With the Wisconsin Badgers Men's Basketball team out of the running for the NCAA Tournament and the Wisconsin Women falling to Villanova in the NIT last week, what is a Badger fan suffering from March Madness to do? Why not drop the ball for a puck and look to our very own Kohl Center? Downtown Madison will be packed tonight with Badger hockey fans as Wisconsin battles North Dakota for a spot in the Frozen Four.

Going in to tonight's bout North Dakota is a three seed while Wisconsin is a 17 seed. On Saturday, North Dakota topped Princeton 5-1 and Wisconsin topped Denver 6-2. North Dakota may be the higher seed, but Wisconsin goes into the match with the home ice advantage - the Badgers are 8-0 for playoff games played on home ice including five NCAA Tournament wins. The Sioux and Badgers are roughly even when it comes to previous battles this season. During their first meet and greet the Badgers shut the Sioux out with a 4-0 victory, however, the Sioux turned around and won the next game 3-1. The last time the Badgers won the NCAA Tournament was in 2006.

Besides ending Wisconsin's run to the NCAA Tournament's Final Four, the second worst thing about the Badgers taking a dive to Davidson is that every blogger in the world used it as an opportunity to make puns on Davidson's Stephen Curry's name (including me). "Davidson serves up Curried Badger," "Badgers get served - with Curry," "Curried Badger on the Menu," "Badgers Have No Taste for Curry," and the worst, "Badgers Get Stuffed with Curry." While I couldn't find an actual recipe for Badger Curry, I did find a recipe for Badger Casserole. Besides the puns, what else are bloggers saying about the Badgers loss to the North Carolina team dubbed "Cinderella"? (hat tip to Dane101's Jason Dean for calling the Davidson victory.)

Senno On Sports says it best, Davidson is now America's team, "Those students, joined by LeBron James in the student section, received a treat watching Curry. No matter where tiny Davidson ends this year’s run - no 10 seed has advanced to the Final Four and only one other, Kent State in 2002, has reached the Elite Eight - Curry’s tournament run will go down in NCAA lore."

This year when I entered a college basketball pool, I had my share of Cinderella teams picked to upset “the big boys.” My friends smirked when they saw I had Davidson beating Georgetown.

“The Big East is the best conference in college hoops,” a friend informed me. “Georgetown will slow them down and make them play their style of basketball.”

After beating Georgetown last weekend 74-70, the Davidson Wildcats meet the Badgers in the Sweet 16 Friday night at 6 p.m. Those that once scoffed at my bracket now hope I am wrong, as I have the feisty Davidson team beating the Badgers.

Well, I'm pretty much done. I chose my alma mater, UConn, to go all the way and they lost yesterday to San Diego with an 18-foot jumper in overtime. As usual, all of my NCAA Tourney hoop dreams are left in the hands of the Lady Huskies who rarely let me down, but no one pays attention to Women's Basketball in Wisconsin, so I'm left all alone in my quiet cheering (worth mentioning, the Wisconsin Women's Hockey Team could pull off a three-pete today if they beat Minnesota-Duluth in the final match-up of the Frozen Four). In order to salvage my bracket at all I need upsets of major proportions today and tomorrow. No one in my office pool has Wisconsin making it out of the Sweet 16 so if they make it to the finals I can at least win a free lunch. Today the Badgers take on the Kansas State Wildcats at 3:20 Central. Below is a round-up of blogger predictions.

Wisconsin came out on top of Cal State Fullerton last night to win 71-56. There was some sloppy play throughout the game and early on it looked like Cal State could be heading for an upset of our mighty red and white. Wisconsin will go on to play Kansas State Saturday. Below is what the bloggers have to say about last night's game:

Badgercentric has the best overall breakdown of the entire game. He gives the Badger MVP to Krabby who had his best game last night. Badgercentric also points out, "30 wins for the second straight season. Just think about that for a minute. Thirty wins, two years in a row. Given where this program was 20 years ago, it's simply amazing the levels it has reached in the last 10."

It's NCAA tournament time, and there are three things you can expect every year:

1.One team will get a bid they don't deserve based solely on past reputation (see Kentucky).

2.There will be upsets. Oh yes, there will.

3.Wisconsin fans will complain about their seeding.

I'm as big a Badger fan as anyone, but come on, this complaining is getting old. Yes the Badgers could have been a No. 2 seed and probably deserved to be. Yes, we all know how the Badgers "get screwed" every year by the committee. However, it could be worse. We could be Butler.

Sweet: The Badgers defeated Michigan State on Saturday and Illinois on Sunday to take the Big Ten Tournament. Bitter: Less than three hours later they were given what has come to be known on the Internet simply as "the shaft." The NCAA Tournament Committee, who most Wisconsin sports bloggers seem to believe has nothing but hatred for the Big Ten, placed the Badgers in a number three seed. There was not much rejoicing. We take a look at how it is being discussed below:

Matty takes a look at the screwing of the Big Ten starting with our Badgers, "This is a team that was 16-2 in conference, won the conference tournament convincingly and boasts a road win at Texas. I thought they should have been a #2 seed, but even if they weren’t, could they have gotten a tougher draw? They’ll likely run into USC in the second round, easily the strongest of the #6 seeds and a horrible matchup for the Badgers. For a team that pretty much ran the table in the Big Ten, this is a very crummy deal."

