Good morning. Tonight, Villanova will play in the National Championship.

Let’s hit!

 

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The roundup:

Worth noting: North Carolina is a 3-point favorite (some think this is a Nova line, I’m not so sure), but they haven’t played higher than a five seed in the tournament and only one team (Indiana) ranked in the top 25 coming into the tournament. Meanwhile, Nova has beaten Oklahoma, Kansas and Miami– all top 10 teams. Two of those games weren’t even close.

Buddy Hield, who was held to only 9 points and NO SHOTS IN THE FINAL 13 MINUTES, on Villanova: “They just played great and hats off to Villanova. That’s one of the best teams I ever played in college. Just have to give them credit, they made it hard for us tonight.” Buddy plays in the Big 12.

More stats. From ESPN.com’s Stats and Info blog:

Villanova shot 71.4 percent from the field. Oklahoma shot 31.7 percent. Villanova’s shooting percentage was the second-best ever in a Final Four game. The only team to shoot better? Villanova, which shot 78.6 percent in its upset of Patrick Ewing and Georgetown in the 1985 title game.

The Wildcats now have four of the top eight shooting performances in the 2016 NCAA tournament. The Wildcats enter the final shooting 58.2 percent for the tournament, the best mark of any team entering a final since the field expanded in 1985.

And from CBS Sports:

On Saturday, Nova was 11 of 18 from beyond the arc and finished with an offensive efficiency rating of 156.8. Insane!

Maybe the most incredible stat: Oklahoma’s seven previous losses came by a total of 40 points. Villanova outdid that in one game. Easily. Oklahoma is the second single-digit seed in modern NCAA Tournament history to lose a game by at least 44 points.

Villanova’s 91 points were the most in a national semifinal since Syracuse laid 95 on Texas in 2003, and no rematch in the past 16 years — at least — was more lopsided for a team’s revenge win than what Villanova did to the sooners.

And even better:

And yet, this…

… despite most of the points here coming from Villanova:

John Clark, crushing it in Houston along with Villanova alum and former team manager Keith Jones, has a story on Kris Jenkins and his brother Nate Britt, who plays for North Carolina.

Villanova now has the seventh most NCAA Tournament wins of all-time— behind Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke, UCLA, Kansas, and Louisville. #elite

Dan Levy on what would have been if Jay Wright went to Rutgers as planned.

Great shirt in Houston– pretty sure I know this guy…

Villanova tournament photo gallery.

Twitter reacts to the impaling of Oklahoma.

Radnor Police have gone “DEFCON-1” as they prepare for celebrations tonight. So many Polo shirts gonna get ruffled.

Business Insider on the tiny bit of (expected) sportsmanship from Jay Wright and Villanova.

Slowly wrapping my head around Bush being behind the Villanova bench. Not sure if it will give weight to all images from the game, or fuel crazy conspiracy theories about offshore drilling companies. Either way, I’m pretty sure Nantz was asking him here if he ever played Augusta. In the foreground, Biden just discovered that the big screen was showing a favorable closeup of a cheerleader on top of the pyramid.

 

Speaking of conspiracy theories– the Panama Papers might just be the holy grail. Just an unprecedented leak of millions of pages of documents from a Panama Law firm that set up shell companies for the rich and powerful to hide their money from tax responsibilities. Media outlets from all over the world participated in reporting the findings, and there’s even a dedicated website for them: https://panamapapers.icij.org.

The biggest name involved is, no surprise, Vladimir Putin (in Soviet Russia– scandal find you!). But there’s more fun ones:

The world’s best soccer player, Lionel Messi, is also found in the documents. The records show Messi and his father were owners of a Panama company: Mega Star Enterprises Inc. This adds a new name to the list of shell companies known to be linked to Messi. His offshore dealings are currently the target of a tax evasion case in Spain.

Whether they’re famous or unknown, Mossack Fonseca works aggressively to protect its clients’ secrets. In Nevada, the records show, the law firm tried to shield itself and its clients from the fallout from a legal action in U.S. District Court by removing paper records from its Las Vegas branch and having its tech gurus wipe electronic records from phones and computers.

Slippery!

And then there’s this:

Before dawn on Nov. 26, 1983, six robbers slipped into the Brink’s-Mat warehouse at London’s Heathrow Airport. The thugs tied up the security guards, doused them in gasoline, lit a match and threatened to set them afire unless they opened the warehouse’s vault. Inside, the thieves found nearly 7,000 gold bars, diamonds and cash.

