(Denver, Colorado) - Hello again from Denver, Colorado and the start of our News Channel 8 coverage of the 2008 NCAA College Basketball Championship tournament -'The Road to the Final Four".

Rick Pendergraft and I arrived in Denver on Tuesday night and Wednesday covered the ORU press conference and shoot around at the Pepsi Center. This arena will be the site of the first and second round of the

South Regional.
The eight teams here are ORU, Pittsburgh, Notre Dame, Washington State, Temple, Michigan State, George Mason and Winthrop. The winners play Saturday for the right to move on to Houston next week for the Sweet 16 and Elite 8.

ORU, the #13 seed, is making a third straight NCAA Tournament appearance under head coach Scott Sutton. This is the Golden Eagles highest seed but they have not been able to get past the first round the last two seasons. The opponent, Pittsburgh, earned the #4 seed after winning the Big East tournament.

It's been quite a season for our Big Five men's college teams. All five made it to post season play. ORU, OU and Arkansas into the NCAA field of 65, Oklahoma State got an NIT invitation and Tulsa hosted a game in the very first CBI - College Basketball Invitational tournament.

Three of our women's teams, ORU, OSU and OU also earned NCAA tournament bids.

There's a reason they call this "March Madness"!

It' going to be fun to be on the Road to the Final Four with the championship semi-finals set for Saturday, April 5 in San Antonio and the national championship game, Monday, April 7th in the Alamo Dome. Hopefully one of our teams will take us all the way!