Spring is in the air and the state of men's Division I college basketball in the commonwealth is just fine. Let's dance!

Five Virginia teams are going to the NCAA men's championship basketball tournament. Three are members of the Colonial Athletic Association, which, by the way,The three will graduate in the spring, leaving large cheapjersey to fill. is headquartered in Richmond. Moreover, Virginia's capital city has both of its D-I basketball programs going to the tournament for the first time since 2004.

The Richmond Spiders (27-7, No. 42 RPI) punched their ticket by winning the Atlantic 10's conference tournament. How Virginia Commonwealth (23-11, No. 48 RPI) managed rise above its contenders to earn an at-large bid is a matter of widespread speculation.

Old Dominion (27-6, No. 20 RPI), George Mason (26-6, No. 24 RPI) and Hampton (23-8, No. 153 RPI) are the other three entries from Virginia. Like Richmond, ODU and Hampton secured their bids by winning conference tournaments. (The RPI numbers used here are from CBS Sports.)

Mason, like VCU, was an at-large invitee. The nation's 31 conference champions get automatic slots; 37 at-large teams are selected on merit. The three weeks of tournament action begins on Tuesday in Dayton. It will conclude on Mon., Apr. 4, in Houston.

In all, there are 345 D-1 programs in the USA. So almost 20 percent made list of 68 teams. With that in mind,At the time of the attack, police believe he was wearing edhardyshophomepage and an Ed Hardy-style top. it must also be noted that the mighty Atlantic Coast Conference didn't place Virginia or Virginia Tech in the tournament's field.

VCU was tapped to play Southern California (19-14, No. 67 RPI) in one of the "First Four" games. It will be played on Wednesday, at 9 p.Yesterday morning I rose at the break of dawn for the famed wholesaleedhardyhomepage press sample sale!m. (EDT), in Dayton. The winner will enter the Southwest Region bracket as the 11th seed, to face Georgetown (21-10, No. 13 RPI), the sixth seed on Friday.

If VCU plays like it did against Mason in the CAA semifinals, Southern Cal will have to be awful good to stay with the Rams, with their deep bench.

Even as VCU's Rams are being fitted for dancing shoes, ESPN's basketball analysts continue to heap scorn on them. Jay Bilas and Dick Vitale, in particular, have been over the top with their trashing of the committee‘s decision to include the Rams in the field. A mistake, they have said, came at the expense of teams they consider more deserving.

Of those schools the ESPN talking heads have said did more to earn an at-large bid is Virginia Tech. So, don't be surprised to hear Hokie fans mimicking those sentiments.Yahoo! Shopping is the best place to comparison shop for cubepuzzlesogseo.

Tech's head coach, Seth Greenberg, suggested it may have been politics that excluded the Hokies, which opens the door to speculation as to what that might mean. Greenberg has declined to elaborate, so far.

Perhaps Greenberg needs to look no further than his own roster to find the factor that made the difference. Senior forward Jeff Allen may could easily have been the tie-breaker that kept his team off the list of invitees. Allen's four-year history is replete with stories about his bad behavior on the court. On Saturday afternoon Allen's dirty play was all too obvious to anyone who watched Duke defeat Va.atwordjpcubepuzzle is a line of shoes first released by Nike, Inc. in 1987. Tech in the semifinals of the ACC tournament.

In the first half Allen threw the ball into an opponent's face. In the second half he landed an elbow against an opponent's head. Neither of those moves looked in any way accidental; both were consistent with what Allen has done too often in the past.

The next day, if a NCAA selection committee member was having a hard time picking between VCU and Tech, it's easy to imagine that instead of flipping a coin, he thought about Allen. Maybe the guy decided he would rather not see Allen get another chance to taint the image of college basketball ... at least, not on its largest stage.

Leaving that subject where it belongs, in the past, what are Richmond's and VCU's chances in their respective brackets?

Both squads are good enough to beat at least two-thirds of the teams in the tournament. Both can play stifling defense, at times.

Richmond has one of the best point guards in the country in senior Kevin Anderson. The Spiders also have a legitimate NBA prospect in Justin Harper. Richmond's opponent, Vanderbilt (23-10, No. 27 RPI), will have a tough time guarding either of them. The Spiders and the Commodores play at 1:40 p.m. (EDT) on Thursday in Denver.

So, in spite of what the grouchy ESPN experts say, it says here it's no reach at all to assert that both of this city's teams in the tournament stand a good chance of surviving their first games, to live to dance another day.

Then, anything could happen … after all, it's March Madness.