We don’t have a lot of time this afternoon, but here are some links to keep you company until our more exhaustive post-mortem on the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament (due sometime later this week):

- I was surprised that VCU lost to Pitt on Sunday. I guess the invisible man that they had in the lineup against Duke must not have shown up?

- Brian is on fire over at Mgoblog. Check out his Dr. Jack-style breakdown of the potential Michigan coaching candidates. Personally, my money’s on the Wolverines making a “WTF?” hire — which would eliminate such potentialities as Montgomery and Tubby — but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

- Speaking of coaching searches, there was no new news today regarding the Steve Alford-New Mexico-Iowa love triangle (or would that be “disdain triangle”?), although Andy Katz mentioned in his Insider’s blog that the situation with Alford could resolve itself by the end of this week. More on this later.

- Whatever cache of good tidings and positive media energy that Illinois basketball had built up during their run to the 2005 title game has very quickly been lost. The Chicagoland Daily Herald’s Mike Imrem weighs in on the short downward spiral of Illini hoops. This, of course, follows on the heels of alleged sports columnist Gregg Doyel’s public evisceration of Ron Guenther and Illinois message board participants a few days ago.

- Finally, some sad non-basketball news: Indiana football coach Terry Hoeppner has announced that he’s sitting out spring football practice due to health concerns. It goes without saying that this is not an encouraging development for Hoeppner and the Hoosiers. Best wishes for Coach Hep and his family, and we’ll try to have more on this story as it becomes available.