Very entertaining match. Mason were a little bit in over their heads, but still this one counts for a bit more than last night's win over Grand Canyon or next Friday's match with Division III UC Santa Cruz. Conference play begins for the Cardinal next Saturday against Pacific, who also beat Mason this weekend (the Patriots are 0-2 on the season). This is an exciting team, but whether they have enough to get past UC Irvine or BYU, the big conference heavyweights, to make it to the NCAA tournament remains to be seen.

Interesting article about Stanford assistant coach Pep Hamilton, and his ties to DC netting Hogan.

A look at Stanford’s and Wisconsin’s bases of operation, during Rose Bowl week in LA. Includes team hotels, practice sites and original up close video of Coach David Shaw and the entire Stanford program exiting their custom charter buses, shortly before the beginning of practice. Also includes original video of Barry Alvarez and Russell Wilson form last season’s Rose Bowl lead up.

Here's a cool opportunity for any women's volleyball fans -- or anyone who likes to fill out brackets to potentially win free stuff, actually. Northwestern Mutual is sponsoring a Bracket Contest for the 2012 Women's Volleyball Championships, which start Friday. You could win a $500 gift card to the NCAA Shop, which you could then use to purchase six of these. The deadline to enter is Thursday at 12:30 p.m. ET. Stanford, which earned the No. 2 overall seed, hosts Jackson State on Friday at 8 p.m..

Centennial (Las Vegas) High School twins Marcus and Malcolm Allen (no relation to yours truly) verbally committed to Stanford this weekend. Marcus, a shooting guard, and Malcolm, a point guard, are both rated as three-star recruits by Rivals. Their mother was a gymnast at Stanford.

The Rice MOB (Marching Owl Band) took some shots at USC during halftime of last night's loss to UCLA.

Stepfan Taylor, Chase Thomas, Zach Ertz and Shayne Skov are all represented in the 12th edition of Kirk Herbstreit's Herbie Awards.

Simeon (Chicago) basketball star Jabari Parker was reportedly on campus today. Parker lists Stanford among his Top 10.

USC, with 25 first-place votes, is No. 1.