November 2004 Archives
Like a young, wet foal bravely attempting to put his legs under him for the first time, the Mid-Majority Baller Of The Week Award made some happy progress this week towards its very first frolic in the meadow. Yes, this week saw the first vote that originated from the TMM-reading public. It was for Western Kentucky's freshman phenom Courtney Lee, and it may have had something to do with a throng of WKU faithful streaming into this site after a kindly mention on the Hilltopper Haven message board. To all friends of Big Red I'd like to offer a hearty "hello," a stern reminder that I have extremely high ethical standards when it comes to ballot-stuffing, and here's my e-mail address if you'd like to do it some more. It's kyle at midmajority dot com. Thank you.
Santa Clara strikes again! A week after making North Carolina extremely angry, the Broncos beat Stanford 86-76 at home. They were led by Travis Niesen and his jump hook - 31 points and 11 rebounds for the reigning MMBOW. Independent Texas A&M-Corpus Christi free-threw a tired Old Dominion team to death last night in their home tournament, 71-67. Take note: the Islanders have now beaten Florida State, Texas Christian and ODU, and these are the same guys who shocked Tournament-bound Murray State last year. Game 008: at Boston College 79, Clemson 70 A stocked slate of 113 games yesterday. Where to begin? Game 009: at Harvard 85, Northeastern 75 Please make sure you check out Yoni's new design over at College Basketball Blog if you haven't already. Clean, fit, functional. I'm now listed in the "pundits" section, although I'm not quite convinced I have pundit-like qualifications. But being listed directly ahead of Mark Cuban is cool. Boo-yah! America East co-favorites Maine showed some guts last night by winning a defensive slog on A-10 Rhode Island's home floor, 47-44. The Salukis of Southern Illinois (MVC) dropped a bomb on a Vanderbilt team that's returning four starters from a 23-win team, winning by an impressive 67-53 margin. Otherwise, the college basketball world stayed in ints normal orbit yesterday. Everyone have a great Turkey Day? Excellent. Slight upset in Fort Worth last night, with Colonial favorite Old Dominion taking out previously unbeaten C-USA'ers TCU 79-72 in something called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times Challenge. Otherwise, the essential fabric of the college basketball universe has remained untorn for another day. How do you turn around one of the worst basketball programs in the country?Coach Jimmy Patsos thinks he has the answers at Loyola (Md.), a team that would have likely had trouble beating high school JV squads last year. Today, we celebrate the one-weekiversary of the brawl that will likely end up plunging the NBA to levels of fan indifference not seen since the 1970's. Pundits are still lining up to decry a disturbing new "culture of violence" in the modern sports world. Who's to blame? The fans, the players, the media? Are college sports partly at fault, what with the "fight songs" and all? Okay, so maybe my old journalism professor had a point when he said I couldn't swing a lead to save my life. No matter. College fight songs date back to the 1880's, when Boston College unleashed "For Boston" on an unsuspecting public; just about every school with an athletic department has followed suit since. Many are iconic and memorable enough to run through one's mind at the very mention of a school's name - think Auburn and "War Eagle," or the University of Tennessee and "Rocky Top." It's time once again for the Great Alaska Shootout (not to be confused with the Top Of The World Classic). I'm sure it's difficult to be at least 4,000 miles far away from home on Thanksgiving, but I hope the players don't get too bored between games and do stupid things, like, say, getting lost in the woods while snowmobiling. An excellent night for teams that aspire to play .500 ball in the Sun Belt Conference. The North Texas Mean Green beat the CAA's UNC-Wilmington 76-69, and Western Kentucky's Hilltoppers went into Georgia's house and beat old coach Dennis Felton, 71-61. Game 007: at Villanova 66, Maryland-Baltimore County 41 So if you're not following the controversy over the checkered college career of Wal-Mart heiress and Missouri basketball arena namesake Paige Laurie, or are just having trouble figuring out why her accuser is coming forward years after the fact, here's about getting you up to speed. OK, so there's Paige, she's this rich girl, right? And then there's this girl from the other side of town, her name's Elena. Elena's like this total nerd who never gets invited to the cool parties, and she has all last year's clothes, and she's kinda fat, and there's this totally cute boy she likes but she knows she doesn't have a chance. So Elena and Paige are in the girls' room putting on their makeup or whatever, and Paige says, "Hey, you always have your hand up in class, can you help me out?" And Elena thinks, oooh, this is my chance to hang out with the popular girls. So she says, "Okay." And soon Elena's doing all of Paige's homework while Paige goes out to the beach in her convertible with her friends. OK, so there are the headline upsets of this past weekend, like Santa Clara over North Carolina and Virginia over Arizona. But here are some other first-weekend results that stick out from the thicket. When the Mid-Majority Baller Of The Week award made its debut last week, I never expected that it would be argued about in sports bars across the nation, become the target of intense lobbying by athletic directors, or gain a cherished place in college basketball fans' hearts. At least, not right away. So there will be no scrap-heap for this honor, which is intended to showcase superhero-like performances by mid-major stars.
