Obama goes with chalk

For someone considered politically liberal, President Barack Obama was rather conservative when filling out his bracket for the NCAA Tournament.

Obama selected No. 1 seeds Louisville, North Carolina and Pittsburgh and second-seeded Memphis to win their regions and advance to the Final Four. Obama picked North Carolina to beat Louisville in the NCAA final April 6 in Detroit.

Obama's picks were recorded Tuesday and aired Wednesday on ESPN.

Andy Katz of ESPN interviewed Obama in October during the presidential campaign for a story about the president's brother-in-law, Oregon State basketball coach Craig Robinson.

Afterward, Obama invited Katz to play in a pickup game on election day in Chicago, and Katz got Obama to promise that, if elected, the new president would complete a bracket for ESPN after the NCAA field was announced.

For the record: Obama carried North Carolina and Pennsylvania (Pitt) in the election, but lost Tennessee (Memphis) and Kentucky (Louisville) to Republican candidate John McCain of Arizona.

In the first round, Obama picked two No. 11 seeds to upset No. 6s: Virginia Commonwealth over UCLA and Temple over Arizona State. Considering he didn't carry McCain's home state, the president must not have much love for Arizona. He picked Utah to beat the University of Arizona.

And his brother-in-law's Beavers went 0-4 against the Arizona schools in the Pac-10 this season.

• SWEATING IT OUT -- For the first time since senior Jeff Pendergraph began playing for Arizona State, he awoke Sunday confident his Sun Devils would be among the 65 teams going to the NCAA Tournament.

Pendergraph became nervous when three of the four regional brackets had been announced and his team hadn't been named.

"We started getting kind of anxious," he said. "We're like, 'Holy cow, what's going on?' It seemed like all the other schools in the Pac-10 got picked. Where (are) we at?"

Late in the selection show, the Sun Devils (24-9) were finally announced as a No. 6 seed, playing Temple in the first round tonight at Miami. It is Arizona State's first NCAA berth since 2003.

Since enrolling at Arizona State, Pendergraph's career was threatened by a benign tumor in his left leg as a freshman, a coaching change and an 8-22 record two seasons ago, the school's worst in nearly 40 years.

• PLAY-IN WITH MEANING -- Columnist Randy Youngman of the Orange County Register is ready for "the madness to begin," but first he offers a better idea for the NCAA's use of the play-in game to determine the last rung of the 64-team bracket.

"(The Tournament) officially began Tuesday night in Dayton, Ohio, when Alabama State, ranked 179th in the Ratings Percentage Index, took on Morehead State, ranked 142nd, for the right to be crushed by top-seeded Louisville on Friday night in the Midwest Regional," he wrote.

Youngman suggests letting two snubbed teams such as Saint Mary's and San Diego State meet in the play-in game.

COMPILED BY JEFF WOLF LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL