Here's todays sports news...

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.

Take a big whiff everybody, it's that b-ball time of year. You've got the men's NCAAs, the women's NCAAs, and the men's NIT. Don't even get us started on Division II, DIII, or the Warriors.

The men's NCAAs tip off this morning at 9:40 a.m., with the Bay Area's only entrant, the Stanford Cardinal, taking on their University of Louisville homophones.

It's hard to say which is more popular these days, watching postseason college basketball or "playing" an NCAA bracket pool or two, or seven.

-Baron Davis leads the way to a win over the Sacramento Kings. Apparently, he's not too happy over him being mentioned in all the Iverson rumors. But is even trading for AI a good idea?...

Sharks 2 Blues 0- the Sharks good early run continues on as they shut out the St. Louis Blues. It's their second shutout in a row and their third straight win. It's also their third win in five of its past six games and nine of its past eleven games. Not too shabby. ...

Note to the remaining teams in the 2006 Women's NCAA Championship basketball tournament: beware the number three seed Stanford Cardinal. ...

Alas, Stanford University is currently mascotless, after the debacle involving a tree drinking a little too much of its own sap. We're not Stanford folks, so we can't explain to you why their mascot is a tree when they're called the Stanford Cardinal -- Cardinals/Trees, please feel free to provide the story in the comments. So it's Tree Week, where the Stanford band picks next year's tree. Today, the Stanford paper reports that psych professor William Dement's "Sleep and Dreams" class was interrupted by a tree aspirant wearing ripped tights and a green shirt busting a move to "Come Sail Away," with a backup team in bunny tails, who then laid out a bed of leaves for the tree to fall asleep in. The sports editor of the Stanford Daily paper performed a striptease in White Plaza, at which point, two people known as The Chicken and The Rabbit then proceeded to wax him down, like in the 40 Year Old Virgin. And a junior walked down Palm Drive wearing nothing but green body paint. We're not even getting into the Kool-Aid and the medieval torture stunts, they're too hard to describe. You know, we write a number of odd posts (Chris Daly said what? Gavin Newsom's dating whom?) but this one has got to be the weirdest post ever. The Chicken and the Rabbit? New Tree gets named March 4. The winner is being encouraged not to drink. Picture of this year's deposed Tree by Rod Searcey from the Stanford Alumni Magazine...

In the most anticipated game of the season for Bay Area football fans, the Cal Bears manhandled the Stanford Cardinal, 41-6. J.J. Arrington put together yet another 100-yard game, but red-shirt freshman Marshawn Lynch stole the show, running for 122 yards -- including an electrifying 55-yard touchdown run -- and completing a 20-yard pass to for a score. Cal plays their makeup game on December 4th in Mississippi, but are otherwise at the mercy of......