North Carolina-Asheville at Winthrop (Big South) Nine teams and fourteen conference games make for a lot of floating variables; it's mathematically unlikely that a league title could come down to any single game, especially the last one of the season. But that's what we've got in the Big South, a winner-take-all No. 1 seed battle between the Eagles and Bulldogs. There are two scenarios... UNCA (9-4) wins if they can pull into a tie, because they'd own the tiebreaker based on a season sweep. Winthrop (10-3) would go two losses clear of the field with a victory with zero games to go. Because this is a conference that plays all its tourney games at the homes of higher seeds, this G!O!T!N! is H!U!G!E!. As recently as Groundhog Day, UNCA was league-undefeated, flying high at 7-0, celebrating a crushing 71-56 win over Winthrop at home. Since then, however, the offense went off the rails, and Asheville struggled to find points in a four-game losing streak where no loss was by fewer than nine points. A couple of home games against teams with losing records made for the perfect slumpbuster, as the Bulldogs sank Charleston Southern and Coastal Carolina. The leading scorer against CCU was none other than 7-6 man/mountain Kenny George (12.6 ppg, D-I leading 71.7 percent shooting), who's been playing 16-18 minutes recently, as his severely taxed knees become more accustomed to the grind. Winthrop also had the opportunity to tuned up for this match with an easy home win over Charleston Southern, following up their disappointing BracketBusters loss to Davidson last Friday night, in which the Eagles scored a season-low 47 points. But there's been nothing dispiriting about the defense, which has held every opponent but one since the first UNCA game at 60 or below. (You can decide whether or not to count the 70 VMI scored against them, playing the Keydets requires stat adjustments like pre-Humidor Coors Field). It's not as if the Eagles don't have weaponry or anything, though -- we're big fans of sophomore guard Mantoris Robinson. The Eagles are 11-1 when he scores above his 6.1 ppg average. LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J. -- Last night was a great evening for regular-season champions, all of which have now clinched at least a spot in the National Invitation Tournament. In addition to five crownings last night, Belmont took a share of the Atlantic Sun title with an 11-point win over Campbell. We have more coming this weekend, with Cornell within a win of a precedent-setting Ivy League championship (and autobid), the Patriot League, Sun Belt and WCC one-seeds are about to become unsettled, and UNC Asheville and Winthrop are squaring off for the Big South. It's the kind of madness that make you happy. Let's celebrate some titles!
The picture above is not of our travelin' hoops buddy. This is Bally's distant cousin Orangey, who retired to Fort Myers a few years back, let himself go, and took a job at a tourist-trap fruit stand near the Minnesota Twins' spring-training camp. What a sell-out. Here are some other snapshots of our soon-to-be-annual Florida swing.
Wright State at Butler (Horizon League) With the way the Horizon League race has shaped up, this could simply be the second of three dogfights between the Bulldogs and the Raiders (who are canines, you know). With a win at home here, Butler will win the Horizon League regular-season outright and pull hosting duties for the second round and semifinals. The championship game is still at the higher remaining seed, so wrapping up a one-seed is important. (If you think the State of College Basketball rankings are confusing, try playing Track The Bracket.) A lot of people aren't that familiar with Wright State (20-7, 12-4), so we'll replay the overview. Despite the same defensive-oriented, grinding style, it's a much different team that won the 2007 Horizon double-championship and went 2-1 against Butler last season. All-everything guard Dashaun Wood has moved on, and it's a two-sophomore show that will be strong for years to come. Guards Vaughn Duggins (14.3 ppg, 2.7 apg) and Todd Brown (12.7 ppg, 4.2 rpg) stand to become the league's best backcourt once the Graves and Green show ends at Butler after the season, and any championship experience they pick up this time around will only make them more dangerous later. And we've spent plenty of time heralding and praising the Bulldogs' superguards and the senior core that comprises five of the team's seven leading scorers, but one of the most compelling storylines of this Butler (25-3, 14-2) season is the undercurrent of good young players that are coming up behind them. Matt Howard, the 6-9 freshman, is certainly making his presence felt with 12.9 ppg and 5.8 rpg, but the rest of the kids are, you know, alright. Willie Veasley is a 6-3 sophomore who plays half the game now and shoots 53 percent. Avery Jukes is a 6-8 soph who could very well grow into an excellent frontcourt complement for Howard, he's hit 77 percent of his shots in spot duty. And anybody who's seen the team play can tell you that freshman guard Shawn Vanzant is playing through early mistakes on the court and could be poised for a breakout year in 2008-09. This won't be the end of this Wright-Butler rivalry.
