But within a month of each other, WSU recruit Guy Alang-Ntang collapsed and died during a pickup game -- right in front of Marshall's eyes -- and DeAndre Adams, one of his key role players at Winthrop, died as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident. Along with the logistical struggles of moving with his wife and two kids to the Great Plains after nearly a decade in Rock Hill, S.C., it's been a difficult summer. On the court, though, Marshall's Shockers are 4-2 on the young year, and they're already showing the same kind of tough and energetic play that thrilled Winthrop fans and annoyed opposing Big South coaches for nine seasons. After using a blistering 7-0 run out of halftime to beat Appalachian State 62-53 last night, Coach Marshall was kind enough to hold up the team charter so we could catch up. We discussed his transition to life in the Valley, what there's to do in Wichita, and his son's Pop-A-Shot prowess.  
Hampton vs. Howard (MEAC) Madison Square Garden -- New York, NY (Big Apple Classic) 9:00 PM EST We figure you already know about the big mid-major vs. major games on Saturday's docket (Duke-Davidson in Charlotte, Indiana @ SIU, Michigan @ Harvard, Seton Hall @ Saint Mary's, Texas Tech @ Centenary, etc.), those matchups speak for themselves. So we'll use this space to give some hype to a fantastic event that may have slipped your radar. This is the second annual Big Apple Classic, an opportunity for historically black colleges to play in the World's Most Famous. And of course, it'll be a celebration of all the atmospheric elements that make HBCU hoops so great: there'll be a stepshow and a drumline competition during the afternoon. Then, as the sun sinks low over Manhattan, the doubleheader's first game will feature Virginia Union and Bowie State, two CIAA giants who have torn up Division II in recent years. (And if anything, it's an opportunity to see former Temple enforcer Anthony Ivory play). But the main course is the HU-HU battle, the MEAC opener for both schools. Hampton's certainly been in the news lately, as the Pirates knocked off VCU on Thursday to go 2-0 versus the CAA (they beat Delaware last weekend), and gave Holy Cross, Kent State and Maryland all they could handle early on. Rashad West and Vincent Simpson make up a high scoring backcourt (29.1 ppg between them), and 6-9 Donte Harrison holds down the middle. Then there's enigmatic sophomore forward Matt Pilgrim, who I've continually said is the best player in the MEAC when his head's on straight. Howard won the first Big Apple Classic matchup between these two last season (95-84), but that was last season. At the Philly Classic last weekend, they seemed borderline dysfunctional in two bad losses -- and overly reliant on 6-5 junior Eugene Myatt (19.0 ppg, 52 percent FG), who likes shooting the rock a whole lot more than he likes anything else that has to do with basketball. Indeed, the Bison were missing 6-5 senior Randy Hampton and promising freshman guard Kyle Riley (two key cogs in head coach Gil Jackson's machinery) but Jackson said they'd return in time for this game. If anything, I'd think they wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to play on that hallowed floor at 34th and 7th, five stories above street level. HAMP 65, HOW 31 DAVIDSON, N.C. -- Welcome to your weekend Big B, the final one of November. Hard to believe it's almost December already. Season's almost a month old. Say, how's the family? Kids alright? Good, good to hear. This weather we're having... never thought we'd still be in short sleeves and singing Christmas carols at the same time. Global warming, I guess, right? Yeah, you got me, I've never been one for small talk. Let's Boubacar!
 
Drexel at George Mason (Colonial) Patriot Center -- Fairfax, VA 7:00 PM EST We here at The Mid-Majority are 100 percent for early conference games and schedule gerrymandering if it gives us games like this, contests that will shape the conversation in leagues like the CAA for weeks to come. Whether this is the first step towards 40-game regular seasons and/or starting the action in mid-October, I guess we'll find out eventually. Tonight, the lone league game in Hoops Nation will be played under the green and yellow banners of Gunston U.. Both teams are 5-1, but Mason has definitely been the more impressive of the two so far. There was the nationally televised gang-up on the Beasleys of Kansas State, followed by a close loss to Villanova and a wire-cutter against South Carolina to take third place in the Bruce Campbell Classic in Orlando. Will Thomas and Folarin Campbell, mid-major household names both for their 2006 heroics, are seniors now and they're acting like seniors. They have 31.8 ppg between them, and Thomas has a zoinks-worthy 12 boards a game. Then there's John Vaughan, who everybody said was the best player on crutches at the Final Four that year. Now that he's back, he's averaging 11.8 ppg in six games. The Dragons? They've been drawn into hard slogs with Loyola (Md.), Robert Morris and Virginia. We spent the Thanksgiving weekend with Drexel at the Philly Classic, and we saw flashes of greatness. When they can set up their halfcourt offense -- with Frank Elegar and Randy Oveneke on the opposite blocks with those young guards buzzing around the perimeter -- they Dragons are a sight to see. Unfortunately, they've been too sloppy and silly to do that for long stretches so far. Coach Bruiser Flint, in yet another in a string of unforgettable press conferences, made Friday's subpar performance a generational issue... he said that in his day players didn't take Thanksgiving off from practice, and that coaches didn't cave in to moms demanding their sons get to leave campus. Kids these days! GMU 85, DREX 38 HIGH POINT, N.C. -- In a world of Bill Simmons this and Dennis Miller that, there is no worse crime than blowing a pop culture reference. You know what I'm talking about. I think all of us, at one time, have tried to pass ourselves off as having seen a movie (by looking at the list of quotes on iMDB), then have dropped lines whilst hanging with our cool friends. Later, we realize -- after we finally see the film -- that we totally tanked on the delivery. Those are minor, everyday blown references though. Over the summer, I mixed up Li'l Bow Wow and Li'l Romeo in an ESPN chat. It started innocently enough, when I said that Bow Wow was the one who was signed by USC. When I was caught on it by a bunch of chatters, I kept it up for a while -- it was a decent joke about stupid rap names, and it gave me an excuse to talk about Like Mike. But the joke juice ran out, and I came clean.  
