THE MORNING PAPER: Early afternoon baseball is in the NCAA Tournament WOOHOO! edition

I meant to try to get around to this in the morning time, but sadly didn't have the ability. With the announcement that the Cougs are back in the NCAA baseball tournament for the first time since 1990, there are a handful of things to pass your way this afternoon.

First, coach Donnie Marbut will be the latest participant in the Cougar Chats series, making his way to the athletic department site at 5:30 p.m. to take questions from Cougar fans. Here's the link.

Also, there were a couple of stories out there on the selection of the team to the tournament. Grippi checks in with his story for the Spokesman-Review from the team's selection celebration, noting that the Cougs feel pretty darned good about the draw, given that they've faced both of the top two teams in the regional already, while Howie Stalwick has this story for Cougfan.com.

Be sure to check back at CougCenter often this week, as we're going to be doing up coverage of the regional big.

Lastly, one non-baseball note. About three weeks ago, Roy Weaver Stuckey reported seeing a basketball recruit on campus with the coaching staff, someone we determined was probably Chelan's Joe Harris (2010). Well, Cougfan is reporting that the Cougs have extended him an offer (HT to selahcoug).

Some of you might be scratching your heads at this point, the Cougs only appear to have Nik Koprivica's scholarship available, and that scholarship is going to Patrick Simon. But it's not unusual for a team to extend more offers than they appear to have openings for, so don't stress too much about where the scholarship might come from if he commits. If you believe Scout.com, we've got at least four other scholarship offers out there. As I've said multiple times before, these things tend to work themselves out. For all we know, Charlie Enquist might have agreed to a year-to-year scholarship. We just don't know, and it's not really worth stressing about. These situations are pretty fluid.