It’s been a rainy month in Mississippi. With rain comes rainouts, and it’s tough to talk about sports when not many of them are actually being played.

So what’s a columnist with a weekly deadline and a small case of writer’s block to do? Why, share some random thoughts, of course! It’s an old trick, but the old ones are the best. Here we go:

• Daylight Savings Time is awesome.

Sure, we lose an hour of sleep when it rolls around every March, but that’s a small one-time price to pay for an extra hour of sunlight every day. When we fall back to standard time in the fall, I get a little sad. When Daylight Savings Time arrives, I do the Snoopy Dance in the living room.

The cold of winter is depressing enough. Throwing in a 5:30 p.m. sunset is just adding insult to injury. I left a baseball game Monday — one of the few that hasn’t been rained out in the past two weeks — and driving home in daylight was like winning the lottery.

• Why can’t cats bring themselves to walk through doors?

I tried to let ours out this morning, and she just sat there looking at birds. I pushed her, she meowed angrily. I nudged, she bit.

Just go through the door, kitty kitty. We’re not air conditioning the neighborhood.

• The NCAA Tournament should be fun this year. Kentucky looks like a beast, nobody can score on Virginia, and there’s a dozen teams capable of making a Final Four run. It’s shaping up as one of those years where you curse and rip up your bracket by dinner time Thursday.

Want a potential sleeper pick? Keep an eye on the SWAC champion.

For the first time in years, the SWAC might be more than just cannon fodder for a No. 1 seed. The league has two teams — Texas Southern (19-12) and Alabama State (18-9) — with tournament-worthy records. More impressively, they’ve got some big wins and notable near-misses on their resumés.

Texas Southern won at Michigan State and Kansas State in December. Southern pushed Iowa State and Baylor, two top-25 teams, to the limit. Jackson State crushed Southern Miss.

Excluding the play-in round, no SWAC team has won an NCAA Tournament game since Southern upset Georgia Tech in 1993.

That might change this year. Don’t be stunned if we get a March memory out of the SWAC next week.

OK, that’s enough randomness for now. Enjoy what’s left of spring break, and be sure to tip the waitress.

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Ernest Bowker is a sports writer. He can be reached at 601-619-7120 or by email at ernest.bowker@vicksburgpost.com