Georgetown (Big East) at Old Dominion (CAA) Constant Convocation Center -- Norfolk, VA 7:00 PM EST Sure, we're being quasi-homers again and picking our attended game, but this is what we've got for counter-programming to the ACC-Big Ten thing. This is the home-and-home rematch of last year's shock at Georgetown's old gym, a 75-62 Monarch victory that featured ODU-us shooting (only 43 percent) but exceptional ball control (9.3 percent turnover rate, six coughs in total) and, shockingly enough, a 31-27 rebounding advantage. Old Dominion will have to win two of these three battles to repeat the result and sweep the series. The Monarchs are the 42nd best rebounding team in the nation right now (37.5 rpg as a team), and battle they stand to lose is the shooting one. That 43 percent from the Nov. 19, 2006 game is exactly what they're putting up for the year, and the 3-3 Monarchs are coming off a 34 percent night against Louisville. They'll need a great night from emerging 6-10 CAA star Gerald Lee, who scored 20 against the Cardinals and leads the team with 12.2 ppg. The backcourt's been a bit iffy, but I say give the ball to senior Brandon Johnson (yes, the dude who got shot a couple years back), he's shooting 49 percent. When you look at Georgetown, you see... well, a Final Four team from a year ago. And Roy Hibbert, who is very big and scary and averaging 17 and 7. There's discipline and defense and all the things that made the Hoyas a secret Mid-Majority team-crush a year ago. But Hibbert's ginormous performance in this matchup last year (17 and 8, incidentally) was overcome, and we're hoping for a similar script tonight. C! A! A! Basketball State Preview/Box NORFOLK, Va. -- Sorry about the late post today. Full story later on, but in most of Southern Virginia, the internet is something to catch bass with. Not a slight against those good people, mind you, I'd trade it all in for a life in a place like Skippers. Life down there brought to mind a modern tone poem I've heard lately. Changing, yeah, everything's changing And while I'm at it, a note to the Emporia police department: if you're going to try to catch speeders by hiding between two "for sale" cars on the side of the road, you're better off doing it in an unmarked car with "$1100 OBO New Brakes New Trans" chalked to the windshield. You're not fooling anyone.
I know, I know, I promised to do this last week. I didn't. I'm doing it now. Welcome to the first edition of The State Of The Other 22, a weekly look at the best and hottest mids in convenient top-ten form. There is no Week 1. The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 341 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the Final Four last season. For our purposes here, it gives the world's only hype-free, non-voting, computer poll of teams in the lower 22 conferences. It's updated every hour on the hour over at Basketball State, but we'll be looking at a snapshot of the ratings every Tuesday in this space over the course of the season. SID's, get your linkers fired up! (In case you've been living under a rock, or have just been looking at one of the Internet's 56 million other web pages, Basketball State is The Mid-Majority's sister site. Its beautiful, luscious, smart, basketball-loving red-headed sister, who demands you buy her a $25 dinner before you can come up to her apartment.)  
Binghamton (America East) at Cornell (Ivy League) Newman Arena - Ithaca, NY 7:00 PM EST It's a November Tuesday night, which means lots of guarantee games and prefab power-conference challenge matchups. But up in the occasionally snowy wilds of upstate New York, we have an intriguing battle of potential factors in their respective northeastern leagues, both of which are off to uneven starts. The Big Red, an easy Ivy out since most of us were born, has started 3-1 and on Sunday knocked off Siena -- the team with the best talent in the Metro Atlantic. Cornell is prominently featured on many of Hoops Nation's leaderboards: they're shooting an even 50 percent from 3, 51.1 percent overall from the floor, and are fifth in the geektastic stats of points per weighted shot (1.27) and true shooting percentage (64.1). They have a total of six double-figure scorers -- six! -- and are averaging 88 per game. Not bad for a team that was slow and painful to watch just a season ago, a squad that often played in the 50's and 60's. This here's a rematch of a pretty decent little game at The Mid-Majority Events Center a year ago, a 57-56 defensive slog won by the Bearcats. It's a different coach this time, though, as Binghamton only won 12 other games and brought in Georgetown product Kevin Broadus over the summer. He's got plenty of holdover talent -- perhaps enough to win the A-East -- but the team's been up and mostly down, coming in on a three-game slide after an impressive season-opening 88-75 win over NEC threat Quinnipiac. Keep an eye on Lazar Trifunovic, a 6-8 sophomore and a product of the Belgrade-to-Binghamton pipeline who was one of the few promising parts of the 2006-07 campaign. He's averaging 15.8 points per game so far. CORN 73, BING 68 WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- The leftovers are already running out in your fridge, but they're always stocked up here at the Bread Restaurant. Personally, I recommend the cinnamon crunch bagel with hazelnut cream cheese, and perhaps a veggie grilled panini sandwich later. I'd better finish this Boubacar up before the lunch rush starts. "Houston Fancher, your order's ready at the counter. Houston?"
