* Were you riveted by my preview of the Men's 2026 World Curling Championships, but didn't get to watch? Don't worry, I got you covered: as expected, the U.S. men fared better than the women, making the semifinals, but falling there and falling in the bronze medal game, as well. Sweden, led by Niklas Edin, won all the marbles. Under Edin, Sweden has won eight of the last 14 world championships, and his crew has an Olympic gold (2022 Beijing), silver, and bronze. He's got to be the greatest men's curler of this generation.
* I don't have much to say about the NCAA men's basketball finals because, as an Ohio State fan, it was won by the evil empire. I just want to note that apparently, Ohio State passed on Dusty May in 2024 to give the job to interim head coach Jake Diebler.
At the time, I supported the decision because boy, did the Buckeyes improve immediately after he took over on an interim basis in 2023-24. He also still has my stamp of approval inasmuch as I wouldn't fire him if I was Ohio State's athletic director. He was OK-for-a-first-full-year head coach in '24-'25 and improved this year, finishing strong and easily making the tournament. That sort of progress is really all you can ask for.
But of course, seeing what May did in such a short amount of time makes me wish we had gone with him. What he accomplished is asking too much, too soon as an expectation, however.
* Coaching is also at the forefront of the news for my other team, Akron, who lost their head coach John Groce not to a high-major or even a near-high-major (like the Mountain West, say), but to the College of Charleston of the Coastal Athletic Association.
Groce led Akron to the Big Dance four of the last five years. Before him, Keith Dambrot was also very successful and also left to take what was arguably a lateral-move job (Duquesne).
This trend doesn't really speak well of Akron. Dambrot, reportedly, wanted to move to a league that will often get more than one bid to the NCAA tournament (the Atlantic 10, in his case), which Akron can't doing anything about, but I don't know what Groce's reasons were, and the CAA is certainly a one-bid league as much as the MAC is (Miami's outlier season notwithstanding).
I feel like there's a way to crack this code and make Akron a place coaches want to stay — or at least, will take a high major to lure away.
The attendance for the MAC championship game in Cleveland (40 minutes away from Akron) was 10,936 and was 80% pulling for Akron, even though the other school, Toledo, isn't crazy-far Cleveland (115 miles). So how we get the people who went to the MAC Championship Game and pulled for the Zips to go to regular season games just down the road? I don't know.
* I found a great Twitter account to follow, @YanPeronn (if you can stomach that he works for Polymarket). His schtick is to succinctly report (just a headline/sentence or two) on what happened in sports the previous day. So besides MeatChicken beating UConn to cut down the nets, what else happened on Monday, April 6th that I have something (also short) to say about?
The Spurs hit 60 wins in a season for the first time since 16-17 (the Zaza year). Besides fans of franchises that absolutely pump zillions of dollars into their team, are Spurs fans the luckiest in the world? They are never non-elite for very long, despite dealing with the limitations of being in just the 24th-largest MSA in the country.
North Carolina hired Mike Malone. I like this hire. I think. I'm very intrigued by it, anyway.
The Dallas Stars banned the buyer of the seats of fans who went viral for doing Nazi salutes at a recent game. I will relish this, as it means that being or emulating Nazis is still a bad thing for another few weeks, at least.
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