Saturday link salmagundi

Trouble for hockey: rumors that center Joe Pavelski is close to going pro have surfaced in the mainstream media. Pavelski was the top points producer for the Badgers last season and accounted for 23 goals (to team leader Robbie Earl's total of 24). The article notes that Pavelski's departure would mean that the Badgers will have lost their top five scorers. Will the Badgers repeat as national champs? At this point it's looking more likely that Barry Alvarez will sprout an afro.

Good news for hockey: Brian Elliott, by all accounts, will return. Bonus: the bottom third of the article is recruiting speculation, for those who enjoy that sort of thing.

Cleveland rocks: the football game "at" Bowling Green, originally announced as a 1 pm kickoff, has been moved to prime time. The 7 pm (Eastern) start means that Badger fans traveling to Cleveland will have a few extra hours to fuel up for the game. Odds are that they'll take advantage of that.

If you don't have football tickets yet, you can buy some on July 17. That's when the remaining unsold tickets will be made available to the public. However, those purchasing tickets will either have to be (a) very excited about seeing that Badgers take on the Buffalo Bulls in mid-November, or (b) willing to travel to exotic locales like Bloomington or West Lafayette.

Tough ticket? Yessir! Maybe after all this success, UW will finally think about expanding and renovating Camp Randall. Oh wait.

UW Football has a new official t-shirt -- and it's terrible. This year features a changing-of-the-guard motif with departing coach Barry Alvarez on one side of the famous Camp Randall arch, and new chief Baron Sengir on the other. Trite, tacky, and worst of all - red on white. It's not tough to see that last year's design was superior in every way.

Convert third and long: put a +1/+1 counter on Coach Sengir

Finally, NCAA basketball tournament action will return to Wisconsin in 2010 at the Bradley Center. Hopefully UW draws their #1 seed and gets to play close to home.