 
Davidson at Appalachian State (SoCon) Holmes Center - Boone, NC 7:00 PM EST Conference games are already upon us. Can you believe it? Hoops Nation's first league contest of the year happened last Saturday here in the Southern Conference, as Georgia Southern beat Furman. But that one had little on tonight's tilt, which will set the scene for the way the rest of the SoCon season is played. Davidson. "It." You've heard it all summer. But the Wildcats are 2-2 now, following up their buzzworthy loss to North Carolina with a seven-point drop at Western Michigan on Wednesday (told you the Broncos were good). But the Wildcats are still averaging 90 points a game, and are still one of the best ball-control teams in the nation (14.8 percent turnover rate, 22.5 assists per game), and took out their frustration on poor, defenseless North Carolina Central on Saturday in a 98-50 mauling. And they have Stephen Curry, the best player in mid-majordom despite the fact that national announcers still can't pronounce his name right. In the yellow corner is Appalachian State, looking to prove themselves after a 25-win season (one was against these Cats) that ended sadly in the NIT's first round. We've already spat 800 words about their current roster and makeup over in ESPN pay-land, but here's the short version: size. They've got it. Lots. Donte Minter, Jeremy Clayton, 6-10 Ike Butts, and a churning rotation of 6-7-and-biggers that Houston Fancher will throw early and often at Davidson. Up at WMU, size helped beat the Wildcats (a team with two 6-8'ers up front), and it's not outside possibility's realm that it could happen again tonight. Skill versus size... who you got? And this isn't the G!O!T!N! just because I'm going to be there. But stop and say "yo" if you go. DAV 71, APPST 60 The Rider Broncs went 1-2 over the weekend at the Old Spice Classic in Orlando, but one of the top stories coming from that tourney was the performance of a certain 6-11 center, number 1 in maroon and a likely NBA pick. Fresh off a nationally televised showcase that lasted all weekend long, Jason Thompson is our third Mid-Majority Baller of the Week for the 2007-08 season.
As he did last season, Thompson is averaging a double-double for the season: 20.8 points, and 11.3 rebounds. In addition to his two dub-dubs in Orlando, he unleashed a ferocious 23-and-21 performance on Delaware on Nov. 17. He's shooting an even 50 percent for the year, and is also averaging four blocks a game, tied for sixth in the nation. Thompson has made no secret of his desire to play in the NBA, and his fallback position is ESPN sports anchor. He's even been taking the speech communication classes at Rider to polish his delivery, and he's already got it over Kenny Mayne in the looks department. For now, though, he's pulled the "Yahtzee!" of being named Mid-Majority Baller of the Week. BOONE, N.C. -- The problem with taking the holiday off from posting is that things happen, build up, force a gigantic Monday post. Here, then, is your long weekend in mid-major land.
The Long One Steel-colored first light above a lengthwise highway, rolling gun-metal hills beyond, a scene set off by a row of spindly and barren trees in crisp black focus. There's something comforting, regular about the standard tableau that I usually wake up to on the road, a simple chalk drawing dashed off by an art student. It could be anywhere in America, but it is one place: the far corner of the truck stop parking lot. This reverie, or contentment, or whatever you could call it, quickly fades away -- early-morning consciousness gets sharpened against the tall black gas-price digits on the flickering yellow sign. I've known this was coming for several days now, and this is not something I can put it off until tomorrow or the next day. This is what I've slept six grey hours for. This is the Long One.  I'll allow you a few minutes to put the pieces of your blown mind back together. Okay? Let's go. Big media rivalries, like college sports rivalries, are supposed to be predicated on the idea that the folks on the other side are filthy, writhing subhumans. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that this is silly.
Our second interviewee of the season is Bill Trocchi, author of the weekly "Mid-Major Report" on Sports Illustrated's website -- which would logically make him my primary blood adversary in the great ESPN-vs.-SI wars. In addition to his mid-major duties, Bill is also an SI.com website producer, an upstanding gentleman, a husband and a father. He was kind enough to stop by during this Thanksgiving week to clear the air. We talked about his job at SI, our respective high-major secrets, where the mid/major fault line really is, American-style football, and his years working at Hustler. (Not that Hustler, this one. Don't get all excited now.)  
