Hit and Run: With Spring in our Step

Here's Marquette, whose victory over Syracuse last night made me cry. (Photo: Getty Images)

It’s Monday. How are your brackets looking? Like hell? Thought so.

First of all, a warm welcome to our special guest Ladies… Bracket Brawl participants: Melissa_thistle, Courknee35, Big10Bias and fellow Canuck/friend of the blog Andrew Bucholtz (you will go read his blog The 55-Yard Line now, won’t you?) Our current leader isn’t in our Ladies… group – due to technical difficulties, we had to create another group on ESPN.com so one gal could get her picks in. That gal is Buffalita, leading the pack with 460 points and picking Ohio State to win it all. CuteSports and Raven round out the Top 3 at 440 and 430 points respectively. Any hopes I had of repeating last year’s surprise success have been flushed down the proverbial toilet. I blame Butler.

Best of luck heading into Thursday! Sweet Sixteen will be hopefully be sweet for some of you.

So what else is going on?

Friday Fellow: Brett Gardner

We know you’ve been missing the baseball banter. But please bear with us…we’re melllltiiiing!

The following post won’t do a damn thing to cool you down, either. So enjoy this montage of the hotness that is Yankee outfielder Brett Gardner after the jump, and then take a cold shower.

Mr. Monday: Got Melky?

While I’m not a huge Melky fan and never have been, I am still a Yankees fan and one has to admit that he was mighty impressive yesterday in their 8-5 victory over the Chicago White Sox. After seeing the highlights (because I’d apparently rather spend my Sunday in a muddy park in NJ listening to bands instead of watching my Mets lose and the Yanks finally win), something was brought to my attention which I admittedly never knew had a technical term: the cycle.