For a homecoming weekend the Badgersphere is oddly quiet concerning the game this weekend. I place a great deal of blame on one major factor - the Big Ten Network making the game inaccessible to fans of college football and the Badgers. Isn't there something in the Constitution about free and equal access to football?

With Halloween festivities raging in the city surrounding Camp Randall, the Badgers (for the second weekend in a row) showed why they were so high ranked at the start of the season. The Wisconsin Sports Bar puts it out there for us when he says, "I believe Space Aliens replaced the Wisconsin Defense today." Personally, being Halloween and all, I hope Coach Bielema didn't go as far as to sell his soul for a new Badger defense. The next two games are the most important games the Badgers have faced all season. They need to take down both Ohio State and Michigan if they want to stay in the running for a decent bowl title (At this time CBS projects UW going to the Champ Sports Citrus Bowl against Georgia Tech. They also project Ohio ending the season undefeated).

It took some doing, but I managed to find a bar on the Santa Monica pier that was showing the UW-Madison versus Illinois game on Saturday. I was joined by a handful of Wisconsin tourists, businessmen, and Sconnie-to-Cali transplants (as well as two justifiably exhuberent Illini fans). One such transplant summed the game up as such, "looks like this defensive crapfest Bielema has put together finally got served." Crapfest, indeed. That sentiment is echoed throughout the Badgersphere this morning and in the polls from USA Today and the AP where the Badgers drop from fifth ranked in both to 15 and 19, respectively. Not helping matters here in Wisconsin is the Packers losing to...the Bears? I'll be completely honest - I take full blame for the Packers loss. Ever since I moved to Wisconsin four years ago I've been picking the Packers in my football pool for the first five games of the season and they have consistently let me down. This year I decided to try something different by not picking them. With a strong season start I changed that this week and chose the Pack to crush the Bears. Surprise, surprise, they lose. Sigh. But, hey, at least the Brewers finished one of their best seasons in history with an 11-6 win.

Anyway, I'll let the Wisconsin Sports Bar start this Badgersphere Round-Up, "Let the Overrated stories and posts that half the country has been dying to write begin."

The Badgers also went into this game ranked ninth and undefeated for the year. The blogs are a-buzzing that Wisconsin will likely not hold onto that ranking and will continue to fall. But don't take my word for it, let the blogs speak for themselves. Click here to read more.

While the press is telling you the big story out of Saturday's Badgers game was that we "extended the nation's longest active winning streak to 12" they are missing the bigger picture aptly caught by the Badgersphere - P.J. Hill tied a school record with five touchdowns and essentially made up for a floundering Badger Defense in the first half. Citadel went to the locker rooms holding Badgers 21-21. The other story, of course, is that the Big Ten Network is still robbing viewers of quality television (more on that at the end).

Texas Hold 'Em Blogger suggests that the inability of the Badger defense to play against a spread offense is nothing new, "Speaking of ugly, how ’bout that Badger defense today? Yecccccchhhhh! What is it about UW’s inability to defend the spread offense? This isn’t just recent. This goes back to Barry Alvarez’s days. Barry’s Badgers couldn’t beat Northwestern because the Wildcats ran a spead and marched up and down the field."

During the jovial and light hearted WSUM Snake on the Lake festival on the University of Wisconsin's Memorial Union Terrace yesterday evening I popped inside to the Rathskeller to see how badly our UW-Madison Badgers were whomping the UNLV Rebels - the contrast in atmosphere between the inside of the union and outside couldn't have been more distinct. The looks on the faces of the Badger fans who gathered to watch the game were that of pure stressed intensity. The Badgers were down by 13-12 with less than eight minutes left in the game. The point spread was not supposed to be that tight at any point during the game.

The boys in red managed to rally and left the field with a 20-13 victory. But the close call has left many wondering about the state of the Big Ten - especially with the second embarrassing loss for Michigan this season (and Notre Dame and Miami). The Wolverines were sent packing with a 39-7 loss against the Oregon Ducks. Below is a recap of the discussion of the Badgers game last night in Las Vegas:

On a sunny day in Madison the UW Badgers clocked their first win of the season over the Washington State Cougars: 42-21. With the victory in the bag the armchair quarterbacks have plenty to say. The general consensus is that Senior quarterback Tyler Donovan has a solid game and the defense needs some work before the Badgers' first Big Ten match. The non-Badger news of the day that cannot be overlooked - UW rival Michigan taking a mighty fall to Appalachian State University - the first Division I-AA team to ever beat a ranked team. We'll take a look at some of that discussion after the Badger round-up. Let's take a peek at what is being said around the Badgersphere:

The Game

First up, we should note that the Badger Herald has launched a sports blog this semester and Todd Voelkel captured all of the action as it happened.

Over at Carson's Corner they were impressed with the showing by Senior QB Tyler Donovan who "proved he could fill John Stocco's shoes by passing for 284 yards and three touchdowns. he also had a touchdown on the ground."