North Texas (Sun Belt) at Texas-Arlington (Southland) Texas Hall - Arlington, TX 8:05 PM EST Are you ready? Are you ready to Take It To The Stage? No, not that Stage... this one. Two 3-0 teams will go at it tonight in Arlington, ranked 28th (UNT) and 39th (UTA) in the early version of the RPI. Despite all that, they'll try their hardest not to fall into the audience. You may remember North Texas from such brackets as 2007, as they're the defending Sun Belt champs. The Mean Green didn't win at the NCAA's, but they did take down Oklahoma State last week in an 82-73 Big XII beatdown at the Super Pit. They're averaging 88.7 points per game on the young season, and have found an electrifying scorer in 5-10 freshman Josh White, the reigning SBC player of the week, who was carried off the floor all Rudy-like after scoring 25 points in the OSU upset. One outlet called him the 10th best player in Louisiana last year! How did they get this guy? UTA won this matchup last year on a buzzer-beater, and this is a far better team than the 2006-07 version. The Mavericks lead Hoops Nation in field-goal percentage at 59.3, and have hit an eye-popping 74 percent of their 2-point shots. That is patently ludicrous, but true. And these weren't D-II teams or anything, their wins are versus UALR, Texas Southern and UC-Riverside. Jermaine Griffin, a 6-8 senior who I've been plugging as a possible Southland POY candidate all summer, has gone 15-for-18 from the floor on the way to a team-leading 19.0 ppg. Make my funk the J.G.-funk. Honorable g!o!t!n! mention to Davidson at Western Michigan, the obvious choice. Maybe too obvious. That'll be a good one too. UTARL 72, NTEX 64 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- This season's been real warpy in terms of time... early start on the 5th, and now we're staring down Thanksgiving. The Official Wife™ and I are on the way out to go grocery-shopping for what used to be Unturkey day around here (Why, damn you, WHY!?!?!?) but I said, "Not yet, honey, I've got to do The Boubacar." So I wish each and every one of you a happy Thanksgiving on behalf of myself, TOW and the li'l orange guy. Don't spend all your time watching basketball, take a few moments and do that dewy-eyed crap about reflecting on what you're thankful for. Me, I'm thankful my wife is home after five months of Navy training (and hasn't had her number called), and that there are a lot more of you out there than there were last year -- thanks for finding TMM, or for just coming back. There will be a couple of posts here over the weekend for those of you stuck on campus... but for now, enjoy the holidays.  
Austin Peay (OVC) at Utah State (WAC) Dee Glen Smith Spectrum -- Logan, UT (South Padre Island Tournament) 9:05 PM EST For reasons unbeknownst, the last few days of The Mid-Majority have been brought to you by Office Depot. Office Depot: do you have your "easy button?" If anybody understands what those Transformers-type characters made out of office supplies are all about, let me know, they're kinda cute. But it's not my place to understand any of this complicated commerce stuff... I'm just the guy who tells you where the hot mid-major games are. This is Game! Of! The! Night! for a Tuesday. Tonight, we have two teams that were mere heartbeats away from the 2007 NCAA Tournament. OVC regular season champs Peay lost a heartbreaker to Eastern Kentucky 63-62, and promptly collectively crumpled to the floor in pain. Utah State's two-point loss to New Mexico State in the WAC title game wasn't a complete shock, since they expended a lot of energy coming up from a low seed to upset NCAA-bound Nevada 79-77 in the semis. Both schools were given nice parting gifts: first-round NIT losses on the road. Now it's 2007-08, and the Govs have opened up with a respectable loss at Vandy and a convincing home win over upset kings Belmont. They have the same potent 6-5 one-two punch as last season, with junior Drake Reed and senior Fernandez Lockett, both averaging 15 a game so far. Utah State? Now that's a different story. Despite retaining the services of senior sharpshooter and presumptive league POY Jaycee Carroll, the Aggies have stumbled badly out of the gate and are coming off a 0-3 road trip at Weber State, Cal Poly and old Big West pals UC-Irvine. A normally surehanded and disciplined team has averaged turnovers on 28.5 percent of its possessions, one of the 30 worst figures in all of Division I. USU's back home now, and they had a sterling 5-1 record in G!O!T!N! action two years ago. Let's see if we can give them back some of their lost mojo. USU 71, APSU 68 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- It's a snowy Tuesday here at the office home, but that won't depress us, not in the least. Here, for the first time ever, a 100% positive Boubacar...
Tennessee Morning cracks open over Middle Tennessee like a giant farm-fresh egg. It bastes the mini-mall in gooey yellow sunshine, washing over the giant fluorescent Shoe Carnival sign. The letters blink a few times, then they're drowned, extinguished for another day. The sun soaks the Bread Restaurant, bleeding through the tall windows, and my laptop casts a long sundial shadow that reads 7 a.m.. This is where I sit now, and where I will sit for the next eight hours. This is my temporary office on this first Friday of the traveling season, where I'll catch up on writing and coding and e-mail.