Game 006: James Madison 59, at LaSalle 50 Game 005: Auburn 80, at Temple 78 Can you feel it? That sense that with a new season, anything's possible - whether you're a defending conference champion (Lehigh), a program on the rise (San Diego State). somewhere in the middle (Miami (Oh.)), or a hapless doormat (San Jose State). Can you smell it? Yeah, that's pretty gross. But don't worry, it's just the mildew in Bradley's arena. Game 004: Syracuse 71, Mississippi State 58 Game 003: Memphis 81, St. Mary's 66 When your humble proprietor was a wee lad, he played him some base ball. Although official statistics were not recorded in the Keene-Peterborough (N.H.) Pee Wee League, I'm sure that my .560 season batting average (achieved primarily with slap singles) would have been near the top of the league leaderboard. The star of our team was a big, burly man-child - let's call him Drew, 'cause that's what his name was. Drew was the prototypical slugger - he played left field, hit fourth, and was the only one of us who could hit the ball over the fence. He did so about once a game. I'll admit to having snuck a peek at last-minute flights to Raleigh yesterday. I thought that catching the opening quadrupleheader at the BCA Invitational might give me an early boost towards the 100 game mark. Turns out the only real contest worth the airfare was Oregon State's buzzer-beating Houdini act against Siena. I always tell people never to write Siena off. Rob Lanier is a patient coach who has a track record of dealing positively with roster turnover, and always seems to coax the maximum out of his teams. The fumbling Saints I saw getting blown out at Delaware last December bore no resemblance to the well-jelled squad I saw making a solid run to the Metro Athletic semifinals three months later. So the fact that Siena has six frosh this year shouldn't keep them from contending in a post-Luis Flores MAAC. Their top scorer, six-six Michael Haddix, is a stud who's been known to confound double-teams with his quirky-jerky left-handed style. Game 002: Pennsylvania 74, Quinnipiac 60 We all know how teams are picked for the postseason National Invitation Tournament. But what's the selection process like for the preseason version, you wonder? The 16 best available teams are based on the following: The Magnificent Spitlers: USA Today profiles four brothers who all gained spots on Division I basketball teams (Saint Peter's, Stony Brook,Canisius and Holy Cross) the walk-on way. Says Chris Spitler, "What's amazing to me is that all of us could be mediocre enough not to get a scholarship." Air Force broke a 19-19 halftime tie with Mississippi and stormed to a 60-36 win. This game was notable not only for the Falcons' rope-a-dope act, but also for the surreal Yahoo Broadcast audio presentation, which interspersed random snippets from a talk show about weight loss in and amongst the game action. Come back, Mark Cuban! I can remember a time when close only counted in horseshoes and hand grenades. When second place meant "#1 loser," when gold was for champions and silver was for dinnerware, when "Miss Congeniality" and "bridesmaid" really meant "No Soup For You." There, in the dimmest recesses of my memory, I remember when being number one actually meant something. But in an age of adjusted expectations, lower test scores, and a general unwillingness to hurt feelings, it's okay to finish a little bit behind the winner. Second place is alright, because there will likely be a second chance. This site has been open for business no more than six days, and it is already being lit up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Most gratifying, however, are the wonderful things that others are saying about The Mid-Majority elsewhere in the b-ball blogosphere. I am touched and slightly overcome by the kind responses, and I'd like to take this opportunity to begin returning serve. College Basketball Blog (shout), the undisputed original and still champeen, has been my 1 bookmark for almost a year now (the RSS feed is excellent for phone-based hoops fixes, too). It's updated more often than the wire services, and is spiced with informed opinion and hilarious commentary that's highly preferable to what the teevee suits are bringing. And If anyone is going to crack the mystery of Jay Bilas' film career, it's Yoni. The inaugural anything is tough - there's all that pressure, all those questions. What will the public think? Will this new thing be embraced, accepted? Will it become an iconic institution, or will it join the ranks of such outright flops as Crystal Pepsi, Cop Rock and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays?
