College games and a little girl

Perhaps the biggest upset of the season so far was Wisconsin's win last night over seventh-ranked Baylor, 59-58. What happened? Baylor's been steamrolling, and Wisconsin isn't supposed to be a very good team.

In other upsets, Nevada defeated eighth-ranked Louisville, and nineteenth-ranked Arizona State fell to Florida. That parity thing is just spreading like a virus.

As for Pac-10 teams Saturday night, California stayed unbeaten in their defeat of Iowa, and Oregon State continued to surprise. They beat Arkansas Friday night, and came very close to defeating North Carolina the next night, 78-82. Could the Beavers finally be for real? Daniel and I think they are. I've been wanting the Oregon schools to show up for a while, so this is good news to me.

And speaking of Oregon, I'm happy to say that the Ducks beat Wyoming tonight, 51-45. Let's go, Bev Smith!

One of the five Pac-10 teams that wasn't in some kind of holiday classic this weekend was UCLA. They beat Cal Poly Wednesday, and must have chilled and gone shopping because their first game back is today, against Cal State Northridge. Game report later, of course.

Changing gears, by now many have seen the video of the five-year-old girl from Northern California dribbling two and then three basketballs at once. She is both skilled and adorable:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEmzewBMaaE

Milan Simone Tuttle has been getting tons of press for this video, which originally appeared on pro baller Rod Benson's blog. Here's one feature:

http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_11083726?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com

She's also been on TV:

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/east_bay&id=6527524

The day before Thanksgiving, Milan was a guest on the Ellen DeGeneres show, which is now on youtube.

I'm writing a story on her and on the place where she got the training, Triple Threat Academy of San Leandro, CA, for fullcourt. Today I talked to Milan's mother, Renee Tuttle, and I was as impressed with this woman as I was with her daughter.

Renee and her husband Jon encourage their kids to do what they want instead of pushing them into sports and other activities. They are being incredible sticklers about completing school work before anything else, and it's already instilled in their kindergartener. They also insist she remain humble, because "we still have to go home, and I have to go to work and you have to go to school," Jon Tuttle said.

Could we just get these people to parent all the young ballers of America? Life for us teachers and coaches would be so very much more simple.