Because most of you are probably looking for a quick take on an entertaining Saturday of college basketball, here’s a preview, one that hopefully our other staffers will add to.

Women’s “Lower Left Bracket” Sectional

Calvin vs DePauw: The sweat and guts of Calvin vs a deep, smart, fundamentally sound DePauw squad. Keys: What does Calvin have left after a stress-filled 40 minute sectional semi? How will DePauw match up with Calvin posts Rachael Willett and Lisa Winkle? And how do you slow DePauw down?

Women’s “Upper Left” Sectional

Bowdoin vs Mary Washington: Rematch of last year’s sectional semi grudge match, only on a neutral floor Keys: Bowdoin is 1-4 in its 5 sectional finals losing to a slew of team’s led by All Americans. Bowdoin may have the best player (Flaherty), but will that be offset by Mary Washington’s hunger to avenge?

Well, that was pretty entertaining.

Washington University advances in women and men. Last two remaining participants in last year’s women’s final four eliminated, ending the careers of some great players (Mellody and Matt at Scranton, Marbles at Southern Maine). And 59 points for the All American Ben Strong in a triple overtime thriller. No, we haven’t named All Americans yet but, at least for tonight, I’m removing the “candidate” suffix for him.

There’s no way I can do justice to everything that happened, so let me try to give you a taste of the regional here at Luther.

Props to the Blue Crew: Luther fans packed the Regents Center and created a fantastic atmosphere. Their chants were creative (“tie-your-shoe-tie-your-shoe” as a Wash U player bent down to do so) and at one point even altered the game. In the first half, Wash U had the ball when the Blue Crew started counting down the shot clock. “5-4-3-2…”

Wash U forward Jaimie McFarlin fired up and missed a shot to beat the “shot clock” – with 3 seconds still remaining on the actual shot clock. Score one for the Blue Crew.

Future so bright: The players who took over the game for Wash U down the stretch were Zoe Unruh and Jaimie McFarlin. Unruh has a great first step and silky smooth jumper. McFarlin is tenacious on the glass with good quickness that creates open looks off offensive rebounds. And the scary thing here is Unruh is only a freshman and McFarlin a sophomore. Write these names down because they will be coming to D3hoops press releases near you for several seasons.

The Spirit of D3: Frequently the best, most striking moments happen aside from the games themselves. Tonight with a near empty gym one of the Luther players was sharing a moment with her family and friends. They shared words of encouragement with the player on the great season that just ended. Then her family turned to leave and she headed toward a separate door as the clock neared 10:30 pm local time on a Friday night.

Before leaving she looked over her shoulder and called back, “anyone wanna go to the library with me?”

That, friends, is what makes this special. Great games on the court and great kids off it.

Where will we be? Everywhere, for the first time.

The very first year of our existence we couldn’t even get to both Final Fours. That year, 1998, was the last year the women’s Final Four was not played at a predetermined site and we simply couldn’t get a team up to Maine on that short notice.

Things have certainly changed for the better for us over the past decade. This year, for the first time, we’ll have a crew at all eight sectional finals, so you can listen to D3hoops.com’s coverage of every Elite Eight game, thanks to Allinbroadcasting and NCAASports.com.

I’ll be at St. John Fisher for all three games. Seth Cantor and Eric Ren will call the final from Amherst on Saturday and video will be available. Dave McHugh will be at Virginia Wesleyan for all three games and Wayne Randazzo is making the trip to UW-Stevens Point for three as well.

Mark Simon will do all three games from Emmanuel. Gordon Mann is doing all three games at Luther. Lance Medow makes his network debut for us from NYU, with John Vukelj joining him on Friday. And Sugar Ray Martel will call the Elite Eight game from Scranton for us on Saturday.

And in true D-III penny-pinching fashion, we do all this with one flight. 🙂

Then we’ll have crews at both Final Fours. There will be live online video produced by the NCAA for both semifinals and the third-place game with our broadcasters calling the action and we’ll have an audio broadcast of the title game, including the announcements of our All-American teams in our pregame coverage.