Boston 100, Milwaukee 91

[recap] [box score]

The NCAA Tournament precludes the NBA regular season for me, so I didn't watch more than a few minutes of this game. It's really a huge win, though. The Bucks had a six-game winning streak going and a new weapon in Monta Ellis, acquired from Golden State for the injured Andrew Bogut. And the Celtics were in the seventh game of an eight-game road trip. Boston is now four games clear of Milwaukee for the playoffs.

Even more importantly, thanks to Philly's home loss to the Knicks on Wednesday, the Cs are just half a game back of the Sixers for the Atlantic lead (and the #4 seed in the playoffs that would come with it). So a win in Philadelphia on Friday would put Boston in the division lead. Our schedule down the stretch is quite a bit tougher than Philly's, and so there's no guarantee that we'd hang on to the lead. But a win Friday would be huge -- it might even rattle the young Sixers, which could give us an edge down the stretch. You can watch the game on ESPN at 8 p.m. Eastern.

One personnel note: We're reportedly on the verge of signing Ryan Hollins, recently waived by Cleveland, to replace Chris Wilcox on our roster. Wilcox is out for the year with a heart ailment -- yes, another heart problem -- and with Jermaine O'Neal also done for the year, Boston's been using Kevin Garnett as the starting center with Brandon Bass at power forward, with Greg Stiemsma really the only available big off the bench. (Stiemsma had a great game Thursday in his return to his native Wisconsin, where he also played college ball, doing a little bit of everything with six points, four rebounds, three assists, and -- here's where it gets good -- five blocks and four steals.)

KG and Bass have thrived in the roles, and Doc Rivers has said that he intends to keep the starting lineup the same. No longer having Bass has made the second unit significantly less effective on offense, but playing Garnett has been getting more time with the second unit this season, thanks to Doc's plan to only play him for five minutes at a time until the fourth quarter. Hollins is long and athletic, though maybe a little too lean, but in that respect he's kind of a good replacement for Wilcox; Doc had said that he planned on playing Wilcox in uptempo games and Stiemsma in slower-paced games, and Hollins certainly can get up and down. I'm not sure he's got much of a shot, but Hollins is also a pretty good shotblocker. Word is we're after one more big, though a lot of the buyout guys have been snapped up already and I'm not sure who is left.