Never do your bracket until grades come out

So you filled out your NCAA Tournament bracket for your office pool, and you decided to have Syracuse go all the way. Or at least make it to the Final Four.

Oops.

Perhaps a little patience was in order given the news Tuesday that center Fab Melo is ineligible to play for the Orange in the NCAAs. Supposedly, there are academic issues. But there may be other mitigating circumstances keeping the "Fab One" off the floor. Yahoo! Sports' recent report on failed drug tests by Syracuse basketball players may have included Melo, though the school denied that any of its current players are part of the scandal.

Either way, without Melo, top-seeded Syracuse's path to New Orleans got a lot tougher. And unless the person running your office pool is a kind and gentle soul who will let you rework your bracket before today's games tip off, you might have hitched your wagon to a horse whose chances of winning suddenly became greatly diminished. A lot of brackets could have been busted before the first errant shot gets tossed up this morning.

The lesson, boys and girls, is when it comes to bracketology, wait until the last possible moment before turning in your entry. You never know who's going to flunk a philosophy class. Or a drug test.

■ WAITING GAME -- Not that it mattered in the end, given it squandered a 25-point lead and can lay claim to the biggest collapse in the history of the NCAA Tournament, but Iona's day was a little longer than expected.

The team's bus pulled into the University of Dayton Arena in plenty of time for the players to disembark and settle in for pregame preparation before their first-round game Tuesday against Brigham Young.

However, with President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron on hand to watch from courtside, the Secret Service made the Gaels remain on their team bus for 30 minutes while they secured the area.

"We have no excuses," Iona coach Tim Cluess said of the loss.

Actually, that might have been a pretty good excuse. Blame the White House. But Obama didn't even stick around to watch Iona's epic fold job, so the Gaels can't blame him.

■ FIND YOUR OWN RIDE -- ESPN college basketball insider Andy Katz has had the chance to visit the White House each of the past three years to get President Obama's bracket selections, which is a pretty cool assignment.

Katz also usually attends the First Four games in Dayton, Ohio. And with the president traveling to Dayton on Tuesday for the Western Kentucky-Mississippi Valley State game, what better opportunity for Katz to get his ultimate thrill -- a ride aboard Air Force One?

"I tried but they said there was no room," Katz tweeted to Leftovers on Tuesday.

Maybe if Prime Minister Cameron and his entourage weren't accompanying Obama, "The Word," as Katz is known in the college basketball world, would have had a shot of hitching a ride to Dayton.

COMPILED BY STEVE CARP
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL