Roughly eight zillion* messages from college basketball coaches get posted on Twitter every day. This one, from Indiana's Tom Crean, is the first I've seen that brags about his players' academic performance.

@TomCrean I just had a chance to see our grades. We had a TREMENDOUS SEMESTER. I am really happy and proud of these guys.

Nice work, coach.

*Eight zillion is a rough estimate.

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Charles Barkley will host the January 9 episode of Saturday Night Live. The musical guest will be Alicia Keys.

The list of athletes that have hosted SNL is long and distinguished and includes NBA legends Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal and, most recently, LeBron James. This will be Barkley's second appearance as host -- his first was in September, 1993 -- and Nirvana was the musical guest. Not sure what's more jarring about this rehearsal video from that show... seeing Kurt Cobain mugging for the camera, seeing Sir Charles back at his playing weight, or noticing that Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic is tall enough to post Barkley up.

• The Sports Guesspert has a fairly exhaustive list of athlete appearances on SNL

The Chicago Bulls built up a 35-point lead with 8:50 to go in the third quarter of last night's game with Sacramento, when Derrick Rose and company apparently decided to start their Christmas vacation. The Sacramento Kings closed out the game on a 58-19 run -- outscoring Chicago 33-10 in the fourth quarter alone -- and beat the Bulls 102-98.

It was the biggest comeback in an NBA game in over 13 years -- since Utah rallied from a 36-point deficit to beat Denver on November 27, 1996.

Chicago coach Vinny Del Negro was already on the top of many "next coach to be fired" lists; last night's performance certainly won't help his job security. Even before last night's collapse, there were indications that Del Negro would be let go if the Bulls don't turn things around by mid-January. Can't help but wonder if that timetable will be accelerated now.

Firing coaches during the holidays is something of a Chicago tradition; both Tim Floyd and Scott Skiles were let go by the Bulls on December 24th.

Chicago faces the Knicks at Madison Square Garden tonight.

The Kobe and LeBron puppets match up with a couple of Santa's reindeer for a little game of three-on-three in this Christmas video from Nike.

Not bad, guys, but I don't think it'll replace "Christmas in Hollis" as my favorite holiday rap any time soon.