In the Federated Coalition of Roundball: Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson, two of the top three scorers in the FCR, combined for 51 points in their first game together, a victory over the Grizzlies. Anthony was back from a 15-game suspension, which he hopefully used to hone his poor boxing techniques. … Meanwhile, KG was back from a one-game suspension (The lesson there is it’s better to swing and miss while backpedaling than swing and connect, then backpedal, Carmelo), but the Wolves were still trampled by the Jazz. They’re now 20-20, which would be far better if we were talking about vision. The Wolves’ vision? Not so good.

We didn’t need him: Lane Kiffin, bypassed for the Gophers football job, will instead jump straight to the NFL as the new head coach of the Oakland Raiders. ESPN.com is quoting Kiffin from Chip Scoggins’ story in the Newspaper of the Twin Cities. Yes, we pay attention to those kinds of things.

Barbaro has his own message board, but he still couldn’t win Horse of the Year honors. We think that’s just wrong.

Theismann loses expert cred: ESPN chief annoyance Joe Theismann fell to 2-4 picking playoff games over the past two weeks, while RandBall somehow improved to 6-0. Paul Maguire’s take: Did you see those picks? Bam! Right there.

Wolves routed: Playing without Ricky Davis, suspended for being a clown, and Kevin Garnett, suspended for his slap party with Antonio McDyess, Minnesota didn’t have much of a chance against the Suns. Then again, even with those two, we wouldn’t really like their chances against this guy.

Tomlin is gone: Mike Tomlin, perhaps the biggest bright spot for the Vikings this past season, is the new head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Again, we will borrow from Anchorman: That really escalated quickly. The guy is only 34. We put together a list of five other football coaching loves we lost for the Newspaper of the Twin Cities today (it’s on the right hand side of the linked page). Where does Tomlin rank? We’d have to say he’s in the same ballpark as Scott Linehan. Your thoughts?

We’ll keep this short and sweet because we’re behind, and we have a COW on the way. Seriously, that made perfect sense when we wrote it.

Ex-Gopher Phil Kessel scored the winning goal in a shootout in his sixth game back with the Bruins following cancer surgery. The highlights from this game, in general, were phenomenal. Evgeni Malkin’s goal to tie the game 3-3? He could have stripped down to his jock strap like Ned Braden afterwards and he would have been excused. It was that good.

Every single ESPN “expert” is picking the Saints to win Sunday, which means that since the experts were 14-18 last week, RandBall obviously likes the Bears. More on that later.

Up next: Coyote in COW’s clothing.

Not the best of days for Minnesota hoops: The Wolves were throttled at home, 105-88 by the Hawks. KG apparently didn’t play with a whole lot of enthusiasm. Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. That’s what the media said. … The Gophers men fell behind early and were easily defeated by Illinois. … And the Gophers women found out officials made the wrong ruling in Sunday’s game in which South Dakota State won on a last-second shot. Conspiracy theory? We believe the scoreboard at Williams Arena is made by Daktronics, a company based in Brookings, S.D. — also home of SDSU. We suspect some sort of tomfoolery occurred.

Barry Bonds knows injustice when he sees it: Bonds, the inflatable slugger, thinks Mark McGwire and Pete Rose belong in the Hall of Fame. He also thinks the cream and the clear are just things to help soothe his muscles. Whatever, man.

Tim Brewster is in the news: Yes, it’s official. People want to read about the new Gophers football coach. As of 8:06 a.m., the four top-read stories on Startribune.com were all related to Brewster. After having the chance to chat with him a little yesterday, we think he’s a pretty affable guy. At the very least, from a personality standpoint, he’s not Glen Mason.

Panda watch; the mood is tense: New Gophers football coach Tim Brewster will be introduced today at a 1 p.m. news conference. We will start to unravel the mystery of just who Brewster is. We’ll be there because we care.

I’m a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn: It seems Dennis Green is too good to coach the Raiders. So many roads leading to Oakland. None of them the high road, apparently.

Wait, Veronica, please tell me this is some kind of sick, tasteless joke: Fired Alabama coach Mike Shula is a candidate for the Dolphins job vacated by Nick Saban, who left to take Shula’s old job at Alabama. And around, and around, like some sort of crazy 1970s wife-swapping, only with coaches.

Milk was a bad choice: For no other reason than we really like saying that.