March Madness Finale: NCAA Tourney Teams with Women's Gymnastics Programs

We conclude our five entries dedicated to the NCAA Tournament, also known as March Madness, with a look at ten schools who made the Big Dance that also happen to have women's gymnastics programs. In total, 30 schools of the men's basketball field have women's gymnastics team. Of the ten teams listed here, only three are still in the tournament:

1) Florida Gators * (pictured top: Florida gymnast Kytra Hunter. Amazingly enough, the Gators are ranked number one in both sports)

2) Nebraska Cornhuskers (The team's mascot Lil' Red is pictured center)

3) Western Michigan Broncos ^ (We couldn't find an image we could use of the basketball team, so we went with an image of the Broncos' hockey goalie Lukas Hafner instead).

4) Ohio State Buckeyes. ^

5) Arizona State Sun Devils

6) UNC Tar Heels

7) Michigan State Spartans *^

8) Michigan Wolverines *^

9) Oklahoma Sooners (The Sooners have a solid chance of winning the NCAAs in gymnastics)

10) North Carolina State Wolfpack.

*-Teams still in the NCAA Tournament

^- Teams that also have men's hockey programs

http://www.collegegymfans.com

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/

College Gymnastics Lists (2 of 4): The All-Stars

Here is a list of NCAA gymnasts who have been stand-outs all year or all during their respective collegiate careers. The order presented here by no means suggests where each gymnast stands nationally. It's interesting that both Bridget Sloan and Samantha Peszek who competed as Olympians for Team USA are from Indiana:

1) Bridget Sloan. Florida. Sophomore (pictured top)

2) Samantha Peszek. UCLA. Senior (pictured center)

3) Emily Wong, Nebraska. Senior (pictured bottom, she will compete for her third straight Big 10 all-around this weekend)

4) Nicolette McNair.. Stanford. Freshman.

5) Diandra Miller. Alabama. Senior.

6) Brittany Rogers. Georgia. Sophomore. (Rogers competed for Canada in the 2012 London Olympics)

7) Joanna Sampson. Michigan. Senior

8) Nansy Damianova. Utah. Senior (The Canadian gymnast's parents were gymnasts in Bulgaria)

9) Jessie Jordan. LSU. Junior.

10) Haley Scaman. Oklahoma. Sophomore.

http://www.collegegymfans.com

Bonus Road Trip- Nebraska to Wisconsin (3 of 10)

Today, we look at the distances between two college towns which both happen to be state capitals named after two legendary American presidents: Lincoln, Nebr., to Madison, Wisc.

On Saturday, the Wisconsin Badgers won a home victory over the Nebraska Cornhuskers, a team that was making its Big Ten debut (there are actually now 12 teams in the Big 10) by a surprisingly devstating 48-17 score, which help move the Badgers into the top ten.

But, both schools also strong women's volleyball programs, and in that sport Nebraska will travel to Wisconsin for an important game on Oct. 14th.

On Saturday, the Nebraska women's volleyball team won a crucial road game at Michigan State on the part of 22 kills from Cornhusker stand-out Morgan Broekhius.

The Cronhuskers have several players from Nebraska on their squad, including Laren Cook, a junior from Lincoln and Brigette Root, a senior from Grand Island.

As for the Badgers volleyball team, they play four-time champion Penn State for a road game on Friday.

Nebraska also has a competitive women's gymnastics team, which has come close to winning a national championship at several intervals in recent years. That team's first home meet will be against Denver University on Jan. 13, 2012. The team has at least one gymnast from Nebraska, including Deanna Barrmore from Omaha.

So, for this segment, we are comparing the distances between two panckae houses, including the Original Pancake House at 5518 University Avenue in Madison (the state-wide chain has four other locations in Wisconsin) and Greenfields Pancake House on South 87th Street in Lincoln.

The distances between these two places is:

A) 7 hours, 30 minutes

B) 7 hours, 40 minutes

C) 7 hours, 50 minutes

D) 8 hours even

Give us your answers, and you may qualify to win a vintage 1970s Oak Ridge Boys record on vinyl (that is a joke, folks!).

Things We Learned From Twitter This PM-Nebraska May Defect

It seemed like my efforts to find out if anything new or extraordinary was going on in the world when I was checking tweets an hour and a ago was going to turn up nothing new or extraordinary.

But, then I read a tweet from KCTV, a Kansas City television station, which said the following:

"Orangebloods.com said Nebraska regents have informally agreed to leave for Big Ten. A formal announement will come Friday."

Does this mean that The University of Nebraska will now have in-conference rivalries with the likes of Ohio State, Illinois and Wisconsin instead of Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas State?

The Corn Huskers are known nationally for their football program, but the school in Lincoln, Neb., also has outstanding programs in both women's volleyball and women's gymnastics.

The Lady Huskers volleyball team is now touring China according to the Nebraska athletics' web site.

Similary, the school's women's gymnastics team finished seventh at the NCAA championships in Gainesville, Fla., in April. They were lead this past season by seniors Kathryn Howard and Kylie Stone (pictured here).

Erin Davis, a standout junior, returns to the squad next year. During a meet with Illinios and Minnesota, Davis scored a perfect 10 on the vault.

SIDEBAR: I want to congratulate fellow Radford University alumnus John Marks who graduated from Highlander U in 2007 (11 years after I did). Marks was named Teacher of the Year for the City of Roanoke, Va. (my hometown) recently. He is a sixth and eighth grade math teacher at James Madison Middle School.