Porch sittin'

So we're almost done with the NCAA tourney (5 games left) and I'm slowly yet steadily plummeting down the standings of my pool.
Some observations:
Is there a new trend where the team that beats duke automatically gets into the Final 4? LSU is in this year, Indiana did it in 2002, and I'm thinking Michigan St. did it last year. Frankly, I can really get behind this trend. Teams should be rewarded for ousting the suckiest bunch of sucks who ever sucked.
Also, I didn't notice it so much this weekend, probably because the games were so much closer, but it seemed to me that in every game last weekend when one team was losing by less than 10 and had the ball with less than a minute left, one of the announcers would complain that said losing team doesn't need to take a three point shot. They would never say when that team DOES need to take a 3, though. I'm still curious, when do they need to take it? Perhaps I'll never know.
Finally, we've all heard about George Mason's Tony Skin who was suspended from their first round game vs. Michigan St. for punching a guy in the CAA tourney in the nads. All during the MSU game, the announcers were hoping that GMU would win to continue Skin's career. Since when is it ok to blatently bunch a guy in the 'nads and have the whole country routing for your team? And suspended for only one game? Obviously, the coach figured they wouldn't win a game in the NCAAs so the length of the suspension wouldn't matter. I guess we all showed him, huh? Don't you think that if this had happened at the high school level, Skin would've been kicked off the team, thus assuring that we'd only hear about Tony Skin in the porno industry?

That's it for my basketball thoughts for now.