Basketball playoff flurry -- shock on football front

The national collegiate basketball tournament -- the 48-team, NCAA model -- begins this weekend, and, boy, what a dogfight it should be. Not a single school survived the regular season undefeated, though DePaul and Oregon State came awfully close, finishing 27-1 and 26-1 respectively.

OSU saw its hopes for a perfect campaign crushed just last weekend, when Arizona State stunned the Beavers on their own home court with a 87-67 upset. The defeat allowed DePaul, which lost to Old Dominion in January, to move ahead of Oregon State in both major wire service polls.

DePaul's Blue Demons would seem to have the momentum needed to carry them to the semifinals and finals, slated for Philadelphia on March 28th and 30th. Of course, strange things can happen in tournament play, as DePaul discovered last year, when it also entered the post-season top-ranked only to lose to UCLA in its first game.

Coach Ray Meyer's running-gunning squad is as explosive as they come and will join Oregon State, Louisiana State, and Virginia as the top-seeded teams in four separate regio nals.