NCAA Nicknames: Smart Schools

There is a bit of an in-joke here as the editor has decided to insert his own alma mater, although it is not a college which requires a sky high SAT score for entry. But, the other nine schools have that requirement (not all of these teams are in the NCAA Tournament):

1) Harvard Crimson  Ivy League. Cambridge (Boston), Mass., (John Harvard, the school mascot, pictured top. Yesterday, the school upset Cincinnati. They next face Michigan State)

2) UCLA Bruins. PAC-12. Los Angeles, Calif. (Bryce Alford, the son of UCLA's coach Steve Alford, is pictured along with a teammate. They play Tulsa tonight).

3) Duke Blue Devils. ACC. Durham, NC (The team's cheerleaders are pictured bottom. Amazingly enough, the team is losing by one-point to Mercer in Raleigh, in the NCAA Tournament. Will star player Jabari Parker prevent it?).

4) Radford Highlanders. Big South. Radford, Va. (Yes, this is your's truly's alma mater. Though not in the NCAAs, the team pulled a huge upset in the College Basketball Invitational over Oregon State 96-92 on the Beavers' home court.)

5) UVA Cavaliers. ACC. Charlottesville, Va. (The team is a top-seed, they play Coastal Carolina from the Big South tonight).

6) Cal Poly Mustangs. San Luis Obisco, Calif. Big West. (The 16-seed plays top seed Wichita State tonight).

7) George Washington U Colonials. Washington DC. Atlantic 10. (The team plays Memphis today).

8) Stanford Cardinal. PAC-12. Palo Alto, Calif. (The team is playing New Mexico right now).

9) Northwestern Wildcats. Big 10. Evanston, Ill.. (The team improved this year, but still had a losing season).

10) Colorado Buffaloes.PAC-12. Boulder, Colo. (The team lost to Pitt in the NCAAs yesterday).

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Our Top Ten Comic Strips from "The Roanoke Times:" Blondie Actually Makes the Top Ten; Speed Bump Wins the Survey

Greetings to our blog readers in Canada, Spain and Switzerland.

And, a shout-out to our celebrity visitors George Lucas, Jane Fonda and Nancy Kerrigan (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

Here is our top ten:

1) Speed Bump: In Dave Coverly's one panel strip one of the Easter Island heads acts up, and his mother straightens him out

2) Get Fuzzy: In this strip, the age-old battle of which pet is more popular: the cat or the dog takes center stage.

3) Pearls Before Swine: Stephan Pastis goes autobiographical again, this time asking his own creations, the rat and the goat, how he looks with a beard and a beret. (Hmmm....yeah, I suppose some of you are imagining Che Guevara right now)

4) Doonesbury

5) Dilbert

6) Blondie: Dagwood goes ski jumping?!! This should make the strip more popular in Finland.

7) Funky Winkerbean

8) Zits

9) Mutts

10) Agnes

SIDEBAR: Last night in Boston, Yale actually upset Harvard in men's basketball by a score of 74-67, but perhaps no noticed as everyone in the world is watching Bob Costas and NBC's coverage of the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

And, this is our 2,225th blog entry!

http://www.gocomics.com

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Kudos to Harvard

The Harvard Crimson men's basketball team won its last two home and regular season games in victories over Columbia University 56-51 and Cornell University 66-56. Prior to Harvard's out-right Ivy League crowns over the last two years, Cornell, located in Ithaca, NY, and nicknamed the Big Red, had won several league titles in a row.

The Crimson edged out Princeton for this year's league title.

Harvard, a 14-seed, will now face New Mexico, the three-seed, at 9:50 p.m., eastern time, in Salt Lake City, Utah (where the local time will be 7:50 p.m.) in the opening round of the West Region for the tourney.

The Crimson have two basketball in the mid-Atlantic region, which is also known as 'ACC Country,' in Michael Hall, a freshman forward/center, and Christian Webster, a senior from Washington, DC. Harvard's coach Tommy Amaker played college basketball at Duke University, an ACC powerhouse. The Blue Devils are a two-seed and they will face the Albany University Great Danes in the first round.

The nation's capital is also home of the most well-known current living Harvard alum in President Barack Obama; he has picked the Indiana University Hoosiers to win it all, which seemingly illustrates that he don't suffer from sour grapes since the state that voted for him in 2008, went red for Mitt Romney, who seems to have disappeared like D.B. Copper, in last year's presidential election.

The mascot for Harvard is John Harvard (pictured above).

http://www.harvard.edu