I love college basketball, ahead of everything except my mom, my wife, Hot Pockets and Mandy Moore (apologies to my three sisters). But the NCAA isn’t doing such a sure-fire job of selling next year’s action.

This year’s tournament has provided a lot of competitive and exciting basketball, prompting me to look at where some of the games are happening next year. Luckily enough, first and second-round action returns to my home state of Minnesota in 2009.

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We swam against the current of 15,000 Justin Timberlake fans streaming into Xcel Energy Center to get to The Legendary Roy Wilkins Auditorium. There we were to witness a whole different kind of pop — bone-crunching hits delivered by women you’d be sure to take to prom for fear of what they might do to you otherwise.

You may have already witnessed what I’m talking about on TV. Does RollerJam sound familiar? But even that isn’t an accurate depiction of what real roller derby is like.

The Minnesota RollerGirls are authentic and gritty. They’re black and blue knock-your-socks-off aggressive in their black and blue-striped tube socks. They are hell incarnate on four wheels.

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