After four long and intense days of watching college basketball I’m taking a bit of a break. I’m not burned out by any means – how can get you get burned out by something as great as college basketball. I just feel like the best thing for my intensity and focus is to take a day where I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about basketball. That means that I will feel ready to jump right back into it tomorrow to get ready for another weekend and to see if there is any value available in any of the other tournaments.

That’s not to say that I’m not paying any attention at all. I am an addict, after all, so I can’t go completely cold turkey. There are a couple of news items that have caught my eye today because they may or may not factor pretty heavily into next weekend’s action:

1. Villanova center Casiem Drummond is out for the year – The 6’10” sophomore broke his ankle against Siena. I’m not at all worried about his absence, but I really hope that the public sees the headlines and jumps all over it like they do with most injuries. Drummond is the only pure center on the Wildcats’ roster, so people may think that this is a big problem for Nova. It isn’t. First, the guy has only played eight minutes and scored four points in the tournament. More significantly, the team is very overmatched by Kansas anyway, and the presence of a middling center wouldn’t change that.

2. Bruce Pearl won’t name a starting point guard for Thursday – This is a much bigger story, and a much bigger concern. Tennessee has looked fine in the tournament, but they still haven’t excited me any more than they did down the stretch. They are lacking in two big areas – point guard obviously, and an inside presence. The fact that Pearl is playing these games would make you think that he could just be messing with the media, but if you watched the two games the team played then you know this isn’t true. That means that he is legitimately concerned about the problem. That’s not a good place to be when you are heading into a game with a team as hot as Louisville. It makes me like the Cardinals even more than I already did. Unfortunately, everyone else will have seen the two big Louisville blowouts, too, so the chances of finding a line with any value are pretty slim.