1. UCLA
2. Tennessee
3. Memphis
4. North Carolina
5. Stanford
6. Texas
7. Kansas
8. Xavier
9. Duke
10. Louisville
11. Georgetown
12. Notre Dame
13. Vanderbilt
14. UConn
15. Purdue
16. Wisconsin
17. Butler
18. Michigan St.
19. Gonzaga
20. Drake
21. Indiana
22. Marquette
23. Washington State
24. Southern Cal.
25. South Alabama

Save your angry e-mails, Memphis fans. I’m not going to debate this point. Given the recency of a home loss to Tennessee, there is simply no way I can justify moving the Tigers ahead of Tennessee. The Vols lost at Vandy, but everybody loses at Vandy, and Vandy is a top 15 team. Had they lost at, say, Auburn or Ole Miss, I could have justified dropping UT further. At the same time, I could not justify keeping UT at No. 1. So I moved up the team that is playing better than anyone right now, and that’s UCLA. The Bruins’ road sweep over two NCAA Tournament teams justifies being No. 1 on my ballot.

I’m avoiding all temptation of saying anything about what might be.

CSTV is terrible. I don’t know where they got this Carter Blackburn fellow but he’s terrible. He seems lost during key moments of the game. Gillen does ok and I was surprised by the positive things Packer had to say Wednesday but it is difficult to overcome CB’s shortcomings. I guess he isn’t as bad as the CSS guys. At the end of the UAB game they said, “They’re looking at the replay to see if he was fouled.”
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Well, we didn’t win.

But this was only our second-ever Crappie USA tournament, and we bettered our finish by quite a bit over last year. After finishing 36th at the Logan Martin Crappie USA event in 2007, we finished 19th this year with seven fish that weighed 9.83. That’s an average of 1.40 pounds per fish, not too bad.

Unfortunately, it was still way off the lead.

In the Amateur Division (which is where we fished) Fred Walker and Mickey R. Peacock of Lizella, Ga., won with seven crappie that weighed 13.57. Troy Thiel of Gordon, Ga., and Ricky
Willis of Gray, Ga. placed second with 13.21.

In the semi-pro division, Rick Howard of Warner Robins, Ga., and Steve Deason of Gray, Ga., won with 13.83. Famed solo angler Harold Rich of Westover, Ala., was second with 13.43.

On a side note, if we had entered the semi-pro division, our total of 9.83 would have ranked ninth.

Anyway, click here for the complete results from Saturday’s Crappie USA event.

Haven’t heard anything yet on the Crappie Masters from Reelfoot, but I’ll get something up on that as soon as possible.