Drew Lachey of the Drew Crew will now be dancing with a baby girl. His wife, Lea, gave birth yesterday in Los Angeles. Other than tending to dirty diapers, feedings, etc., Drew will be co-hosting the 2006 Miss USA Pageant in Baltimore on April 21.
Which of this year’s Big Dancers have the shoes of champions? Unfortunately, if we go by recent history, Memphis, UCLA, and Boston College have the odds against them winning this year’s NCAA Tournament. Why you ask? Because these teams are wearing the wrong shoes.
Let’s review recent March Madness winners starting from 2000. Mateen Cleaves led Michigan State to the title in 2000 wearing Reebok Answers. In 2001, the talented Duke team of Battier, Duhon, Jay Williams, Boozer, and Dunleavy won wearing Nike. In 2002, Maryland shocked the NCAA Tournament with their Nike Shox Stunners. Carmelo Anthony and the Orange won in 2003 wearing various Nike Shox shoes. In 2004, Nike Lebron Zoom Generation and Air Force Operates were the rage with the UConn Huskies. Last year, the Heels had the hookup with Jordan Brand and Nike shoes. Who can forget their ice blue Retro Jordan X?
So if you’re keeping count, teams wearing Nike have won 5 of the last 6 NCAA Tournaments. Reebok was the only other brand represented since 2000. Yes, Nike sponsors most of the teams making the Big Dance, and of this year’s Sweet 16, 81% of the teams have Nikes, 13% Adidas, 6% Reebok.
Can this title trend change this year? So far, Adidas is going on to the Elite 8.
Before the Sweet 16 games start up, here’s a quick look at what team is wearing what.
With 48 victories so far in this year’s NCAA Tournament, Nike sponsored teams have the clear edge in representation with 35 wins. Adidas is second with 11 wins, and Reebok is holding on with 2 wins by Boston College.
Gone are teams sponsored by And1 and New Balance.
Earlier, I looked at the shoe sponsorships for the teams making the Big Dance. Looking at the teams’ respective conferences, here is a breakdown of shoe sponsorships by conferences playing in this year’s March Madness.
I always wanted to know what shoe companies sponsored the various teams that made it to the NCAA “March Madness” Tournament. Scouring through Yahoo and Getty Images pictures and watching games on TV, I compiled a list of this year’s team kicks.
Nike (not surprisingly) sponsors the most teams, followed by Adidas, then And1 (Penn and Pacific). As far as I could tell, New Balance (Winthrop) and Reebok (Boston College) sponsor one team each while Monmouth didn’t seem to have a sponsorship with players wearing Nike, Adidas, and And1.
To capitalize on March Madness, Nike has released new, custom kicks for teams playing in the tournament. Here is the Huarache 64. Did Northwestern St. wear these during their upset of Iowa?
The Air Force Specialist for Illinois
Technorati Tags: Kicks
I installed the Mac Office 2004 Update 11.2.3 last night, wanting to see the Spotlight integration and Entourage syncing with .Mac. After installing the update, I repaired disk permissions and kicked off a sync with .Mac. Things didn’t go too smoothly though. Initially, I got expected warnings to deconflict contact information between Entourage and Address Book. No surprises there. Then I got a few strange error messages that I unfortunately didn’t write down. Something about inconsistent data and telling me to sync with a computer with good data. Kinda scary.
But even with these repeated errors, syncing seemed to eventually work since I saw changes to my contact info in Entourage (and Address Book). To be on the safe side, I repaired disk permissions once again. Since then, I haven’t got any sync errors.
In all fairness though, I didn’t follow good troubleshooting techniques since I had also installed the info management app, Yojimbo, and was trying to use its .Mac syncing feature as well.
Now that the update is installed, syncing works and Spotlight can search my Entourage data. I’ve found some old forwarded emails in Entourage using Spotlight with keywords I remembered in the email.
But I’m getting used to configuring Spotlight and .Mac syncing via the System Preferences. Seems like for Spotlight, Entourage email searching is clumped together with Mail Messages searching which is represented by the Apple Mail icon and for syncing, I’m guessing Entourage contact syncing is part of Contacts syncing, represented by the Mac OS X Address Book icon? For syncing, there is a new entry to sync Entourage notes however.
Bottom line is that the features in the update works.
Like the Tabasco Man, I had a weekend of overeating capped off with dinner at Shokudo. The place was packed on a Sunday night. Lots of hip youngsters crowded the booths but also a lot of the older generation. The interior design is funky, more bar-like than restaurant-like.
Good Japanese food, served family style. We tried several different dishes, Yukari french fries (fries coated with furukaki), lightly pickled cucumber, fried noodle omelette, gyoza sticks, chicken karaage with spicy tartar sauce, spicy tuna roll, pork cutlet sticks, seafood dynamite, Ishiyaki garlic shrimp, honey toast, and lychee shaved ice.
Some dishes were better than others. I recommend the Yukari french fries (actually good with the furukaki instead of salt), fried noodle omelette, and chicken karaage with spicy tartar sauce (the sauce has some kick to it). The pork cutlet sticks are okay, a little dry, and the spicy tuna roll is not spicy at all. The honey toast looks neat but isn’t all that great. The shave ice is no good.
Service could be better. Our waitress, Chelsea, was nice but was busy and forgot some things. And it didn’t seem like any of the other servers helped each other out. No one else to refill water, no one else to take away dishes, and no one else to bring extra utensils.
Oh yeah, watch out for dangerous steps in the back parking structure. Dark lighting, wet floor, and a weird paint job make for easy slips and falls.
Lookee, lookee, the Microsoft AutoUpdate kicked in today and showed an update to Mac Office 2004. This update now enables “Mac OS X Sync Services and Spotlight searches to sync and find Entourage items, use smart cards with Entourage 2004, and enjoy improved overall security…”
Oooohhh, Spotlight integration. I must say using Spotlight on my Mac has made it much easier finding things since I store stuff all over, in my Documents folder, in Entourage email, in iPhoto, etc. Having Spotlight able to search through all of this is so, so much better. And, syncing Entourage! Hope that means I can sync contact info without the need of additional software.
The 11.2.3 update is a huge 57 MB.
Technorati Tags: Macintosh
To help with his workouts and Pilates, newscaster Shawn Ching listens to tunes on his iPod Shuffle. Here are his current Top 10 songs playing on his Shuffle:
What’s on your Shuffle (or iPod)?
Here’s some of what I got on mine.
In the Hot kicks for men article, there’s a pic of interviewee Alan V.’s kicks. I only recognize his Diamond Dunks and his pink/brown Stussy Dunks since I pretty much only follow Nike or Jordan stuff.
Here’s my circle of kicks. Going clockwise starting at 12:00 is the mineral/vapor Dunks, minty fresh Nike iD Dunks, Air Max running shoes, Lebron Air Zoom Generation 2, Hawaii/lava/Pele Dunks, and Air Max Penny 2 (NY Knicks colorway).
My small Dunks collection