It's a magical evening, with capacity crowds paying homage to careers great and small, offering cheers and respect to the players they'll always remember as being the ones that represented their school while they were there. Twenty years from now, when two VCU alums meet and catch up over a cold beer, one will say, "Remember Jamal Shuler? Now there was a basketball player." And the other will nod and agree, they'll raise their glasses, and both will drink to the tough, gritty 6-3 guard who always played several inches taller than he really was.
American at Navy (Patriot League) Perhaps it has something to do with the Presidential race or something, but the balance of power in the Patriot League has definitely tilted towards America's capitol region. The champions of recent years, Bucknell and Holy Cross, can be found at mid-table. The Bison and Crusaders are two parts of a five-team glob all within two games of .500, still filibustering for seeding positions three through seven as the regular season approaches its end. Your leaders are the American Eagles (17-10, 9-3), a team that has never achieved the NCAA Tournament. Not to say they haven't come close -- they began their Patriot life in the 2001-02 season (after leaving the CAA) have reached the title game three years in a row, and have not missed the semifinals in six tries. But this looks like the year the Eagles could get over the hump. That's thanks to a breakout junior season from 5-11 guard Garrison Carr (whose 15.8 ppg is over four times last year's 3.8 figure), a methodical, slow style, as well as improved shooting, ball control and defense. The Eagles have won six straight, and could claim their third regular-season title in seven years tonight. But they'll have to do it at Navy (15-12, 8-4), the Patriot's second place team, winners of five straight. The Midshipmen haven't won the league title since the Don DeVoe days of the late Nineties, but could pull into a tie with the tiebreak hammer this evening. That's because Navy won the first meeting between the two, a 77-66 Midshipmen win on Jan. 30 that featured a career-high 36-point performance from one of the most prolific PL shooters in recent memory, Greg Sprink. The 6-5 senior leads the Patriot League with 20.8 ppg and has attempted no fewer than 453 shots. But the Mids have been a bit better on the road (8-4) than at home (7-5), and they'll be facing an American team that's run a 10-6 record away from Bender Arena. Crowd size could play a factor tonight. RICHMOND, Va. -- We don't do a lot of Mid-Major Mailbag action around here anymore (we get plenty interactive enough with the chats, you know). But there's something about the combination of assisted research and the last slow Wednesday of the season that makes us want to break out the blockquote tags. This, recently, from brilliant reader Max: Hey man. You probably already know this or mentioned it somewhere, but I got bored and checked the records for the games the mid-majors hosted this year (based on your Oct. 1 column you did at ESPN) - the big dogs of course came out on top, but only by 24-19! Wow! My fear is that if this info gets out, we may be facing the facist wet dream of a guarantee-game mandated non-conference sked by the big boys, exempting only games played as part of incestuous inter-BCS-conference "challenges" and the like. May God have mercy. My goodness, that's a future freakier than Total Recall. And I didn't know that! But I think we'll continue to see a fair number of these games in the future, but more of the USC at The Citadel variety and fewer of the Michigan State at Bradley types. With the loss of the 2-in-4 rule, power-conference teams can go play in a Multi-Team Event every year to play schools with decent RPI's, and they can get a relatively easy road win by playing a Big South or Atlantic Sun team or something. Those schools are good about not walking into losing propositions when they don't have to. All of this makes for a great excuse to revisit some of our numbers that we were following on a weekly basis before league play started. 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 in a simulation of 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. This is the full 246-team chart (updated hourly), and this is a recording. As of 2/26/2008, 1 p.m. ET There was quite a bit of movement in this here index after BracketBusters weekend, with two new teams entering the top 10 and some shell-shuffling in the top five. But we have the same No. 1 for the seventh straight week, which is just nine weeks fewer than the record 16 weeks "One Sweet Day" spent atop the Billboard Hot 100. We'll be right back after the jump with a long-distance dedication to a very special walk-on.
