It's been a while since the TCBH had an update, but I wanted to drop a few notes: 

• The TCBH won't have daily action during the off-season, but its two cousins -- the Trentonian Thunder blog and the Rutgers football blog -- will. The Thunder Blog will take over as the place you can find daily updates and musings, but the RFB will be pretty busy too, especially since spring practice is going on now. 
• I had UMass in the NIT final in my pool, but got the other three Final Four teams all wrong, leaving me in 14h place out of 23 in my pool. I'm not in an NCAA pool, but I got three out of four right, with the one miss being Texas over Memphis in the South. I did not enter a CBI pool, nor did I make any kind of projections, but it looks like Tulsa-Bradley has been a pretty good championship series so far. The only problem: I don't think there's been close to enough interest across the board, fan support or TV ratings to keep this thing going in the long term. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the first and last CBI. 
• Too bad Siena didn't move past Villanova and into the Sweet Sixteen. That would have been great for the MAAC. But the Saints put on a show when they crushed Vanderbilt in the first round. And here's the scary thing: they have all five starters back, making them the prohibitive favorite to repeat next year as MAAC champs. 
• Tommy Dempsey was contacted by officials at James Madison when they were conducting a coaching search that eventually led them to select another MAAC guy -- Marist's Matt Brady. Dempsey talked to the Dukes before deciding his heart was definitely at Rider, where he'll remain for the time-being and where his team has four starters back after winning a share of the MAAC regular season title. (Of course, the one starter the Broncs are missing is a likely first-round draft pick). I think both Dempsey and Brady made the right decision. Despite losing Thompson, there's hope in the future at Rider, so leaving for one of the lesser jobs in the CAA wouldn't have made sense. Not when a few more big years could lead to an A-10 job or a better job in a conference like the CAA. But Brady's stock is still high two years after leading the Red Foxes to a regular season title and a first-round NIT win, and it would have been destined to plummet next year, when the Red Foxes will be lucky to finish seventh in the MAAC. 
• My best stab at ranking the MAAC teams in 2008-09, which optimistically speaking,  is only 6 1/2 months away: 1) Siena; 2) Fairfield; 3) Niagara; 4) Rider; 5) Iona; 6) Manhattan; 7) Loyola; 8) Saint Peter's; 9) Canisius; 10) Marist.                                             

I'll go into much more detail on the MAAC picks in a later post. Until then, we need some hits on the Thunder and Rutgers blogs, so check 'em out, tell some friends, and leave some comments with feedback, analysis and suggestions.