Sixty-five teams, three weeks, endless empty brackets and countless hours watching all the action. So you need a primer.

Here are the Sweet 16 things you need to know as the NCAA tournament gets set to tip off.

1. Repeat Gators

Since the John Wooden era ended at UCLA in the mid-1970s, only once has a team repeated as national champions – Duke in 1991 and 1992. There have been some close calls – Georgetown reached the finals in 1985, Arkansas in 1995 and Kentucky even went to overtime in the title game in 1997.

But for the most part, college basketball has been the land of the no-peat. And with the trend of top college players making immediate leaps to the NBA, there was a school of thought that it might never happen again.

Enter the Florida Gators, the defending champions with all five starters back and, after bulldozing the SEC tournament, the No. 1 seed overall. They even have, in the Midwest Region, what appears to be a favorable bracket.

Maybe most importantly, they appear to have

About the only good news for Gary Walters, the chair of the basketball selection committee who probably has a raging migraine about now, is that it could have been worse.

If it wasn’t for Kevin Durant, even more hell could have broken loose this weekend and Sunday could have been even more stressful.

The Texas freshman broke a final minute tie to propel Texas over Oklahoma State on Saturday in the Big 12 semis, assuring the Cowboys weren’t still alive to steal an automatic bid and rock the tournament field that, in most years, is usually set by Sunday morning.

But that’s the good news, the only good news.

The bad is the unusual slew of conference tournament upsets that has pared down the available at-large spots to the point where Sunday promises to be the most bitter and bickered about selection process in recent memory.

And still looming are two potential conference shockers that would further wreak havoc with the tourney field – North Carolina State in the ACC, Arkansas in the SEC.

Besides being hell bent on infuriating its best fans and having less people watch its games, Major League Baseball would also prefer if you stop calling to complain. If the FCC and Sen. John Kerry would stop threatening to investigate them, that would be good too.

Other than that, it’s full speed ahead for MLB, which appears to have offered a virtually impossible to complete proposal (and a tight deadline to do it) to the consortium of cable and satellite providers that distribute the Extra Innings package to die-hard and displaced baseball fans.

If that option isn’t met by March 31, then DirecTV will get exclusive rights to Extra Innings and all the hundreds of thousands of fans that Bud Selig called “ridiculous” two weeks ago will be out of luck when it comes to watching out of market games.

As long as they stop complaining to MLB President Bob DuPuy, no one in New York seems to care what happens with them.

“I hope that those fans who have been directing their concerns to us over the

Traveling Violations: As good as it gets

FAIRBORN, Ohio – Had Brad Brownell chosen to take a moment atop the Horizon League championship ladder to take in all the Wright State fans chanting his name below and, rather than clipped the net, shaken a how-do-you-like-me-now fist back towards Wilmington, N.C., well, who could have blamed him?

For anyone who’s every felt underappreciated by their new boss and just desperate to tell him "to take-this-job-and-shove-it," to issue a "you’ll-miss-me-when-I’m-gone" walk out the door, you just got yourself a team and a coach in the NCAA Tournament.

Brownell went to the NCAAs last year too, leading UNC Wilmington to its second bid in four seasons. But the school had a new athletic director, Mike Capaccio, a former junior college national championship coach and one-time UNCW assistant.

The details remain sketchy, but the broad picture is clear, an AD/coach relationship that was so strained not even a 25-win season could ease it. Despite the on-court

Dan's Road Trip: Right at Wright

FAIRBORN, Ohio – If your team is sweating out its chances to get into the NCAA tournament, then every DaShaun Woods shot here at the Horizon League tournament Tuesday was like a dagger to your dreams.

The Wright State senior delivered his team into the NCAA tournament with a 60-55 victory here over Butler and that means he delivered some other school right out of it.

And this is the biggest problem with all the endless debates about who is in and who is out taking place this year. Until all the conference tournaments are done, it is impossible to know how many at-large bids are really available.

Everyone talks about clichéd bubbles, but available at-large bids are more like an accordion, they can stretch out or get crunched in quickly.

Butler (27-6, 17th in the polls and 30 in the RPI) is now going to gobble up an at-large bid, joining Wright State (automatic bid) in making the Horizon League a two-bid conference. Had the Bulldogs won Tuesday, the

Traveling Violations: A lesson in spin

RICHMOND, Va. – He says little. He smiles rarely. He shouts, perhaps, never – at least on the sideline. He doesn’t stomp or preen or showboat. All the dramatic histrionics that define the generation of coaches Anthony Grant, 40, is quickly ascending to the top of, seems lost on him.

Even here in the delirium of a jammed and jumping Richmond Coliseum as his Virginia Commonwealth Rams stormed back in the final minutes to dramatically beat March’s eternal darling, George Mason, 64-59, he never afforded himself a smile.

At least not until the sophomore guard whose will he once questioned imposed all of it on the game.

It’s an intriguing coach-star duo here at VCU (27-6), one that just may make major noise later this month. The point guard, Eric Maynor, is emotional and loquacious and daring. The coach, Anthony Grant, is serious and focused and intense.

The similarity, however, is simple. Both want to win in the worst way.

And so there was no panic as

Dan's Road Trip: Balancing act

RICHMOND, Va. – A final thought on Sunday's Duke-North Carolina incident, where with 14.5 seconds remaining, the Blue Devils' Gerald Henderson broke the Tar Heels' Tyler Hansbrough's nose with a forceful forearm.

Mike Krzyzewski is one of the smartest people you'll ever meet, and his spin job after the game was more proof of it. They ought to teach this one – an almost instantaneously hatched plan – in college public relations classes.

Krzyzewski, without being asked, brought up in calm and measured tones that, "the game was over before [the foul]. That's unfortunate, too, that those people were in the game in that play.”

By throwing that out there, he flipped at least part of the post-incident debate away from his program and squarely on Carolina.

That he tried to do that was not surprising. While I was waiting for Krzyzewski to enter the pressroom after the game nearly every reporter was speculating what accusation the Duke coach would throw out there.

Dan's Road Trip: Fight night

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – For most of the past few decades the most frightening four letters in the NCAA basketball tournament were D-U-K-E.

Find your favorite team squared up against the Blue Devils and odds were good you were losing. Duke has reached 10 Final Fours and captured three national titles under coach Mike Krzyzewski. Maybe even more telling, there have been no major upsets and this team always seems to make the Sweet Sixteen at least.

It's been the closest thing we've seen since the ultimate college hoops closer – John Wooden's four letter U-C-L-A juggernaut that was hardly worth showing up to play against.

But here comes the year there is little reason to fear the Blue Devils. Duke is 22-9, a seventh seed in the ACC tournament and when they reach the NCAAs they'll be neither a high seed nor an unstoppable power. Duke could even be one and done.

Not since the mid-to-late 1990s has Krzyzewski fielded a team with such a limit of pure talent. Granted,