My personal favorite image from the joyful game against Georgetown, Chase Fieler's bass-ackwards flying dunk.

A week ago, many of our astronomer friends had never heard of Florida Gulf Coast University. Because of basketball, because of the team and the coach, this has all changed. The most impressive and compelling story of this year's NCAA tournament was the stunning upset of 2nd-seed Georgetown by the 15th-seeded FGCU Eagles, 78-68, March 22, only the seventh time such an upset had occurred in tournament history, but the thrill became worldwide last night when FGCU went on to dunk San Diego State 81-71... the first time ever that a 15th-seed has advanced to the NCAA east regional semifinals (sweet 16).


Sherwood Brown, a walk-on for the Eagles program, celebrates with his teammates after toppling the 7th-seeded San Diego State. Comer and McKnight picked up when Brown got into foul trouble early, and the joyful style of FGCU play came though for the second time in three days.

Derek was home watching the game. I was playing Irish music at Hoolihan's, where the game was on both TVs (sound down). Some of the cheering was for the music, but the spontaneous yells were certainly for the Eagles :-)

And yet, I came away from that session with a compelling tune in my head. I have learned it in the hours since the session ended, but I couldn't go to sleep last night without being able to play it through. Sometimes astronomy happens that way as well -- a particular problem or idea is just something you have to keep working at until you "get it." Here's the tune that kept prodding me:


It was composed by a 15-year-old French hurdy-gurdy musician, Gilles Chabenat, in 1983, and is properly named "Les Poules Huppees" (but is widely known in the US as The Crested Hens-- especially since there is another Poules Huppees out there!). The fellow playing it hesitates a wee bit in a couple of spots, but you get the idea -- that is, if something similar has ever happened to you, and I'm guessing that many of our friends have these interesting ideas or stories or techniques or tunes that compel them to fully investigate before they can rest! I suspect Andy Enfield feels something like that about coaching basketball...