This schedule kind of sucks because many games are relegated to networks even more obscure than ESPN2 (ESPNU anyone, anyone, Bueller?).

Last night this page had links where you could watch games on-line, I don’t know if you have to pay or register or what.

What I will say is that it’s a shame and a disgrace for the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament to be treated this way.  It shows disrespect for a game that is altogether superior to Men’s Basketball dunk fests of boredom.

So you’ve been reading about those bare shelves at WalMart.  Even I thought it was due to their vendors getting tired of being squeezed and late payments (contracts typically call for payment within 90 days of delivery, WalMart waits until the last possible moment to cut a check- always).

Well, there’s another reason that should have occured to me as a former supervisor of shipping and receiving (that’s the fancy title I put on my resume to point out I ran the loading dock and stockrooms, and handled inventory from the back of the truck to the sales floor along with returns to warehouse).

I seldom appeal to expertise, but I’ve seen this first hand.

Customers Flee Wal-Mart Empty Shelves for Target, Costco

By Renee Dudley, Bloomberg Business

Mar 26, 2013 9:47 AM ET

During recent visits … she failed to find more than a dozen basic items, including certain types of face cream, cold medicine, bandages, mouthwash, hangers, lamps and fabrics.

The cosmetics section “looked like someone raided it.”

…

“If it’s not on the shelf, I can’t buy it,” she said. “You hate to see a company self-destruct, but there are other places to go.”

But, but it’s there in the store!  We have the paperwork to prove it!

“Our in stock levels are up significantly in the last few years, so the premise of this story, which is based on the comments of a handful of people, is inaccurate and not representative of what is happening in our stores across the country,” Brooke Buchanan, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said in an e-mailed statement. “Two-thirds of Americans shop in our stores each month because they know they can find the products they are looking for at low prices.”

Well then where is it?

It’s not as though the merchandise isn’t there. It’s piling up in aisles and in the back of stores because Wal-Mart doesn’t have enough bodies to restock the shelves, according to interviews with store workers.

…

At the Kenosha, Wisconsin, Wal-Mart where Mary Pat Tifft has worked for nearly a quarter-century, merchandise ready for the sales floor remains on pallets and in steel bins lining the floor of the back room — an area so full that “no passable aisles” remain, she said. Meanwhile, the front of the store is increasingly barren, Tifft said. That landscape has worsened over the past several years as workers who leave aren’t replaced, she said.

“There’s a lot of voids out there, a lot of voids,” said Tifft, 58, who oversees grocery deliveries and is a member of OUR Walmart, a union-backed group seeking to improve working conditions at the discount chain. “Customers come in, they can’t find what they’re looking for, and they’re leaving.”

Years ago, supervisors drilled a message into employees’ heads: “In the door and to the floor,” Tifft said. That mantra now seems impossible to execute.

…

“The merchandise is in the store, it just can’t make the jump from the shelf in the back to the one in the front,” said Falletta, who works the second shift. “There’s not the people to do it.”

Well why is that do you suppose?

* == Upset (if you can call a 9 seed over an 8 seed an upset).

This bracket has the only 2 teams I’m really interested in.  Michigan State out of sentiment, I have no idea how they played this season, and the Lady Huskies out of residence.

Geno’s team stunk this year, there’s no more polite way to put it, and they certainly don’t deserve their number 1 seeding.

Since I’m not sure how far either will advance, here are their fight songs-

These are the short versions you’ll hear during time outs.  The full version of the Michigan State Fight Song was arranged by Leonard Falcone who I studied Euphonium under for a time.

He thought I was hopeless and he was absolutely right.

* == Upset

* == Upset.