Big West: Idaho 69, Utah State 62 (story) - Because the students were away, this game was moved from the 7,000-seat Cowan Spectrum to Idaho's old, dusty Memorial Gym (seating: 1,300). Utah State (7-3, 0-1 BWC) outshot Idaho 52%-44%, but the undersized Vandals (2-8, 1-0 BWC) outrebounded the visitors 37-26 - they used their zone to pick off long rebounds, and quickness to beat them to the offensive glass. Because of "the way things work," the Big West tournament may have upped its drama quotient immeasurably this past week - no matter how many important non-conference wins a team gets, at-large dreams can vanish with one simple sentence: "Yeah, but they lost to Idaho."
This will be the final Dribblings - as well as the final Mid-Majority post - until next Tuesday. There are no games Saturday or Sunday, and I've never really figured out why Houston and Washington do this annual Christmas thing. Can't they at least televise it? I'm sure some folks could use an excuse to skip boring family holiday parties. Or mass.
I do know that people use the Internet on holiday weekends, and that some will receive Powerbooks and Dells on Saturday morning and want to try them out. I don't want to let these folks down. To that end, I'd like to present something I call Mid-Majority Classic, a compendium-slash-collection of some of the very special posts from the season so far. Since most of them were posted when this site had about one-tenth its current traffic, this is also a holiday gift to our newer (a/k/a kind, thoughtful and ridiculously sexy) visitors.
The Beautiful Season - why college basketball kicks your favorite sport's ass
100GP, Game 1 - every journey, single step, etc.
The Mid-Majority vs. Cancer - the coaches could use some quality bigs
Paige Laurie: The Real Story - the WB gets a ratings boost
Amateur Night at the Apollo - don't forget to rub the Tree of Hope
The Mid-Majority vs. Gonzaga - move up to the Pac-10, already!
Talk to the Hawk - once you write your first "concept" game recap, there's no turning back
Song for a Division II School - not sung to the tune of "Gilligan's Island," as was suggested
The Mid-Majority vs. Villanova - the game recap that started the war
Pennsylvania 6-5000 - the game recap written during WWII
Best wishes, everybody! See you next week.
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Having recently completed its fourth season, The Mid-Majority is a blog about the 22 smaller Division I college basketball conferences (and independents) by me, Kyle Whelliston. I write for ESPN.com and Basketball Times, and maintain the Basketball State statistics website as well.
Here's a brief note on who we talk about, and why.
If you need to contact me for any reason, you can do so with this form. If you're looking for the stats, maps or budget data, it's all over here now.
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