Donovan At The Beach?

Syracuse officials aren't saying much, but the talk at the American Airlines Arena in Miami is that Donovan McNabb might be dropping in to see his old college team give it the old college try in the second round of the NCAA tournament Sunday. Nice weekend for a visit to Miami, in all respects.

If he shows up, we can ask him about Andy Reid's freewheeling interview (hoo boy, hold onto your hats) with Dave Spadaro on Eaglespompom.comcom. Andy says he and Donovan talk all the time and they have a real good communication going and they're doing a real good job with all that.Donovan saw Syracuse play Villanova at the Wachovia Center earlier this month. Teammate Brian Westbrook, rooting the other way no doubt, was also at that game.During his first two seasons at Syracuse, McNabb was also essentially a walk-on to the basketball team after the end of football season. He played sparingly as a freshman on the team that lost in the 1996 championship game to Kentucky, which had as one of its stars McNabb's former Mount Carmel high school teammate, Antoine Walker. Donovan played a little more the following season before giving up the sport to concentrate on football. He played a total of 116 minutes in 18 games at Syracuse, nearly all of them as a sophomore.

Syracuse, a No. 3 seed, beat Stephen F. Austin, 59-44 in the first game on Friday and will play either a team from his professional home (Philadelphia, Temple) or his adopted home (Phoenix, Arizona State -- well, OK, Tempe) in the second round.

Temple is just taking the court for warmups as this is posted, so you probably know more about the outcome already. If the Owls shoot better than 45 percent from the floor, we'll go ahead and predict a Temple win. If not, not.