 
Fairleigh Dickinson (NEC) at Rider (MAAC) Lawrenceville, NJ - Alumni Gymnasium 7:30 PM EST Tonight's G!O!T!N! is a celebration of all things Jersey: Bon Jovi, the Devils, and that TV show that ended on a black screen. At lovely Alumni Gym in Larryville, the Exit 7A Broncs will entertain the Exit 70 Knights (that's the part of 95 between the GW Bridge and the toll booths, hence the high numbers). FDU had a down season last year (14-16) after a few 20-win campaigns and a 2005 NCAA bid, but there's a nice senior backcourt in Bernell Murray and Manny Ubilla (combined 33.0 ppg so far) a nice underclass shaping up with 6-8 freshman John Galvin and 6-3 soph Sean Baptiste. This'll also be a good time to check up on Rider star and eventual NBA Draft pick Jason Thompson, the 6-10 senior who's averaged 18 and 13.5 over his first two games. Stoppable? Fugedd... ah, you know the rest. The mini-Game! Of! The! Night tonight (or g!o!t!n!) is the annual Beantown throwdown between Boston University and Northeastern, held on BU's Roof. The Huskies and Terriers were conference buddies for a while, but they still get together in the dawg park to tear at each other once a year. Expect a "Sucks to B.U." sign or two from a sizable crosstown contingent, which will be met by the energy of a resurgent Boston student section. Woof. RIDER 85, FDU 70 (J. Thompson: 20 and 9) There were plenty of deserving candidates in the season's second week, lots of big-time performances by big-time players on teams in the lower 22 conferences. But we're going to use this space this time to recognize the efforts of a little guy from a little conference that gets little exposure back east. The second Mid-Majority Baller Of The Week for 2007-08 is Josh Akognon of Cal State Fullerton.
Akognon played for two years at Washington State before transferring south to CSF last July for his final two years of eligibility. At Wazzu, he led the team in scoring (10.3 ppg), and there was that time on Feb. 11, 2006 when he dropped 16 points in a row on USC. But the sharpshooting Californian, a McDonald's All-American nominee out of high school, was was hemmed in by a methodical system -- one columnist said the shoehorning of Akognon into the Cougars' style was like "trying to convince a firearms salesman to believe in gun control." The Titans are more than happy to cut him loose in a league that's dominated by little guards. He's a veteran of international play, having represented Nigeria at the 2006 World Basketball Championship. And he's also a veteran of the nickname factory, being labelled the "Petaluma Pistol" by broadcaster Steve Physioc (after the city of Akognon's origin) and "The Torch" by the CSF faithful. We'll just call him The Mid-Majority Baller of the Week. PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Wow, what a weekend. So packed with hot mid-major action that I don't have time to tell any jokes here in the intro paragraph. Here we go!
 Because no website has ever thought of anything like this before -- to my knowledge, at least -- TMM will be running an interview series at the end of each week throughout the college basketball season. I know, I know, this has been done before, in other places. But we'll be chatting with coaches, players, broadcasters, superfans, and other folks who help make our game the greatest anyway.
Future interviewees in this space will have a incredibly hard act to follow. Our first subject is Mikaelyn Austin, talented shooting guard and filmmaker (philm-maker, actually). Austin recently chronicled the history of Philadelphia's Palestra, college hoops' greatest cathedral and second home to many, in a fantastic documentary that had its national television debut on the ESPN networks over the summer. We e-chatted this week about the grand and ghost-filled old barn on 33rd Street, her championship playing career on that hallowed hardwood, Ivy League women's basketball in general, Philadelphia's tragically cursed sports scene, and her current film projects too. 
Dayton (A-10) at George Mason (CAA) Fairfax, VA - Patriot Center 7:00 PM EST All due respect to the "2-0 Showdown" tonight between Colgate and Texas State at the Kennesaw tourney, but we have an Atlantic-14 threat visiting CAA country on Saturday evening. Dayton has great senior leadership in guard Brian Roberts (31 in the Flyers' season-opening win over East Tennessee State), and a real exciting freshman in 6-8 Chris Wright (22 and 13 in the same contest). Brian Gregory's squad will likely be in the league's March conversations, along with Saint Joe's and Xavier. The Pats, nearly as undefeated as the football ones, are coming off an off shooting night against Cleveland State, where they show 38 percent but still won 56-47. But keep an eye on freshman wing Isaiah Tate, a product of legendary Delmarva hoops factory DeMatha. He scored 18 on 7-for-9 shooting in that Tuesday game. The snappy-dressing bandleader dude with his pimp cup will be there... will you? GMU 67, UD 56
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- Well, that concludes the first full week of the 2007-08 college basketball season. Just so you know how things will work from here on out, no Boubacars on Saturdays or Sundays, one catch-all G!O!T!N! for all three days, and Bally will show up sometime over the weekend.  Mickell Gladness, Alabama A&M. Friend of the site Eric "Extra P." Angevine nominates the current world leader in Spalding sandwiches, who's averaged a total of 8.7 blocks per game over his first three contests. That's blocks, not rebounds. The 6-11 senior has 10.3 of those.
