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SAN ANTONIO — As it prepares to bid in the next cycle of men’s NCAA Tournament Final Fours, a St. Louis delegation was among 10 to meet with the NCAA this weekend in San Antonio.
The meetings were to further familiarize contenders with amended bid procedures and to update the NCAA on developments in each city.
The NCAA will pay informal site visits to each city in the next four to five weeks, said Greg Shaheen, vice president of Division I men’s basketball. Formal bids for Final Fours from 2012 to 2016 will be due in early June, with the list of 10 whittled down to the finalists around August.
The competition is expected to be Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, Glendale, Ariz., Houston, Indianapolis, Minnesota, New Orleans and San Antonio. One of the bids will go to Indianapolis, home of the NCAA, meaning as many as nine cities could be vying for four bids.
Next year’s Final Four is in Detroit, followed by Indianapolis in 2010 and Houston in 2011.
St. Louis will host the women’s Final Four next year. It last hosted the men’s Final Four in 2005.
St. Louis had hoped to be awarded another Final Four in the current sequence but was left out. That was at least partly because the decision was being made before 2005 and thus before a chance to evaluate the city’s first hosting of the event since 1978.
If the NCAA follows the same form, Detroit and Houston’s chances would seem diminished since neither will have hosted before the decision is made. But in previous interviews with the Post-Dispatch, Shaheen has said that would be only one factor among many considerations.
A SURPRISE GUEST
As Memphis players returned to the locker room just before the national title game Monday at the Alamodome, many shook hands with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who recently had addressed the team.

stltoday.com

reuters news agency
NEW YORK–The Nasdaq’s bear market is considered likely to persist longer than the pullback in the broader stock market unless the recently battered technology heavyweights make solid comebacks.
The so-called four horsemen – Canada’s Research In Motion Ltd., Google Inc., Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. – led the index to a 52-week closing high in October. Since then, they have reversed course and dragged the index down with them.
The four stocks account for about 8.4 per cent of the Nasdaq composite’s $3.6 trillion (U.S.) market value. They were investor darlings as worries swept the market at the start of the subprime-mortgage crisis. Investors saw successful technology companies’ strong balance sheets and global exposure as shields from the global credit storm.
But as the prospect of recession in the United States became more likely in recent months, these companies have started to follow the general downtrend of stocks and are also depressing most techs stocks.
"You need the participation of the biggest stocks to pull out of the spiral," said Richard Sparks, senior equities analyst at Schaeffer’s Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio.
"It’s tough for those leadership stocks to go down and then have the rest of the market go higher. That’s not usually the way it works."
Even after the bursting of the tech bubble, information technology still accounts for about half of the Nasdaq’s market capitalization, down less than a percentage point from 2000. Analysts say it’s difficult to work out any scenario in which the Nasdaq will shake off the bearish sentiment without a strong tech-sector recovery led by the horsemen.
That’s unlike the S&P and the Dow, where a healthy rotation can take place. If one sector can no longer lead the way, another often takes over. For example, after the tech bubble burst in 2000, traders moved into financials, propelling the two indices to record highs by October 2007.

thestar.com

Art At Heart’s ups and downs are a source of heartache for trainer Buzzy Sholty. Although the gelding proved he could go with the best of the sophomore class last year, he has been plagued with problems staying on stride.
Art At Heart galloped in five of his last eight starts, but appears to be back on track after winning the opening round of the Four Leaf Clover Series last week at the Meadowlands.
The 4-year-old and his stablemate Artist’s View will tackle the $25,000 second leg of the series Saturday night.
“His left stifle is his primary problem and right knee is his secondary problem,” Sholty said. “You never know when he is going to breakHe doesn’t show any signs and he doesn’t show anything training. It is when he comes to the racetrack. He gets here and I am not sure if it is his confidence or interference yet.”
A $62,000 yearling purchase, Art At Heart showed promise early in his 3-year-old campaign. He set a mark of 1:51.2 in a New Jersey Sire Stakes division on May 19, 2007, defeating Always A Virgin in the process. He won a leg of the Matt’s Scooter Series and just missed nipping Spin Rate at the wire in the $101,300 final. However, two straight miscues in August prompted Sholty to turn him out for the season. The son of Artsplace finished the season with a record of two wins and two seconds in 11 starts.
“I have had him since he was a yearling,” noted Sholty, who co-owns the pacer with JML Stables. “He won the sire stakes [leg] last year and paced away from Always A Virgin. After that, I thought I had a top horse. Then he started making breaks and then the breaks turned into soreness, so we quit with him.
Art At Heart made his 4-year-old debut in the Complex Series opener on January 11 at the Meadowlands. He swung three-wide on the final turned and charged home to finish third, just 3/4-length behind the winner Hard To Beat. However, early miscues would cost him the remainder of the Complex Series and any chance in the Aquarius. Sholty made some changes to Art At Heart’s equipment and sent him to qualify on February 28.
Partnered with Brian Sears for the first time, Art At Heart stayed on stride and finished second. “I changed his shoes to a flip flop with an outer rim on the toe to take some sting out if the track is off,” he said. “We added a Murphy blind on the inside and a line burr, as opposed to a head pole, to help get around the turns. “Andy Miller was supposed to drive him,” he continued. “Then Fox Valley Gambler [trained by Miller’s wife, Julie] shipped in and I was going to drive him myself, but Brian did not have a drive and was able to qualify him. It worked out because I wanted to get another opinion on him.

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