Time to sharpen your pencils

The Dodgers and the San Diego Padres play a historic two-game series in Beijing, the Lakers and the Houston Rockets meet in a matchup of new-look NBA Western Conference elite and dozens of college basketball teams continue the buzzer-beating winnowing process to claim conference tournament championships across the land.

Yet the most-anticipated and eagerly watched piece of sports programming this weekend will be a recitation of 65 names, setting off a frenzy of Internet hits and media over-analysis that won’t be seen again until next month’s NFL draft.

(If the Dodgers and the Padres truly wanted to stage an exhibition of our national pastime in Beijing, they would wear blazers, sit behind studio desks and get very worked up reading long lists of names.)

Selection Sunday is upon us, with CBS announcing the seedings and the brackets that will dominate our lives for the next three weeks. The network’s selection show will air at 3 p.m. Sunday, followed by two hours of “bracket breakdown” analysis.

After the announcement, ESPN will counter with two hours of “ESPNU Bracketology” beginning at 4 p.m. and featuring Bob Knight among its usual cast of studio analysts. Knight switching over to the enemy side -- as Digger Phelps spelled it out for him on Wednesday, Knight is now a member of the “m-e-d-i-a” -- has sparked a lot of speculation about what the future holds for this experiment. The online betting site bodog.com is offering odds on whether Knight curses on the set during his tournament run.

Knight was rather subdued during his Wednesday debut, but maybe he’s just easing his way into the postseason. Certainly, ESPN’s video archives hold far more fiery footage -- clips from old games, news conferences, sit-down interviews, “Season On The Brink.”

Also available for viewing this weekend:

Lakers at Houston Rockets (Sunday, 12:30 p.m., Channels 7 and 9): This is a flex-schedule addition for ABC, which will now use Detroit at New Orleans as a 10 a.m. warmup act for this matchup between newly and surprisingly restored Western Conference contenders.

The Rockets take a 20-game winning streak into their game tonight against Charlotte. After that, they get the Lakers, in position to take care of this absurdly premature talk of Houston challenging the 1971-72 Lakers’ record 33-game winning streak.

Gail Goodrich, a starting guard with the ‘71-’72 Lakers, has been studying the situation as an analyst for NBA TV.

“Our record is pretty incredible, looking back on it,” Goodrich said. “We went two months without a loss. Thirty-three, you start to approach being close to half a season. . . .

“As I sit here and look at the schedule, the Rockets have a tough week next week. They went the whole month of February without a loss. They have to go the whole month of March, plus, I think, four or five ballgames in April to tie.

“What they’re doing is very impressive, and they should be very proud of it. If they get the record, if they get close, so be it. I believe in records to be broken. I don’t believe this one is going to be broken, though.”

Dodgers versus San Diego Padres (tonight, 10 p.m., Channel 9 and Saturday, 10 p.m., Prime): Two more late additions to the television schedule. According to Dodgers spokesman Josh Rawitch, the plan is for Channel 9 to use the simulcast radio feed with Rick Monday and Charley Steiner tonight. On Saturday, Steve Lyons and Kevin Kennedy will provide commentary from the FSN studio.

These are the first-ever major-league games played in China. This is testing ground for Major League Baseball and the Dodgers. If all goes well, the Dodgers’ next move will be to petition for more games against the Padres, some of those pesky ones scheduled during the summer at Petco Park, to be moved to Wukesong Stadium.

USC versus UCLA (tonight, 6 p.m., FSNW): More history being made, somewhat closer to home. With their Pac-10 tournament quarterfinal victories on Thursday, the Trojans and the Bruins set up a third meeting this season, this one on a neutral court, making it impossible to predict. During the regular season, the Trojans won at Pauley Pavilion and the Bruins won at the Galen Center.

Both teams are now playing for seeding and location in the NCAA tournament, but whatever you want to say about postseason conference tournaments, this one just got a lot more interesting.

Arnold Palmer Invitational (today, noon, Golf Channel; Saturday-Sunday, 11:30 a.m., Channel 4): During an NBC conference call this week, talk turned to Tiger Woods’ five-tournament winning streak, which includes a 2-0 record in 2008 PGA events, and how far he might be able to take it.

“It’s crazy that we’re talking about a perfect season in golf,” Dan Hicks said. “It’s absolutely nuts.”

Yes, it most certainly is. It is mid-March.

ATP/WTA Pacific Life Open (today-Sunday, 11 a.m., FSNW): After a long 2007, professional tennis goes to Indian Wells for some spa treatment. So far so good: Two weeks of tennis in the desert, FSN is devoting 52 hours of live coverage and there hasn’t been a scandal yet.

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