Road Report - December 9
NASHVILLE -- In the various regions of Hoops Nation, there are regional customs and rules that specifically dictate to whom people are nice, exactly how much they're nice to them, and when. In the Deep South, where I spent much of November, everybody's nice to you until you're not around. Out on the West Coast, where I went to college for seven years, everybody will be nice for 15 minutes.

The State of the Other 22, Week 8
The State of College Basketball is a sorta newish ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 344 (here's the long-winded version). This is the full chart, and this is a recording.

T-Guide - Weber State
When you're a mid-major with as much pride as Weber State -- the Big Sky's signature program -- three years is too long to wait for an NCAA appearance. Joe Cravens took the Wildcats to the NCAA's in 2003, but three lackluster seasons followed, and a 4-10 conference record in 2005-06 spelled his demise last spring.

Flight 1101 · PEK to ICN
To American missionary George Heber Jones, Korea was home to thousands of billions of ghosts. "They are on every roof, ceiling, oven and beam," he wrote. "They fill the chimney, shed, the living room, the kitchen, they are on every shelf and jar. it has been well said that their ubiquity is an unholy travesty of divine omnipresence.".

The Daily Paragraph 1/12/2007 (Scooby Snaxxx Edition)
NATCHITOCHES, La. -- Mid-majors are often the Scrappy-Doos of college basketball (Let me at'im! Let me at'im!), which is probably part of the reason they're so annoying to major schools. But I disavow any such implied connection -- I hated that character as much as you did.