Southern Illinois at Bradley (Missouri Valley) Drake's Des Moines miracle notwithstanding, it's been a tough year for the 101-year-old Valley. Five new coaches, half the returning starters lost, and a lack of the signature nonconference wins that marked the last few mega-seasons for the ol' MVC. But with this weekend's 5-0 BracketBusters sweep of the televised games and a solid placement of young whippersnapper conferences like the Horizon League in their place, there's a little of that old feeling again. Ah, sweet youth. Southern Illinois (16-12, 10-6) has certainly revitalized itself as well -- after following up a Sweet 16 appearance by starting the season 10-10 (5-4 MVC), SIU has rediscovered the winning ways that went elsewhere, winning seven of nine and four straight. But the margin of error for its weak offense had disappeared, and SIU has struggled on the road (2-9) and given up more points per game overall over last year (60.1 to 56.2). But the offense has come through lately, as the Maroon Dawgs have scored at least 65 in their past five wins. And they've been winning weird: on Saturday in a 74-49 BracketBuster blowout against Nevada, the Salukis managed one of the oddest splits of the season: outrebounded by a whopping 13, but winning on the strength of 21 forced turnovers. We've already done our monthly moralizing about Bradley's off-court issues today (like a real opinion columnist!), but the upshot basketball-wise is that senior guard Daniel Ruffin is suspended after Peoria police booked and jailed him on a battery charge over the weekend. But the Braves were able to win convincingly without Ruffin at Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Saturday, as fellow starting guard Jeremy Crouch led the team in points (24) and rebounds (eight) in a 12-point win. The 6-5 senior leads the team overall in points with 14.9 ppg and is the Valley's third-leading scorer behind Drake's Josh Young and Illinois State's Osiris Eldridge. Watch him and the remaining Braves on ESPN2 tonight -- it's a battle of recent Sweet 16 teams that just might use their experience to string a few wins together in St. Louis, and ultimately steal the autobid from Drake. DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- We're all just getting over the thrills of BracketBuster weekend, but there's plenty to get to as the regular season winds down to its electrifying conclusion. Just 19 days until Selection Sunday...
But if Patty Mills' offensive game against Kent State was stifled, last night's was wet-blanketed. The Australian freshman phenom followed up a five-point performance with a two-point one, as he battled fouls and irrelevance all night. He only took three shots, made just one, and though he had five dimes, his assist-to-turnover ratio of 1.2-to-1 now ranks fifth on the team. And he's the starting point guard! All I'm saying is that asking him to save the team's fortunes this early in his career might be a bad idea. Gonzaga looms again this Saturday.
The 6-5 sophomore's week (for MMBOW reporting purposes) began on Wednesday against Hartford. In a 12-point home win, Mr. Blakely scored 30 points and grabbed 20 rebounds, the 11th 20-20 performance anywhere in D-I so far and just the eighth different player to achieve that plateau (former MMBOW Jason Thompson's done it three times, Michael Beasley twice). Then, Marqus turned in a great road BracketBuster game of his own, albeit a non-televised one. He barely missed becoming the first player this year to reach 20-20 in consecutive games, scoring 19 points and 19 rebounds. But the 84-73 win was a second consecutive victory for the Catamounts, who aren't dead yet in the America East race at 8-6, in third place behind UMBC and Hartford. And, incidentally, the UNCW performance was the Metuchen, N.J. native's 10th straight double-double, and 14th of the year. Marqus is the fifth-leading rebounder in Division I at 11.1 rpg, and he's moving up the national scoring charts with 19.8 ppg (42nd). He's also been the America East player of the week twice this season. Hopefully this will all help fans realize that he's done more than deliver last season's mid-major "two-point dunk shot" of the year, that flying slam in the America East title game which left an imprint of Mr. Blakely's crotch on the face of Albany's . We've linked to that video so many times that we're going to refrain from doing so from here on out. OK, alright, let's watch it again. That never gets old. Congratulations, Marqus, you're the Mid-Majority Baller of the Week. (And we love the new mohawk.)