“Thanks ever so much for your help. Have a nice Christmas,” one of the crooks said as they departed.

British media dubbed the heist the “Crime of the Century.” Much of the loot — including the cash reaped by melting the gold and selling it — was never recovered. Where the missing money went is a mystery that continues to fascinate students of England’s underworld.

Now documents within Mossack Fonseca’s files reveal that the law firm and its co-founder, Jürgen Mossack, may have helped the conspirators keep the spoils out of the hands of authorities by protecting a company tied to Gordon Parry, a London wheeler-dealer who laundered money for the Brink’s-Mat plotters.

If that’s not one of the most conspiracy-y-conspiriasty things of all-time and also a plot from Mission Impossible, I don’t know what is. Crazy Brits pull off heist at Heathrow and route money through Panamanian shell company.

This fucking guy:

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When Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson became Iceland’s prime minister in 2013 he concealed a secret that could have damaged his political career. He and his wife shared ownership in an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands when he entered parliament in 2009. He sold his stake in the company months later to his wife for $1.

The company held bonds originally worth millions of dollars in three giant Icelandic banks that failed during the 2008 global financial crash, making it a creditor in their bankruptcies. Gunnlaugsson’s government negotiated a deal with creditors last year without disclosing his family’s financial stake in the outcome.

Gunnlaugsson has denied in recent days that his family’s financial interests influenced his stances. The leaked records do not make it clear whether Gunnlaugsson’s political positions benefited or hurt the value of the bonds held through the offshore company.

In an interview with an ICIJ media partners, Reykjavik Media and SVT, Gunnlaugsson denied hiding assets. When he was confronted with the name of the offshore company linked to him — Wintris Inc. — the prime minister said “I’m starting to feel a bit strange about these questions because it’s like you are accusing me of something.”

Soon after, he ended the interview.

Four days later, his wife took the matter public, posting a note on Facebook asserting that the company was hers, not his, and that she had paid all taxes on it.

Since then, members of Iceland’s parliament have questioned why Gunnlaugsson never disclosed the offshore company, with one lawmaker calling for the prime minister and his government to resign.

That guy and his wife just scream underground swingers club. That, or they summarily pee on each before planned intercourse.

And:

In 2013, U.K. leader David Cameron urged his country’s overseas territories — including the British Virgin Islands — to work with him to “get our own houses in order” and join the fight against tax evasion and offshore secrecy.

He could have looked no further than his late father to see how challenging that would be.

Ian Cameron, a stockbroker and multimillionaire, was a Mossack Fonseca client who used the law firm to shield his investment fund, Blairmore Holdings, Inc., from U.K. taxes.

Big day for Alex Jones. Huge day.

 

Reader report: Doug Pederson– KIND OF A DICK:

https://twitter.com/RickyStussy/status/716639991904993280

https://twitter.com/RickyStussy/status/716640243789795330

 

Matt Gelb wrote a good piece about how, even in a digital era, people love the Phillies radio broadcasters.

 

Meanwhile, Rob Manfred loves bat flips.

 

Free man LeSean McCoy is flying out of Philly today:

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So… no charges?

 

Shane McMahon jumped off the top of a cage:

Twitter is going nuts over this, but it feels like forced pub to me. Cool to see, but that table had more crumple zones than a race car. The “for the love of Mankind” call was incredibly pre-rehearsed. It just felt to me like they were trying to recreate Mankind’s crazy-ass jump in an overly forced way. I know– I’m a cynic.

 

So these Snapchat filters are awesome:

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Thieves stole the scooter Hunter Pence donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

 

Steph Curry is ridiculous and the Warriors are awesome.

 

Peter King spoke to Chip Kelly for his MMQB:

MMQB: Does part of you feel like you’ve got to prove yourself as an NFL head coach?

Kelly: Not coming after what I’ve just gone through. I don’t look at it like that. I think you want to prove yourself every day. I want to prove myself after my first year, I want to prove myself after my second year, after my third year … I look at it that I landed in heaven and I am really excited to be in San Francisco. The organization is first class and it is about excellence. We’ve won 20 division titles since 1970, six NFC championships, five Super Bowls. You walk down the Bill Walsh Way on the way into the building and you’ll see five Super Bowl trophies in the lobby. It’s an unbelievable organization. How it is set up, the York family, what they do, how they treat people, I was blown away to be able to be part of that.

Cool.

 

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