For our final Man of the Hour, as the early games wind to a close, we turn to a mid-major hero whom I dismissed without cause in my Midwest Region picks, but who is currently putting me to shame with a great performance against Cincinnati. He is:

Today's Shuffle is going to be a quick one — to get your college hoops fix, check out dispatch no. 1 on Indiana-Ohio State from my Big Ten road trip — but, wow, the wheels have really come off, haven't they? Let's do a list of 10 thoughts and conclusions from the weekend, except let's make it just like college basketball rankings and have the numbers mean absolutely nothing.

7. Nobody is good. Or everybody is good. But if everybody is good, then nobody is good. So in the end, nobody is good. Unless you reverse it, in which case, OH, JUST SHUT UP. THIS YEAR IS COMMUNIST. IT'S A PERFECT COMMUNIST YEAR.

With that in mind, who is communist icon Karl Marx's college basketball doppelganger? What about Friedrich Engels? If you take away the beards, I'm going with Marx as a young Bobby Knight and Engels as a fatter-faced Aaron Craft. But I'm not really happy with either of those, so please help me in the comments.

If the e-mails I sent to my editors reached a level you might call "pleading" or even "begging," you can't blame me. The college basketball currents had been colliding for three months, creating the conditions for a freak wave that finally crested last week and may break at any moment. Against all odds, the bastion of stodgy basketball that is the Big Ten had become the biggest and best show around. I knew I had to get to the Midwest fast, while the magic was thick.

What Big Ten magic, you ask? Oh, the two epic Burke-Craft battles; Indiana's first-half blitzkriegs against Michigan and Minnesota, and the furious comebacks that followed; the Illinois Miracle Minute; Bo Ryan, great coach that he is, stealing game after game despite losing his best defender for the season. And then there's the talented group out in the Twin Cities, the underachievers who rebound like men possessed but keep just losing and now stand on the verge of total collapse ... and it goes on and on. This is a constant, brutal war of attrition, and it's terrific theater.

THE PITCH: Watch the six best Big Ten teams face off in a span of five days. Indiana at Ohio State on Sunday, Michigan at Michigan State on Tuesday, Wisconsin at Minnesota on Thursday. Simple, profound, necessary. The editors sensed my desperation and agreed.

First off, I want to thank everyone who made nominations to the All-BeefyBulky Team on Friday. There were so many great contenders, but in the end there can only be five. The winners:

1. Andre Almeida, Nebraska
2. Matt Stainbrook, Xavier
3. Reggie Johnson, Miami
4. Joe Burton, Oregon State
5. Joshua Smith, UCLA (Although he has left the team.)

When my wife read Friday's post, she asked me why I cared who was the beefiest or bulkiest player in the country. And I have to tell you guys … I didn't have a good answer. Let's move on to this week's epiphanies and observations.

I bet you thought college basketball was over when Kentucky cut down the nets and pretended to enjoy "One Shining Moment," didn't you? Well, you were almost right. For about a month and a half after the title game, undecided high school recruits make their final visits, weigh the pros and cons of each school, gather with family and friends and crooked AAU coaches, and then choose Kentucky.

But seriously: The second signing period of the year lasts from April 11 to May 16, by which time all remaining recruits have inked a National Letter of Intent. It creates a healthy amount of suspense for college basketball fans who stick around, and in the midst of it all, you can usually count on a number of interesting transfers heightening the drama.

Let's hit three of the big stories that have developed over the past 10 days, starting in Wisconsin.

There are times when sports give me the urge to stand on my rickety wooden desk (Target, $80 in 2005), brave the first wobbles, and shout some English-based gibberish while gesticulating like an insane maestro. Tuesday night's Michigan State-Wisconsin finish prompted one of these episodes, and today I can't restrain myself from thinking this cliché: If I live 1,000 years, there will still be something to surprise me in sports. It never ends.