Goodbye Pac-10, hello Pac-16?

With Nebraska set to leave the Big 12 for the Big 10, the Pacific 10 Conference is prepared to invite Colorado, Texas, Texas A&M, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech to join them – - creating a power conference in the process starting in 2012.

The 16 teams would be divided in two divisions with the six Big 12 teams joining Arizona and Arizona State in one division and the eight remaining Pac-10 schools in another.

If this were to go down, it would leave Baylor, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri and Iowa State without a conference.

As a Pac-10 honk, I have mixed feelings about the conference expanding to 16 teams. While it would bring in more revenue for the conference, there’s nothing Pacific about Texas.

What do you think about the idea of a possible Pac-16?

It wasn’t pretty.

OK, OK, the first half was actually ugly.

But the UConn Huskies women rallied from a eight-point halftime deficit to defeat the Stanford Cardinal, winning their second straight national championship and 78th consecutive victory overall.

When the Huskies were down 20-12 (12!) at the half, Stanford had to be feeling pretty good about things.

They weren’t able to hold on to the lead, getting outscored 41-27 in the second half.

You can say it’s just women’s basketball but 78 wins in any sport is impressive. With the win, they move within 10 victories of UCLA’s 88 game streak set by the men under head coach John Wooden in the 1970s.

With Maya Moore coming back, there’s no reason to think the Huskies won’t only break the UCLA record but go for 100 straight wins.

22 wins and counting…

We all knew 6-foot-8 freshman phenom Brittney Griner was nice on the court but who knew she was so nice with her hands?

The Baylor center was ejected on Wednesday night after punching Texas Tech’s Jordan Barncastle in the face.

Barncastle and Griner exchanged words during their first meeting on Feb. 17 and the frustration boiled over after Barncastle’s physical play to slow down Griner.

“There’s no place for that in sports,” Baylor coach Kim Mulkey said. “It was ugly for women’s basketball. It was ugly that coaches were on the court, that benches cleared, and I will take care of that with my team.”

In case you’re wondering, Baylor won the game 69-60.

Hopefully Griner won’t be suspended for more than the Big XII Tournament because if you haven’t seen her play yet, you’re missing out.

And now that you know she likes to throw down, there’s even more reason to check out Baylor in the NCAA Women’s Tournament.

Isiah Thomas is wasting no time shaking things up at Florida International University.

The Golden Panthers are threatening to pull out of the Coaches vs. Cancers tournament if they have to face North Carolina in the opening game.

FIU wants to take on Ohio State as they have strong alumni ties according to athletic director Pete Garcia.

You guys do know you’re FIU, right?

Isiah or no Isiah, you should be happy that Thomas can make his college coaching debut against Roy Williams and the Tar Heels.

Rick Giles, who is the President of the Gazelle Group (the group behind the tournament) had this to say about FIU’s antics:

Now can we have a playoff system in college football?

Utah became the first team in the BCS era with two undefeated seasons, capping off a 13-0 season with a 31-17 victory over Alabama.

Yes, Utah is probably not the best team in college football.

But 13-0 is 13-0.

And without a playoff system, there is no way of knowing if the Utes could hang with the likes of a USC or the winner of the Oklahoma/Florida game.

One can dream, right?

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on the Indiana Hoosiers.

According to reports, Indiana basketball coach Kelvin Sampson and his staff violated telephone recruiting restrictions imposed because of his previous violations at Oklahoma, then lied about it to the school and NCAA investigators, the NCAA said Wednesday.

Sampson is no stranger to controversy as the NCAA discovered that during his tenure at Oklahoma, he and his staff made more than 550 illegal phone calls to 17 different recruits.

Sampson was  banned from calling recruits and making off-campus visits for a year before he even coached his first game for the Hoosiers.

Despite this black eye, Indiana University decided to keep Sampson, likely because they felt wins were more important than ethics.

And since they are 20-3 this season and have one of the nation’s best freshman in Eric Gordon, it will likely take much more than a lie or two to get Sampson from the sideline.

Usually women’s college basketball is not filled with this much drama and suspense unless it’s March, but the ending of the #5 Rutgers vs. #1 Tennessee game had me yelling at my television screen.

The Lady Vols were trailing 58-57 when Nicky Anosike grabbed an offensive rebound and was fouled by Kia Vaughn.

However television replays showed the game clock seemed to pause as Anosike came down with the ball and two-tenths remained on the clock.

At this point, the Rutgers bench started celebrating, thinking they had finally knocked off Tennessee … only to find out the referee called the foul before the clock magically froze at two-tenths of a second.

Two free throws later and the Scarlet Knights found themselves on the short end of the stick.

Rutgers was coming off an 73-71 upset of previous No. 1 Connecticut and was trying to become the first team to ever beat No. 1 teams in consecutive games.

It’s hard to imagine that referees can be so bad this often.

Even with the advantage of instant replay, somehow the zebras still managed to get this one wrong.

Keep your head up, Scarlet Knights.