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Traylor dresses ... and watches

Center sees no action for Blue

Maybe Michigan men's basketball coach Steve Fisher just didn't like Robert Traylor's suits.

Traylor, who has worn street clothes to Michigan games since breaking his arm in a Feb. 17 car accident, was in uniform against Texas. He went through layup drills before the game with his right forearm wrapped up.

Would Traylor play?

"Stranger things have happened," Fisher said before the game.

As it turned out, Traylor didn't enter the game. From the looks of his right arm, it's hard to imagine that he would have been able to shoot, so Traylor probably would only have been able to play defense and rebound.

Even though they didn't face him, the Longhorns heard from Traylor. After the game, Traylor got into a shouting match with Texas center Sonny Alvarado.

What were they saying?

"I just told him he played a good game," Alvarado said.

Right, and Traylor was just telling Alvarado he was a good-looking man.

TV TIMEOUT: One of the nicest amenities at the Bradley Center -- and there are many -- is the scoreboard, which shows live television coverage as the game is being played. This was particularly helpful this weekend, because fans were able to watch other tournament games during breaks in the action.

But all was not perfect.

The scoreboard was showing the end of the Iowa-George Washington game Friday. The Hawkeyes and Colonials were tied at nine with 16 seconds left when the Wake Forest-Northeast Louisiana matchup was about to start. The scoreboard operators switched of the Iowa game. The crowd booed as loudly as it had all day, drowning out the first two introductions of the Wake Forest yawner.

The scoreboard eventually showed the last few seconds of the Iowa game -- after the P.A. announcer had already told the crowd Iowa had won, 81-79.

THE LEADERS AND LEAST POPULAR?: The scoreboard was not the only thing that was booed Friday. Every time Michigan's band struck up a chorus of `The Victors,' many in the crowd responded with a round of boos. None of the other seven schools' bands received such treatment.

Meanwhile, the Texas mascot and cheerleaders tried to court the favor of the Milwaukee contingent. The mascot wore foam cheese on his longhorns and the cheerleaders held up foam cheese with their Texas signs.

DIVINE INTERVENTION: Lamont Hill of Texas, a former walk-on, started the postgame press conference by saying, "Thank the Lord."

To which Texas coach Tom Penders added, "Thank God for Lamont."

Then, when Penders was asked about Maceo Baston's timeout, he simply responded, "Like Lamont said, thank the Lord."

Then came a voice from above: "YOU'RE WELCOME."

No, not really.

ALL-AMERICANS: Fans in Milwaukee got to witness two first-team All-Americans in action -- Villanova's Kerry Kittles and Wake Forest's Tim Duncan. No other first-round site had more than one.

Kittles and the Wildcats have had to answer questions all year about their loss to Old Dominion in the first round last year, when Villanova was a No. 3 seed. After Villanova won, center Jason Lawson called last year's loss "a dead horse." But Kittles disagreed with his teammate.

"It's not dead until we win the championship," he said.