Having recently completed its 9th season, The Mid-Majority is a community chronicle of the smaller Division I college basketball conferences. Last year, the theme was Team. Six groups of five (plus a fantasy mid-major player) were engaged in friendly Amazing Race-style competition, criss-crossing Hoops Nation to provide awesome college basketball content. Season X (2013-14) will be our final one.

A basketball clears the net during La Salle practice for a West Regional semifinal game in the NCAA college basketball tournament in Los Angeles, Wednesday, March 27, 2013. La Salle plays Wichita State Thursday. AP Photo

Epilogue, The Ninth: Only Love Can Break Your Heart
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Memories
Over the past two seasons, my opinion on #ghostbracket games has changed. Initially, and before I began writing for this site, I was in favor of tournaments such as the CBI and CIT. I felt that they rewarded teams for a successful season, gave teams extra practices to give younger players more experience, and served as a final hurrah for the graduating seniors. Read more »

So We Meet Again
Whenever I watch Kent State and Akron play on television, one thing the announcers always mention is how close the two schools are. Depending on the announcer, I've heard 14, 11, and 12. When I went to Google Maps, I discovered that depending on the route, the schools are either 14, 11, or 12 miles apart, depending on the route that you take. In any event, the two schools are close, and because they draw from students in the same geographic area in Northeast Ohio, the two are natural rivals. It also doesn't hurt that the two school have both had success in the MAC Tournament, and as I mentioned during a recent challenge, meet often in the tournament. This meeting would be the fifth tournament meeting in the last seven years between the two schools. Read more »

Donning the Black and Gold
When George Mason announced its move to the Atlantic 10, I tweeted that I hoped the A-10 community was as good as the CAA community. The Colonial fanbase's Twitter contingent has had a number of great moments over the years, but one sticks out in particular: #3bids4CAA. Read more »

Rte. 139 - End of the Line
"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.' "- Maya Angelou Read more »

Butler and Us
While mid-majors are making the Final Four more in the past, it still has not been that common. George Mason in 2006 (written about by Raymond Curren) was the first true mid-major in the modern era of college basketball to make the Final Four. Butler also made it of course in 2010 and 2011, VCU did in 2011 as well, and now Wichita State. All of those schools are either in the Midwest or Virginia; places I like and have been to before but not often. I have never seen any of those four schools at home before. And of course I am a Big South fan, where the best Gregg Marshall was able to do with any of our schools was to make the Round of 32. And that was only once. My school High Point has never come closer than the conference final, which it has not made since 2004. The mid-majors I feel deeply connected to just never go far. The only exception to that are the teams of Southern Illinois in the mid-2000s that I saw during Christmas break when my dad returned to his alma mater. And I have also seen 2008 Elon and 2013 Florida Gulf Coast make Sweet 16 runs after having seen them narrowly escape in gyms much tinier (Elon and USC Upstate respectively) than the domes they would eventually reach. But they did not reach the Final Four, although Davidson was certainly close. But following this website made me feel somewhat connected to everybody, particularly Butler in 2010. Read more »

By George, UConn is Dead
There's some irony in the timing of writing this, and a stiff reminder at how while we never change, the world around us most certainly does not. Read more »

Hanging On
After the last loss at Davidson, College of Charleston fans were heartbroken. They were not going back to the NCAA Tournament. But C of C did get a consolation prize: a trip to the CBI! The CBI is the College Basketball Invitational, run by the Gazelle Group which an independent organization dedicated to creating college basketball tournaments and other special events. The tournament is a very prestigious event that is very exciting. Just look at the promo video on the official tournament webpage! Who would not want to be a part of that? The answer to that is College of Charleston fans apparently. Many fans on their message board did not understand why they were playing in this tournament. After all, this is what Kyle calls a "ghost bracket". These teams as far as Kyle is concerned have both reached death. Some College of Charleston fans also thought this as well, even though they were hosting here! And while I am fine with the minor tournaments, I was barely aware (or cared) that my school High Point would be playing the following night at UC Irvine in the CIT after its loss to Liberty in the Big South quarterfinals. And that counts as our first ever post-conference tournament game at the Division I level! So why do we play these games? In part it is to give seniors like C of C's Andrew Lawrence one last game. And it also gives the players on these teams one last shot to practice as well before they are forbidden from doing so during the offseason. Read more »

