With national signing day, desk work every day and extra basketball stories to write, it's been a crazy week. That isn't an excuse for the lackluster blogging output on the TCHB; it's just an explanation for the four-day period during which the TCHB was quiet. 

But we're back and we have a lot to catch up on, such as: 

For reasons we'll get into some other time, it's not as easy as you might think to track down links to stories written just a couple of days ago. Because of that, the feature story I wrote earlier this week about Rider point guard Justin Robinson seems to have disappeared completely from cyberspace. If anyone finds it out there, please let me know and I'll put up a link. I also wrote a story on Jason Thompson's passing ability, I have a link, but right now it doesn't work, so I'll work on that. 

I do have a link  to a column I recently wrote about Tommy Dempsey. 

Tomorrow's paper will have an advance of the Rider-Niagara game featuring on the Purple Eagles' Charron Fisher. 

A few other things to touch on: 

• There was no winner in the TCHB Super Bowl pick em. Not only did no one correctly guess the score; not one person even picked the Giants to win. 
• I had to work last night in the office, but I taped the double header on ESPN, which featured UConn winning its sixth straight by beating Syracuse and Duke topping UNC in Dickie V's return to ESPN. 
• The first and (I think) only MAAC teleconference was yesterday. Tomorrow's post (I swear, there really will be a post. I guarantee it.) will have some notes and quotes from the call, which seemed to have a decent amount of media participation. 
• Rider is playing very good basketball lately. The Broncs are by far the hottest team in the MAAC and they look like the best team in the MAAC heading down the stretch. But I'd love to know who gave them a vote in the AP top 25 this week and what that person was thinking. If anyone can give me a logical argument that Rider is as good as or better than any team in the top 25 or any of the other teams receiving votes, I'd love to hear it. 
• Quick plug for the Rutgers football blog, which is back up and running and has some notes on signing day. 
• A couple of thoughts on baseball season, which is right around the corner: 1) The TCHB would like to go on the record with this now, as to ensure we're one of the earliest publications to officially make the prediction: the 2008 World Series champions will be the New York Mets. 
•  2) For the first 21 years of my life I wore my Red Sox fandom on my sleeve. When I was a freshman in college I'm fairly certain I once went two weeks straight wearing Red Sox stuff to class every day without wearing the same shirt twice. When the Sox finally conquered the Yankees and then won the World Series in 2004, I couldn't have been happier. Now, though, while I'll still quietly root for the Sox, I have to tone it down. I'm going to be the Trentonian beat writer for the Trenton Thunder, the Double-A affiliate of ..... The New York Yankees. So it looks like all the Yankee knowledge I've stored up over the years from living in the tri-state area and (before moving here) going to Yankee Stadium with my grandmother (I can name every retired number without hesitation) will be put to some kind of use. Obviously, I'm going to be objective about everything, but in a way, this means I'm joining the extended Yankee family. I told this to a friend of mine the other day. His response? "Ruth, Gehrig, Dimmagio, Mantle, DOODY?"