Newsday provides another dreary This-season-is-going-to-be-so-great-because-so-many-seniors-are-staying-in-school tract. I see plenty of guys who stay four years in my travels, so I'm guessing that they mean "seniors with superb chances at being drafted." Personally, I'm sick of this crap. Sure, having a star system makes college basketball easier to follow, but love the game - not the player. Coack-K-saved-college-basketball-by-staying-at-Duke stories are getting pretty annoying too. Like he was actually going anyway. It is designed to do a lot of things, but it certainly is not designed to break your heart. The game begins in the late autumn, when everything else has shriveled and fallen and died. Its blossoms come slowly in winter's course like crocus starts popping through icefields. And when it does stop, it leaves you to face the bursting glory of a fresh spring. What the hell's wrong with that? (apologies, Bart) Each November, college basketball fades in slowly, takes its dutiful place in the blurry background of the American sports landscape. Only in recent years have the the Men In Charge decided that the season's opening stages needed to be sexed up to compete with the dominant late-year sports stories - the national pastime that is the NFL, convoluted college gridiron bowl jostlings, the annual start of the increasingly ridiculous soap-opera/freakshow that used to be a pro basketball league. They've done this by staging made-for-television invitationals, power-conference challenges, and sham tournaments with worthless trophies. The Official Wife Of The Mid-Majority™ was held up at the Boston airport due to the inclement weather, so I was able to surreptitiously grab some beer and pizza and fire up the internet radio for two mirror-image games: Syracuse vs. Princeton and Birmingham Southern vs. Mississippi State. Both underdogs play Pete Carril's famous high post alignment/backdoor cut system, and both were just a few minutes away from pulling huge upsets. Sometime in the future, I'll devote some column inches to why these specific types of collapses tend to happen to Princeton Offense teams. St. Mary's pulls the first official "upset" of the year against Cal in the Coaches vs. Cancer tournament, and will play on national teevee next weekend. Game 001: Drexel 78, University Of The Sciences 45 (exh.) When you see your first game of the year on the TV, do not adjust your set. All "exempted tournaments" and some exhibition games will be played under experimental rules, which include a 20'6" 3-point line (9 inches farther out), a wider lane with weird angles, and an NBA-style no-charge zone under the basket. Old friend Bill Herrion weighs in. My opinion? Keep the 3-point line, lose the trapezoid. The NABC Classic tips off today in Albuquerque. Round-robin format, each of the four teams will be guaranteed three games. To the baseball fan, a long winter of hot stove leagues and hibernation is rendered tolerable by that most optimistic of sporting phrases, those two words that warm the soul like sunshine on the coldest of January mornings: "Opening Day." The football fan can summon the bracing chill of September within the oppressively humid clutch of summer, simply by uttering a simple word - a forceful and powerful word that can cut to the reptilian brain even after a lifetime of helmet-on-helmet collisions: "Kickoff." National Signing Day, or the first day high school prospects could sign letters-of-intent with colleges, was yesterday. Scout.Com attempts to break down the top recruit coming into each conference in 2005-06. Note: This list will be absolutely useless next spring once the NBA Draft looms. The Sports Network previews conferences and picks the winners: America East (Vermont), Big South (Birmingham-Southern), Sun Belt (Louisiana-Lafayette), Mid-Continent (Oral Roberts), and the Ivy League (Princeton). Questions, Frequently Asked and Otherwise So, what's this about? One Sunday afternoon in early February, I found myself sitting in a cold, half-empty gymnasium in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. I was watching Rider and Loyola - two of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference's perennial doormats - fall all over each other. It was halftime, and the two squads had barely made it out of the twenties, spending most of the first half going end-to-end without scoring. I asked myself a logical question. "What am I doing here?" My earliest basketball memory: it's a cold winter morning in New England, November 1983. I'm eleven years old, and I'm pulling a Greg Ballard Washington Bullets home jersey over my spindly torso (the only one at the sporting goods store that fit me). I'm taller than the other boys in the neighborhood, and my parents think that the loosely-organized weekend kids' league a town over would be a good release for my spastic youthful energy. I'm loaded into the Honda Accord and I sit in the back seat, quivering with anticipation, head full of hoop daydreams. |
|
Other honorable mentions include 
This week's MMBOW nod goes to 6-7 junior forward 
So, with trembling hands and bated breath, I present to you the first-ever Mid-Majority Baller Of The Week. There is no special halftime presentation at halfcourt, no money to be donated to the school's general scholarship fund, no oddly-shaped trophy to hawk on eBay later. It's simply a small weekly acknowledgement of exceptional performances by players in the mid-major world. 