A Championship in Pictures
After spending the last week watching Liberty win both the Big South women's and men's titles, I wanted a break from watching the conquest by an empire. So I decided to spend a lot more money and make the trip to Asheville and the Southern Conference Tournament, our oldest conference tournament. Neither Davidson or College of Charleston are underprivileged like Charleston Southern of course. Davidson made the Elite Eight five years ago with a future NBA star in Stephen "Flash" Curry. And College of Charleston is following the big boys in being an active participant in conference realignment by leaving for the Colonial, showing that it is not just the schools above the Red Line who are trying to move into conferences with little geographic sense. But these are both true mid-majors, with neither school trying to become a national empire like Liberty. Whoever won would be the closest school to me in the NCAA Tournament, and a team worth rooting for. So this would be a fun game to watch. And I will document it like I did with the Charleston Southern/Gardner-Webb game and tell the story here in pictures, championship style! Read more »

This Time of Year
I have been a reader of this website regular since Season 4 after being in and out of the first three seasons on here. The reason I became a dedicated reader is because Kyle Whelliston connected to me more than any other sports writer. His experience was going to the same games I did, literally going to six of the same games in Season 4 that I did. He actually watched mid-major basketball and was the only writer out there who viewed Our Game the same way I did. He wrote excellent articles I could relate to about traveling, overcoming financial disadvantages, and even the burnout that led him to turning the writing on here over to the readers. I agree with Kyle far more often I disagree with him. I agree with him about what constitutes an "upset" when most basketball fans do not. I also feel disheartened watching our teams lose during the NCAA Tournament as he does. But with any writer you love, you end of being disappointed the more you know them. And for me, I just do not have the same romantic feeling Kyle has of conference tournaments. Read more »

Dotson Leads Ducks to the Sweet Sixteen
In the round of 32 in San Jose, the first game of the afternoon matched fourth-seeded Saint Louis University with the (underseeded?) twelfth-seeded University of Oregon. The Billikens (28-6) reached this game by defeating WAC Champion New Mexico State 64-44 on Thursday; they had won their prior five games consecutively, including a sweep through the Atlantic Ten tournament, defeating Charlotte, Butler and VCU on consecutive days. The Ducks (27-8) got to this game by defeating the Oklahoma State Cowboys 68-55; Oregon's four-game win streak included wins over Washington, Utah, and UCLA in the Pac-12 tournament. The two programs had only met once, a 1976 Oregon victory in Portland's Far West Classic. Read more »

Grizzlies Overwhelmed by Orangemen
Going to the NCAA tournament is an interesting process. Within an hour or so of the selections and seeding being announced, each school's designated contact is called by the NCAA's travel agency about plans for reaching the first game. Generally, school contingents arrive two days before their first contest. Besides the teams, coaching staff, administrators, and other bench personnel like trainers and managers, the NCAA pays for a mascot, band director, and certain numbers of band members and cheerleaders to attend the tournament. For travel over a certain distance, air travel is arranged, generally by charter. Hotel accommodations and local ground transportation arrangements at the tournament site are generally set in advance and matched to the teams after the selections; e.g. X hotel will host the lower seeded team in game 4. Because the NCAA makes these arrangements for the makeup of each school's contingent (read that: the NCAA will pay for the travel of the band, mascot and cheer squad), the pageantry of each game is always enhanced by the performances of the bands, cheer squads and mascots. Read more »

Empire
I really do not like talking about controversial subjects. But with Liberty University making a deep run in this year's Big South Tournament, it is hard to try and avoid controversy. And that is because Liberty University is a school all about controversy. Liberty University was founded as Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971 by famous televangelist Jerry Falwell. While Falwell was more well known for his televangelist efforts through the Moral Majority and Thomas Road Baptist Church, Falwell always took great pride during his life about LU, which became Division I less than 20 years after its founding and the NCAA Tournament shortly after that. Falwell was known for being an ambitious person in spreading his evangelical message, and was a big supporter of the Flames. His controversial nature and passion for Big South basketball was the reason why Kyle found him a good interview subject during his ESPN days. And now five years since his death, the school now led by his son Jerry Falwell Jr. was two wins away from making their first NCAA Tournament in nine years. Read more »

Overcoming the Burden of History
Charleston Southern entered this game as the favorite, 12-4 in the Big South against an 8-8 squad from VMI. But as I mentioned in their last game, this is a new position for Charleston Southern. When you talk about places in Hoops Nation that have had a lot of struggling, CSU has to be near the top of the list. Kyle in all his travels never visited Charleston Southern's "Buc Dome", an 881 seat arena that has limited space for media and would not have been able to host this tournament even if we were going to the higher seeds. At just over $800,000, Charleston Southern spends less on men's basketball than anybody else in the Big South. And yet after the regular season they were now the favorites. They were the regular season champions after years of hanging back towards the bottom of the conference. And when you factor all of that in, CSU was the true underdog story regardless of their record. This was the story of the 2012-2013 Big South season. Read more »

Until the End
We always tell ourselves "It always ends in a loss." Read more »

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