 
Gardner-Webb (Atlantic Sun) vs. Connecticut (Big East) Madison Square Garden - New York, NY (Neutral) - Coaches vs. Cancer Tourney Semifinals 7:00 PM EST This will be the first of two shots at the Huskies that Rick Scruggs and his Kentucky-conquering heroes will get, the other coming up at UConn next Tuesday. That one won't have a full ESPN crew, Dickie V eating cupcakes, and the name "Grayson Flittner" being read repeatedly to a nationwide television audience. Because tonight is what G-Webb earned with that win at Rupp last week: a trip to The World's Most Famous Arena. Tonight's telecast will be a two-hour celebration of all things G-Webb, a day when everybody everywhere is a Runnin' Bulldog From Boiling Springs, and perhaps the school's last chance to bronze itself in the national spotlight for quite some time. Oh, there will be another team out there too... almost forgot. In its opening wins against Morgan State and Buffalo, Connecticut would seem to be a young squad still just finding itself, so G-Webb's Kentucky strategy of smacking the top of the defense and sneaking through the backdoor for buckets might bring them some success. The Bulldogs don't match up well at all in a talent competition, but that didn't stop them last week. Let's see if they have any more magic left. CONN 78, GWEBB 66
BOWLING GREEN, Ky. -- "Yo," my mid-major "peeps." Before we kick off this morning's Boubacar action, I just wanted to let you know that we're running a free preview of Basketball State today. It's one of your last chances to grab a 12-month subscription at the early season price before it goes up next Monday. Enjoy this free opportunity to check out a site one basketball fan called "I'd be stupid to pay my hard-earned money for Basketball State."
Oops, wrong clip file. A bunch of folks think it's a really great resource that will make you smarter than that really annoying buddy of yours who thinks he knows everything about college basketball. Hopefully you'll think so too.
Kentucky It goes in two directions, separated by painted lines or, in the case of American interstate highways, steel and shrubbery. The two directions are named "coming" and "going," two fluid concepts that depend a lot on which side of the road you happen to be on. Another key travel duality is order and chaos. Every traveller faces both when away from home. The chaos isn't necessarily a negative thing -- chaos is the surprise of a new discovery, the sweet shock of an unfamiliar experience that will be remembered far longer than ten thousand carbon-copy workdays. "Chaos" is just another name for "adventure." 
North Carolina (ACC) vs. Davidson (SoCon) Bobcats Arena, Charlotte NC (Neutral) 7:00 PM EST Tonight marks the first of three remarkable opportunities for the SoCon favorite Wildcats: a trio of neutral-court shots at college basketball's elite. Later on, they'll play Duke on this same floor and meet UCLA in Anaheim, but tonight it's the Tar Heels. This is the first game of the year for UNC, and if you want a preview for their season, you've come to the wrong place. Davidson returns intact from a 29-win season, and is is led by supersoph Stephen Curry (27 points against Emory in a tuneup game). He's coming off a 21.5 ppg freshman year in which he finished 10th in all the land in points per 40 minutes (27.8). Can he fill it? Yup. But that's not all the Wildcats have: a talented if not undersized senior frontcourt (featuring 6-8 Boris Meno and 6-8 Thomas Sander) that may be overwhelmed on occasion -- witness the 49-31 rebound margin in the NCAA first-round loss against Maryland -- but rarely makes dumb mistakes and fouled far less than the national average last season. If they can replicate last year's recipe for success: don't turn it over and don't foul (keeping that weird Hansbrough dude in check wouldn't hurt either, injured or not), these Cats might have a shot. UNC 72, DAV 68
LOUISVILLE -- In our third installment of the Boubacar this year, let's wrap up the sights and sounds (both literally) from the Columbus pod of the NIT Season Tip-Off.
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (Southland) vs. Texas-El Paso (Conference USA) A current mid-major darling meets one of our favorite Mid-Majority ex-pats tonight in the early game of the Texas A&M-College Station pod of the P-NIT. The Islanders, defending SLC champions, are a study in bootstrapability, taking just seven years to go from blueprint to NCAA Tournament. They return fifth-year senior 7-footer Chris Daniels, the most dominating player in that league last year, and they'll see if they can rebound from a weird 72-64 loss to the SWAC's Texas Southern Tigers. TAMUCC turned the ball over 28 percent of the time in that game. The Miners, for their part, are coming off an easy season-opening SWAC win over Pine Bluff. They seem to have an emerging scoring stud in senior Stefan Jackson, who might end up being remembered as the dude who got punched by a teammate two years ago. I choose to remember simpler times... like 2004-05, when UTEP put together 27 wins as a WAC member. We followed them every day here on The Mid-Majority that year, but lost touch when they upped and left for the land of the Money Conferences. It's hard to root against a school that has the most recent (unofficial) "mid-major" national title... but tonight, we will. (Honorable mention: Alabama at Mercer. Let's keep it up, A-Sun.)
But, how do we SAY "Boubacar"... is it "BOW buh car", "Boo buh car", or something else?? If we're going to properly use this in the future, we need to know.... Rod, Asheville NC COLUMBUS, Oh. -- "Boubacar," as I've heard it on TV, is "BOO-buh-car." It's a highly exalted name of West African origin, meaning "chief" or "leader." There have been two Boubacar Traores, both with fascinating tales. People who e-mail me are generally very helpful with this sort of thing. Pittsburgh Late Saturday night, in the temporary Saint Louis locker room underneath the University of Pittsburgh's Petersen Events Center, new Billikens head coach Rick Majerus rubbed his face crosswise and lengthwise, trying to invent things to say about a blowout win over Houston Baptist. Failing that, he diverted reporter questions towards more comfortable topics like food and politically-correct labels for ballplayers, and finally asked how things were going at his most recent employer, ESPN. "They got you flying first class?" "No, Coach," I replied. "I sleep in truck stops." A sideways look. "Who's your agent?"
