The Replay: Butler Blue III, Pacers, and #BrackeTALLogy

Sick-As-A-Dog Edition
Every Friday, we post up The Replay, our sports review. It’s mostly fouls and airballs.

 

» Barf, barf: During Butler’s 67-61 overtime loss to Xavier in the quarterfinal of the Big East tournament, beloved mascot Butler Blue III puked on the Madison Square Garden court. Don’t feel bad, Blue—the New York Knicks do it all of the time.

 

» Picking Up the Pace: The Indiana Pacers won their seventh straight on Thursday, besting the Milwaukee Bucks in overtime, and continue to build momentum for the postseason. As it stands, Indiana looks to be the the Eastern Conference’s No. 7 seed for the upcoming NBA playoffs (the team would face the Cleveland Cavaliers). Given that the Pacers have been plagued by injury and played the entire season without Paul George, Frank Vogel deserves coach-of-the-year consideration. He probably has the fan vote locked up.

 

» One Shining Monument: The 165-foot-tall NCAA tournament bracket adorning the east side of the JW Marriott hotel is pretty cool. The Star reports the behemoth, designed and built by Indianapolis’ Sport Graphics, is the size of nine basketball courts, and the paper speculates that it is the largest of its kind ever constructed. All that’s great, but what if people want to fill out two?

 

» Personal Foul: Bloomington South’s Riley Crean, son of IU hoops coach Tom, reportedly entered a sectional basketball game to chants of “Tom Crean Sucks.”

 

» Money Players: The Colts went on a spending spree this week, bringing in wide receiver Andre Johnson and running back Frank Gore. The franchise plunked down a huge chunk of change on the offense, yet still has holes on defense. Don’t fret. Judging by this photo, owner Jim Irsay has a plan for that, too: Andre, Frank—what if I said that you guys could be paid to vacation in Cancun for one week every year for the rest of your lives? Sounds pretty good, right? It’s called a timeshare. Now, I don’t want to pressure you, but—look over by the door—I’ve already got a buyer interested, so the time to get in is NOW.

 

» Now Read This: Former Butler big man Andrew Smith died—and lived to tell about it.