Destinations: Hoop it up at basketball sites

They don't call the race to the national collegiate basketball championships March Madness for nothing. Selection Sunday -- when the 64 teams that make the cut are announced -- is this weekend, and

Friday, March 10th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

They don't call the race to the national collegiate basketball championships March Madness for nothing. Selection Sunday -- when the 64 teams that make the cut are announced -- is this weekend, and scores of official and not-so-official Web sites on the ballyhooed tournaments are bouncing back from any search engine worth its salt. The only problem we had was sifting through pool sites. Why, we'd give 5-to-1 odds that many of these involve betting, so we avoided most of them and focused on what's unfolding courtside.

FinalFour.net
www.finalfour.net

For the official word on the NCAA basketball championship -- all three divisions of the men's and women's tourneys -- log in here. Every event associated with the road to Indianapolis is detailed on this page, including regional schedules for Rounds 1 and 2 and ticket availability. The page also links into TotalCast's play-by-play tracking of each game and throws in shooting percentages, team shot charts, rosters and standings. For complete submersion into this month's games, the site has posted streaming audio of player and coach interviews, radio schedules for call-in shows, tournament rules, records and archives of past championships. Finally, the site includes video clips from the NCAA basketball TV showThe Slant.

HoopsTV.com
www.hoopstv.com

"If basketball is your religion, this is your church," the opening page proclaims. The next page is so packed with epistles of love to high school, college and pro roundball that you'll quickly grasp the floating remote control (a clever way of presenting links) to navigate the site. We punched up the college section and were hurled into conference schedules, standings and highlights from across the nation, plus audio files of Bill Rafferty's College Recap, and injury and suspension reports. For the video side of HoopsTV, click on the Primetime button to catch early morning warmups for the Temple Owls or watch highlights of the latest Southeast Conference games.

FANSonly
www.fansonly.com

Like HoopsTV, casual visitors here may have a tough time handling all the material, but college sports fans will use this page all year. The site's Top Stories section does a good job of posting features on long shots, suspensions of bad boys and pregame hype. A constantly updated scoreboard flashes game results for the top 25 teams, while schedules, statistics, polls and TV listings can be culled from the Men's Hoops section. The site does an equally good job of tracking the women's side of the tourney, though it hasn't stolen top billing from the men. Yet.

RotoGuru
www.rotoguru.com

Another hot topic for those who can't get enough basketball, be it March or November, is fantasy league play. First a warning: Fantasy league play has been known to turn normal, productive members of society into jabbering cliques of stat-keeping automatons. That said, RotoGuru has introduced his 2nd Annual March Madness Contest, which takes the 64 teams in the real tournament brackets and allows participants to buy, sell and trade teams and win points depending on how the real tournament unfolds. The reason this makes little sense to most of the world is because, according to a fantasy player friend of ours, we don't get it. And he's right. Enter at your own risk.

'Ganza!
www.ganza.com

'Ganza is short for the NCAA Basketball Tournament Prediction Extravaganza, and it makes no bones about being a pool. Its hosts swear no prize money is offered, thus avoiding vice squad raids for the next three weeks. The site charges a small registration fee ($3 a head or $5 for a family) for a subscription to a four-part newsletter that tracks tourney events and for access to a database that tallies prognosticators' points throughout the Division I marathon. Unlike systems from better-known online pools in which entrants win points if their team wins, 'Ganza's promoters award points based on how close players come in predicting where each team finishes. The overall winner receives the coveted John Ostertag Plaque, named for the former University of Kansas player.

NCAA Championships
www.ncaachampionships.com

As an alternative to slam dunks and three-point shots, this site covers every NCAA sport championship -- yes, there are others -- throughout the year, which means this is the mother page for FinalFour.net. Hey, doesn't anyone want to know what else is going on in college sports right now? Men's and women's skiing championships are screaming along in Utah, Division III wrestling results from last week in Missouri are still sweaty, and Division II swimming and diving competitions run through this weekend. Frankly, we found the University of Maryland's women's field hockey win over Michigan in November almost as captivating as the Final Four showdown with Connecticut and Duke. Almost, we said.