Appalachian State (Southern) at Charlotte (A-10) Appalachian State's cagers will open their 2007-08 campaign tonight, and they do so on what some might refer to as "a mission." Sweet memories of San Juan wins in December 2006 (Virginia, Vanderbilt) were tempered somewhat by what some referred to as an NCAA snub, and this time around all anyone's talking about is how wonderful Davidson is. On top of that, the general public thinks it's a football school. So motivation won't be an issue. The 49ers, a team expected by most to help hold the center in the sprawling Atlantic 14 conference (again), have already started the season. On Friday, they nipped High Point at home 61-55 and withstood a 26-and-11 by HPU star (and reigning Big South POY) Arizona Reid. Charlotte 5-11 waterbug Leemire Goldwire, owner of one of the most evocative ballplayer names in recent memory, led the Niners with 16 in that contest, and is the likely go-to this year.
So it's back, Jack. And it's one-man unanimous for our first selection: Kyle Hines is the first Mid-Majority Baller Of The Week of the 2007-08 season. Hines was the Southern Conference's player of the year last season, and no stranger to the Whelliston hype machine (we take care of our namesakes, we do). But last Friday night, Mr. Hines exploded out of the 2007-08 gate for 25 points, nine rebounds and two blocks in an 83-74 win at the home of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. That, in case you've forgotten, is an ACC team. The Spartans took full control of a tight game after halftime, and the final point total matched Hines' shooting percentage -- he went 10-for-12. (The number was also two short of his wingspan: 85 flippin' inches.) It was the latest in a series of big early-season performances for the 6-6 senior -- and torched Marshall for 38 to open the 2006-07 season and went 9-for-13 against Vanderbilt as a sophomore. Kyle is involved in lots of series, like his 51-game consecutive double-figure scoring streak. He could also close his college career with consecutive All-America nods, having been named to the 50-man Honorable Mention list during his junior season. Kyle was recruited by former UNCG head man (and current Siena leader) Fran McCaffery and has become the main engine under current bench boss Mike Dement, averaging 20.1 points per ballgame last season. He's an undersized big, but forget the Barkley references: Cliff Ellis, a SoCon broadcaster before being named Coastal Carolina head coach this season, drew solid parallels between his game and that of Adrian Dantley. He's also considered a great and quotable man, as he has his own entry at ThinkExist. That's right, quotes about Elon games sharing database space with Shakespeare and Chaucer... it's a proud moment for mid-major philosophers everywhere. But if you want something a little more in-depth, bookmark or RSS his new blog at the NCAA's site. One entry (written before the GT game), and it's already better than The Big Lead. COLUMBUS, Oh. -- Daily roundups have been a Mid-Majority staple over the past three-plus years. They were known as "Daily Dribblings" during the first season, weren't given titles in Year Two -- an open pander to the surrealist Samuel Beckett fans who make up a good portion of my audience. Finally, daily posts were renamed "The Daily Paragraph" in 2006-07, which was right around when longtime "Daily Word" writer Andy Katz stopped returning my calls.
I thought about this a lot last week. A lot of that thinking happened Wednesday evening, in front of a television that was showing a Morgan State-Connecticut game. Over and over, the answer was right there in front of me, like a chanted mantra. Boubacar. Boubacar. Boubacar.
Once upon a time there was a tiny little cell, one among a million billion, sloshing and sliding inside a gigantic and vibrant and heaving body. The tiny little cell did its tiny little job as well as it tiny little could, and during its time off it had fun bouncing around with other tiny little like-celled cells, having tiny little conversations on its tiny little cell phone (sorry).
In due course, it was time for the tiny little cell to come of age. It was tiny little puberty time! Inside its tiny little globby cell walls, the tiny little cell was feeling changes -- big changes! Chromatin was condensing, and cytoskeleton microtubules were collapsing! Soon, the tiny little cell had pulled apart from itself and become two tiny little cells, appearing to be exactly the same! This is what tiny little scientists -- great big ones too -- call "mitosis."
It was an easygoing, unassuming late-summer Saturday in Rhode Island. I had completed my weekend house-husband chores (saving the stinky litter boxes for last, as usual), then prepared for a long, languid afternoon of relaxation on the patio. I contemplated the birdfeeder, turning out a few chamber-couplets about finches into a Moleskine. Finally, I switched to the French pop station on the XM radio and tucked into a long novel about cowboys.
Then, far behind me in the house, the phone started ringing. Then again. Custom ringtones in quick-cut edits, like a 20-second rotation from a mad deejay on a scratchy AM radio station. Before throwing the switch, he gathered his thoughts in the virtual darkness, choosing his words carefully. He didn't know who was out there on the other side -- who his audience would be, whether or not he would be able to find one. If an audience for someone like him even existed. This was something very new, without any sort of market testing, and represented a leap of faith.
I am your voice, the voice of the fan, the everyday Joe who can't afford a beer and a hot dog and shouts bloody murder from the first pitch to the last out because I paid for my ticket and I am entitled! ... I am your best friend and management's worst nightmare! I am... Superfan!
