Planet Cardinal

That was former Cardinal point guard Michael McDonald, ’01, MA ’02, talking about “stepping up” in a television commercial for the NCAA, broadcast in heavy rotation during the men’s basketball tournament.... Mike Fincke, MS ’90, will join Soviet cosmonaut Gennady Padalka on the next crew of the International Space Station. Fincke and Padalka were scheduled to launch in a Soyuz spacecraft on April 18.... Sabeer Bhatia, Atul Gawande and Srinija Srinivasan were featured in a March 22 Newsweek article highlighting influential South Asians. Bhatia, MS ’93, is co-founder of Hotmail; Gawande, ’87, is a surgeon well known for his writing on medical mistakes; Srinivasan, ’93, is one of the original executives at Yahoo.... Brandon Singleton, ’98, was cast as Simba in the San Francisco production of Disney’s The Lion King. The show runs through September 5 at the Orpheum Theatre.... Aaron Levine, ’04, was runner-up in ESPN’s Dream Job competition (Red All Over, March/April), in which contestants vied for a job as a SportsCenter anchor. Levine lost to University of Missouri-Columbia senior Mike Hall in the finals.