And the Golden Twinkie Goes To . . . Robert Weintraub for his feature, "Such Madness," in Sunday's New York Times, available today on line!

Some of our long-time readers may recall that the BasketCases gave their first Golden Twinkie Award for Journalistic Accuracy to Lori Riley of the Hartford Courant for her exclusive report of Latvian star Zane (pronounced "Za-knee") Teilane's (pronounced "Tay-La-Knee") WNBA debut. There was only one problem with her report . . . Zane was on the bench --- in street clothes. The player whose action (and scoring!) Lori described was actually the Mystics' recently re-signed Nakia Sanford. As Mystics fans know, Zane and Kia do look a lot alike . . . they're both, umm, uhh, tall. And later, Steve Silver of the Washington Times earned a nomination for reporting that two Mystics players had fouled out of a game who, well, to be blunt, hadn't.

So what did Robert Weintraub do to earn his prestigious Golden Twinkie and join such esteemed journalistic company? Well, here's a quote from Robert's NYT preview (dated March 2, 2008) of upcoming women's action (aka March Madness) . . .

Maryland will test the motivational power of motherhood — Coach Brenda Frese is due to give birth to twins early this month. Her team is good enough to win it all, though it’s unclear how involved Frese will be in the tournament.

Congratulations, Robert! You have the distinction of being the only person (not to mention sports "journalist") in the developed world who obviously missed the fact that Coach B and Daddy-Cam operator Mark Thomas are the proud parents of two healthy baby boys -- born two weeks ago!

Robert, thanks for giving women's basketball fans everywhere a good chuckle . . . nothing quite like a little madness from a reporter to get the month of March started off on the right foot!

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In sharp contrast . . . the Baltimore Sun's Milton Kent, who actually does know what he's writing about, has a nice article today about Coach Park and the great job he's been doing filling in for Coach B.

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Sunday Morning Update. The BasketCases have never had to give out the Golden Twinkie Award twice in the same weekend, but there's a first time for everything. Perhaps Friday's Leap Day caused some sort of harmonic convergence of sports "journalists" tackling subjects with which they apparently lack much (if any) familiarity (that would be women's sports), but in addition to the fact that the Gray Lady's Robert Weintraub missed one of the most publicized double childbirths in recent history, Edward G. Robinson III of the Raleigh News & Observer missed an entire season of Crystal Langhorne's storied career, referring to her in his preview of today's NC State game as a "junior forward." Would that it were true and we could have Lang for another season in College Park!