Hillary Clinton may not have filled out an NCAA bracket this year — telling basketball-obsessed reporters on her press plane that she’s just been too busy to follow the sport this year. But she’s certainly kept up enough to know when the tournament trumps politics, as it did at a stop in Winston-Salem, NC.

Running more than an hour behind schedule, Sen Clinton arrived at the event just 30 minutes before the tip-off of the North Carolina Tarheels Sweet Sixteen match-up against Washington State. In hoops-crazed North Carolina, that meant rushing through her speech in record time or risking a mass exodus during her riff on No Child Left Behind. She joked that she hoped to keep her audience until halftime — but made sure to wrap things up expeditiously.

Always one to know her audience, Clinton worked the sports theme into her economic speech in Raleigh as well. Watch her dropping March Madness references below — and try to imagine a young HRC during her days of playing half court basketball in Park Ridge, IL.

As she prepares to go back to Indiana, Sen Clinton can at least be thankful that the bracketology worked out relatively well for her campaign; had the Hoosiers not lost their first game of the tournament (to Bill Clinton’s Arkansas Razorbacks), they would have been matched up against North Carolina — forcing Hillary to face some potentially awkward questions about where her sporting loyalties lie when it comes to the two May 6th states.

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Yesterday on the campaign plane, Barack Obama’s traveling staff was busy filling out NCAA Final Four brackets for a staff pool - no press allowed, per one aide. Each staffer, and the senator, forked over $10 per bracket - the winner taking the undisclosed pot.

Today the campaign announced Mr. Obama’s picks - two of which are schools in states with upcoming primaries.

In the South division, Obama picked fourth-seeded Pittsburgh - Pennsylvania’s primary, of course being on April 22nd. In the East, the senator chose #1 ranked North Carolina, where he hopes to win the state’s primary on May 6th. His other two picks, in the Midwest, Kansas, and in the West, UCLA, were states that went for Obama and Clinton respectively in their contests, held last month.

Today on the campaign trail in West Virginia, Senator Obama headed to a sports bar to mingle with patrons/voters and to eat some chicken wings in front of cameras, of course. “I’m fishing for a few votes around here, you know,” he said to the bar full of mostly male basketball fans. “At least I can show off my basketball knowledge, you know - these are the things I like to do. Sometimes here in this bubble with the press corps around you, you don’t get to talk to people,” he said, cameras rolling.

When ribbed for not picking near-by West Virginia University (ranked #7), Obama joked, “Now that’d be playing politics.”

So who did Obama bet on in the finals? UCLA v. North Carolina. He’s hoping for a Tarheel win on April 7th, after winning in the Tarheel State on May 6th.