Conference USA applies for mid-major membership, with disastrous results for Bally. Here's another story we won't have time for later. When I was 12, I went through a phase that most failed child prodigies go through, the fitful burst of youthful creativity and frustration that comes right before the realization that girls are interesting. For me, it manifested itself in a short-lived Dungeons and Dragons addiction.
In 1995, five years into my stay out in Oregon, I became homesick for the opposite coast, the one I grew up on. The feeling started as confusion and frustration, which grew into a acute sense of not belonging, culminating in a crystalline realization. I missed hockey. The New Hampshire boarding school I attended is located on a remote hilltop, in a broadcast television dead-spot and a half-hour's walk from the nearest cash register. Back in the 1980's, before WiFi brought the world together, our only contact points with the real world were the radio and the Boston Globe. Every morning, a forest-green van would drive up, drop off a bundled stack of paper news, and disappear again down the hill. I had the sports section memorized by 9 a.m., every boxscore and gamecap and pitching probable. Not only did I know exactly what happened in the American sporting world the previous night, I knew what certain people thought about it all too. Mid-major universities tend to fall in one of three categories. There are the expensive and tiny religious schools in remote and leafy locations, flame-keepers of Christian subsects born out of the Great Schisms. You have your specialized colleges: the teacher's schools, the agriculture and mining institutions, the technicals and polytechnics, the private liberal arts outlets named after dead guys. And then there are the public universities established by state school boards of ed that are intended to serve smaller cities and towns, the ones that had the misfortunes of springing up too far away from the motherships. These directionals and satellites often find themselves living on scraps, with money piped through a tube that is just about as thick as the hyphens in their titles. Or perhaps those represent ten-foot poles. There's an annual event -- if that's a phrase suitable and grey enough to describe something that doesn't cut it as a tradition -- here in our household. Every year around this time, the satellite television company beams in a solid week of unlimited American professional basketball in a free preview of the "NBA League Pass." This, to me, is like our neighborhood drug dealer saying that it'll be the second dose of snortable laxative cut with Drano that's going to cost you. If we had neighborhood drug dealers in Pawtucket, R.I., that is. First, this. In mid-August, I was inside a cube-shaped Pilot Travel Center alongside an otherwise barren and remote stretch of northern Pennsylvania. That's where I met someone who might be the tallest truck stop employee in America. He must have been about 6-foot-8, at the very least. The mop he pushed looked like a popsicle stick in his mammoth hands. I had to interrupt him cleaning up a spill near the soft drink cooler because I couldn't find the creamer or sugar for the coffee. He pointed clear across the store, near the newspapers. He made a good-natured joke about the floor plans, one he's probably found himself delivering a thousand times, so I angled in for a question.
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63
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 |
109 |  |
26,514 |  |
season over |  |
119/887 (13.4%) |
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Gregg Marshall is a lot of things: a master motivator, an excellent rap dancer, and the first mid-major head coach to have a double-keg installed in his living room. As of ten months ago, after coming up short in his first six attempts, he's also a member of the NCAA Tournament victor's club -- joining 438 other Division I head coaches who've won games on the Big Bracket. That historic 11-over-6 upset win for Winthrop over Notre Dame, the first non-play-in game W for the Big South Conference, helped Marshall land a job in Hoops Nation's premier mid-major league: the Missouri Valley.
Shooting 16.7 percent. On Nov. 10, Manhattan College went into the New Jersey Institute of Technology to start the season and ripped them apart. The final score was 70-28, and the Jaspers held their hosts to 0.44 points per possession and 16.7 percent shooting. 
On Thanksgiving Day in the opening round, Thompson asserted himself with a 24-and-15 double-double. The next day, he added 21 points and 10 rebounds in the Broncs' win over Big Ten squad Penn State. On Sunday, in the Broncs' consolation matchup with Kansas State, Rider lost by 13 but Thompson shot 9-for-14 for 24 points, nearly doubling the scoring output of K-State phenom Michael Beasley (13 points). 
On Saturday, the 5-10 junior shooting guard scored 23 points at Southern Utah as the Titans stormed to a 78-63 win. He did so on 8-for-19 shooting and a 5-for-12 mark from beyond the arc. This contributed to a season average of 25.3 ppg (currently first among all Big West Conference players), and national-grade scoring efficiency with 34.5 points per 40 minutes (12th in D-I as of Sunday). He's shooting 51 percent from the floor on the campaign, along with a very nice 47.4 percent from threeland (18 in 38 attempts). 
One of the most common e-mails I received last year was the repeated question about where the Mid-Majority Baller of the Specified-Time-Period went. I can't even remember why I took a year off from doing it, it was always such a fun part of every Monday. It had become such an honor that school SID's would put it in press releases, and I got to shake the hands of some of the deserving winners. A couple even sounded honored to receive the title, but I'm sure they were just being kind.
So it's been a turbulent history, which has provided a lot of pressure during my search for a Year Four concept. I needed something that I could handle five days a week, something that would stretch to fit all the eventualities of a college basketball season -- from big upsets to 45-point performances to humdrum conference Tuesdays to bad press-room food. But most of all, most importantly of all, I needed a gimmick.
