The play-in game appetizers are done, and Thursday morning the main course of 63 games involving 64 teams over the next two weeks begins. For the first time since I got into radio in 2007, I will be able to actually settle in and watch the games for the entire first two days with no radio responsibilities. (Shameless plug: If you are driving around and would like to listen to the games, they'll be broadcast all day long on 1560 Yahoo! Sports Radio.)

Being able to watch the games intently means that I can, in theory, have a few more friendly wagers out there to follow. (Note to aspiring talk-show hosts: Gambling, or even following your bracket, and doing a radio show simultaneously do not mix.)

So let's get on the record with my picks right here and do so while giving out a handful of prop bets.

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The NCAA Tournament starts in full force on Thursday afternoon with first round action in four different cities.

(NOTE: I know that there are four games that the NCAA calls "first round" games on Tuesday and Wednesday night. This is hogwash. These games are functional play-in games for access to the field of 64, which begins play on THURSDAY. They call the round of 64 the "second round." It's not. It is, was, and always will be the FIRST ROUND. Got it? Good.)

Every year, like practically every living, breathing American, I fill out a bracket. And every year, perfectionist that I am, inevitably I am despondent when my first incorrect prediction occurs (typically by around the middle of Thursday afternoon).

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The CBI? When is somebody going to go dancing?

March Madness begins on Tuesday and gets into full swing on Thursday. And for the first time in probably forever (technically since 1977), not one single Texas college was invited to play in the NCAA Tournament. No UT. No A&M. No Baylor. No Rice, UH, Sam Houston State or SFA.

Not one. But not all hope is lost. There are several other postseason tournaments, and the Cougars and Longhorns will be facing each off Wednesday night at Hofheinz Pavilion in the opening round of the CBI.

But in essence, as far as the state of Texas is concerned, college basketball is over. So let's take a quick look at the seasons for UH and Rice and see what was learned.

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(Updated with statement from Guy V. Lewis's family.)

Today at the Hilton Americas just steps away from the Toyota Center, the NBA announced their nominees for induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame. The formal announcement of inductees doesn't come until April 8 at the Final Four festivities in Atlanta.

The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame class of finalists includes female player Dawn Staley, coach Sylvia Hatchell, Gary Payton, Maurice Cheeks, Bernard King, coach Tom Heinsohn, Mitch Richmond, coach Rick Pitino, University of Houston luminary Guy V. Lewis, Spencer Haywood, coach Jerry Tarkanian and Tim Hardaway.

Any of those players or coaches who get 75 percent of the voters to pick them will enter the Hall.

There was heavy cheering from the hometown press when Coach Lewis's name was announced.

A cast of current NBA HOFers was also in attendance at the press conference, including Clyde Drexler, Calvin Murphy, Bob Lanier, Earl Monroe and Dominique Wilkins.

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It's coming.....

Sometimes it takes the trailer to a movie to get casual fans really interested. Take some of these superhero movies, for instance. I don't dork out heavily over Batman or Iron Man movies at all. I don't count down the days until those movies are coming to theaters, and I can't tell you the unfilmed backstory of all the characters.

But inevitably, when I'm at the movies and I see a trailer for, say, The Dark Knight Rises or Iron Man 2, it gets my viewing juices flowing. All of a sudden, I'm ready to see that flick, I want to circle the date.

For many sports fans, college basketball is a lot like that. They care not to dork out over such insignificant things as the regular season, but instead prefer to be woken up come mid-March.

Ah, but what if college basketball had a trailer, like a blockbuster movie, to get those folks geeked up? Well, funny you should ask, because the last four days of college hoops served just that purpose.

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Rice's Ben Braun looks upward, seeking a little help from the skies.

The Rice Owls defeating the Houston Cougars 79-69 on Wednesday night wasn't surprising. Or rather it shouldn't have been surprising. Not to anybody who has actually watched both teams play this season.

The Cougars are the more talented team. They're more athletic. They have speed, size and length. They're decent shooters, and they have the ability to become a good inside-out offensive team. The Cougars are everything the Owls aren't and cannot be. At least not for several more seasons.

The Owls play a more patient style of basketball. They make multiple passes on each offensive possession, each pass working the ball around to a player with a better, more open shot than the one before him. They play the lanes on defense, and they play defense with the type of intensity that a smaller, less athletic team needs to play at in order to compete. The Owls' big guys play more like shooting guards. The small point guards often find themselves having to handle the rebounding.

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The Rice basketball team is not soaring to new heights.

The story is not that the Memphis Tigers defeated the Rice Owls 77-51 on Wednesday night. That was to be expected. The story's not that Rice struggled shooting the ball. That's a season-long pattern.

The story's not really about the game the two teams played on Wednesday night. The story's more about what could have been. What could have been if the Owls, now 3-13 (0-3) on the season, were playing with the players who were on the squad when last season ended?

That's the story because if the Owls don't lose six players who were supposed to return to the team, then the outcome of Wednesday's game probably would have been different. There aren't supposed to be any "what ifs" when it comes to sports, but the "what if" is going to define this Rice basketball season.

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There has been a lot of talk about various halls of fame this week with the retirement of Ray Lewis, the baseball Hall of Fame inductions to be announced on Wednesday and now word that, for the first time in five years, legendary University of Houston basketball coach Guy V. Lewis will return to the ballot for the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Lewis has been left off the list since 2007 because he was so lacking in support at the time that, due to Hall of Fame bylaws, they were required to remove him from the ballot for at least five years. With that time now up, his name is back on the list.

The fact that Lewis is not in the Hall is one of the great travesties of Hall of Fame consideration for any sport. Not only are there numerous examples of players and coaches whose résumés fall far short of Lewis's already in the Hall, but Lewis is nearly solely responsible for popularizing the game of college basketball, thanks to his organizing of the "Game of the Century" between his UH Cougars featuring Elvin Hayes and John Wooden's UCLA Bruins featuring Lew Alcindor (you kids might remember him as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). The game at the Astrodome in January of 1968 set the stage for the televising of regular season games, essentially putting NCAA basketball on the map as a national sport.

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A Big year in Houston sports. Didn't I make that joke already?

Yesterday, we took a look at the futures of the Texans and Rockets. Predictions were made. Accusations were tossed about. But no one is Carnac the Magnificent. All we can really do is guess...except when it comes to the Astros.

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Photo by ~(The Rebel At)~ via Wikipedia

It was the morning of April 3 when we first saw the headlines, and it seemed like an innocent enough story at the time -- out for a Sunday, Arkansas head football coach Bobby Petrino crashed his motorcycle and was taken to the hospital to treat some non-life-threatening injuries.

In a statement issued through the university, Petrino's family said the coach "is in stable condition and is expected to make a full recovery. Our family appreciates respect for our privacy during the recovery and we are grateful for the thoughts of Razorback fans at this time."

As a college football head coach, and the most important person in the state of Arkansas, Bobby Petrino could control a lot of things. Unfortunately for him (and fortunately for the rest of us), the public nature and accessibility of police reports is not one of those things.

The police report on the crash came out a few days later, and much like Petrino himself as he careened off the bike a few days earlier, worlds would be turned upside down.

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