As if playing in the second weekend of the NCAA tournament wasn't big enough for Marah Strickland and the rest of the Maryland women's basketball team, there was a little encounter in the lobby of their Spokane hotel Wednesday with Henry Winkler.
That's right, the Terps met "The Fonz."
"It was so exciting," Strickland said. "We mobbed him. It was 10 6-foot-1 girls running at him."
Strickland said Winkler was probably about 5-foot-7 and he posed for pictures with the players.
Crystal Langhorne recognized Winkler from his role as the football coach in "The Waterboy."
But that's not what caught my attention during a brief chat with Strickland.
"I saw Mick Jagger in the elevator the first day we got here [Wednesday]," she said.
How he's look?
"He looks good -- it was awesome seeing him," Strickland said. "He had some people with him on the elevator [as security]."
...
Maryland's quarters this week have been palatial, "the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in," Strickland said.
Strickland earned a brownie point for laughing at my joke about how Keith Richards is like 112 in Drug Years. …
Why Kristi Toliver is a favorite: She's blunt and honest. About tonight's game against Stanford, she said: "This is the game everybody has been waiting for since Selection Monday when they had the split screen on TV and you saw us happy and you saw Stanford [ticked] off. Now it's the showdown." …
Stanford's media guide includes a great feature on every player/coach bio: Their favorite song. Among my favorites were assistant coach Amy Tucker ("These Are Days", 10,000 Maniacs) and forward Morgan Clyburn ("Mr. Jones," Counting Crows).
