay in Orlando, which means the team might go far this postseason, and also we might see another round of WHERE WILL DWIGHT GO? blog non-news stories again this time next year. Joy.

-The Nets will open up the arena, but without four Williamses: that magical era is over.

-Team USA’s assistant coaches had a bad week: Mike D’Antoni resigned from the Knicks (J.R. Smith had a party that night) and Nate McMillan was fired by Portland (to be replaced by a pushy intern); head coach Mike Krzyzewski saw his Duke squad eliminated. Again, Duke lost. Sorry, we just love typing those words.

NHL:

-Sidney Crosby, hockey’s best player, biggest star in America, and owner of the worst mustache behind this asshole, returned to action on Thursday after a rash of concussions. The game was a big deal in Canada, and while it wasn’t as insane a return hockey-wise as his first game back in November, it was productive, and he looked plenty good. Let’s hope his brain is all right.

Iditarod:

In dog racing news, here are pictures of dogs racing.

@samreiss