The first weekend of the men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments is in the books -- are you still alive in your office pool? Not if you took the Road to the Final Four less traveled.

If you went with the favorites, chances are you're sitting pretty. With the exception of the toothless male Badgers of Wisconsin, all first and second seeds in both tourneys advanced to the Sweet 16. That's not to say that a few high seeds didn't get a scare or that some middling seeds will never get a chance to germinate into full-blown Cinderellas, but overall, both tournaments are sticking to the script.

At around 3 o'clock or so on Sunday, Palo Alto gave a huge sigh of relief as the Cardinal made it into the Big Dance, being seeded 11th in the South Regional. Their first game is against the sixth seed, Louisville (23-9). No time has been set, but the game will be on Wednesday. ...

-One day after one of the most awful losses of the season and probably one of the worst losses in several years, the Warriors sprung back to life and beat the Detroit Pistons 111-93. Say goodbye to your six game losing streak. It was their first win at Detroit's home court in thirteen years and the first time they swept the series against the Pistons since the '93-94 season. Now how about that? One of Golden State of Mind's contributors actually watched the game live from Detroit. ...

-Stanford beating ASU has them thinking Big Dance. After a loss to Arizona, Cal is thinking NIT. -In a surprise to nobody, the 49ers released Antonio Bryant. They're supposedly all set to go after some free agent DEs, something to which Monte Poole says beware. -Barry Z and Russ Ortiz are sharp in the Giants first spring training game. Which means, yes, that somewhere on God's green earth, baseball is finally being played. -Tim Kawakami......

We know this is completely wrong to admit, but voting here in San Francisco, the bluest of blue states, is always a bit unexciting. While the rest of the country is taking part in what we're always told is the Most Important Election Ever, we are once again left out of the thrills. Our gubernatorial race never took off and the race for Senate and Congress was such a no contest that one ran commercials featuring her grandchild and the other gave more speeches in Pennsylvania than here in her home city. It's kind of like rooting for the local Division AAA basketball team make their way through the Division AAA tourney while everyone else is obsessed with the NCAA Tourney. And while you want the local guys to win, you can't but help care more about schools you never attended in the Big Dance. What we're trying to say is that for whatever reason we seem more emotionally invested in the Virginia Senate Race than whatever is going on here. ...