San Diego at Saint Mary's (West Coast) Considering that SMC's disappointing eight-point loss in the late-night BracketBuster battle with Kent State ended at around 11 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday, this is a pretty quick 44-hour turnaround. That's not a lot of time to recover from the worst shooting shutdown of the year, a 32 percent showing in a home loss in which star freshman guard Patty Mills was humbled like he hasn't been in his young college career. Mills was swallowed up by Kent's Jordan Mincy, held to five points on 2-for-11 shooting. That one didn't count in the conference standings, but this one certainly does -- and it's a crucial game for the Gaels, which cannot lose here and at Gonzaga Saturday if they want to feel at-large safe going into the conference tourney (and trust me, they do). Tonight marks the return match from a Jan. 28 66-53 loss to San Diego in which the Toreros stifled SMC's potent transition game and gave Saint Mary's its first and only conference loss to date. Kent was able the same thing on Saturday, but the Golden Flashes had trouble containing long, muscular forward Diamon Simpson, who kept the Gaels in the game with his 24 points, most in considerable traffic, while no other teammate reached double figures. The 6-7 junior was a solid contributor in the first San Diego game with six points and eight rebounds, and he's starred against San Diego in previous years. He'll need to step up in case the guards fail again. And there's San Diego (16-12, 9-2), which has managed to stay just a little under the radar because of struggles in the nonconference portion (although that Kentucky win looks better every day). But the Toreros could end up as the second team from the WCC to make it to the Dance. Remember that they host the tourney, have only lost to Gonzaga (twice), and would clearly have SMC's number if they are to complete the sweep this evening. In the case of a USD-Gonzaga final, could the Toreros stun the Sags again, like in 2003? And San Diego becomes even more intriguing because of the recent breakout performances by 6-6 freshman Rob Jones, who's become a valid third scoring option and collected four double-figure scoring performances in his last six games. That counts the team-leading 24 (on 10-for-12 shooting) that he contributed in a weekend win up at Santa Clara.
So I got to spend most of Saturday in the ESPNU studios in Charlotte, watching all the games on a bank of screens. (It wasn't ex-Wonk John Gasaway's house, but rather the next best thing.) Somewhere in the middle, I got to tape a segment for SportsCenter U, and I'm glad to say I didn't embarrass myself. There was, however, a "two-shot" that I completely blew, looking into Camera 1 when I should have been looking at the anchor. When you do that, it looked like you're distracted and looking off into space like an idiot. Here are some other observations and hard lessons about doing TV from the weekend:
But you may not know about some of his other distinctions. Gilmore, who set the NCAA career record with 22.7 rpg while at the University of Jacksonville, is the only player in history to have his number retired at two current Atlantic Sun schools (he started at Gardner-Webb when it was a junior college). In 1970, he and guard Rex Morgan -- nicknamed "Batman and Robin" by the national press -- led the 23-1 Dolphins on an improbable Final Four run. During the campaign, Jacksonville scored 100 or more points and toppled Iowa and Kentucky on the way to the national championship game, where they finally fell short against Lew Alcindor and the UCLA dynasty. After the North Florida native spent years away from home in Texas, Gilmore was invited back to campus by an school eager to undo decades of relative neglect to its athletic department, one that was once the giant-killing pride of northern Florida. As of this January, Gilmore's giant presence is back in Jacksonville, where he's serving a role in the administration and calling games for JU's radio broadcasts. We caught up with him last Thursday after an A-Sun tilt with Mercer, and discussed his new role in the university, the program's future, and Jacksonville University then and now. We talked about his playing days -- the rough travel in that old "mid-major" pro league called the ABA, and of course, teenage idol deluxe Bob Costas.
Drake at Butler If you've been reading along this year, this game needs no introduction. It's the two best chances we here at the mid-major level have for deep NCAA runs, No. 1 (Drake) and No. 2 (Butler) in our . They are so similar -- both are the Bulldogs, both wear blue and white, and both rely on the kind of old-school fundamentals that were thought or considered lost and insignificant. But they really are two different teams, and this will be your first chance to see them together on the same floor. And if you don't have a ticket, you'll get to watch along on ESPN2. One point we haven't made yet -- or at least pounded to death -- is that Drake 2008 is eerily reminiscent of Butler 2007. Both are (or were, in one case) height-challenged teams that rely on their guards to jump into the thicket for rebounds. Both kept the turnovers miraculously low, not coughing it up more than 10 or 11 times a game. And both didn't/don't shoot particularly well. You're welcome to compare the statistical profiles of B-Bulldog mega-guard Mike Green and D-Bulldog Leonard Houston, even though Green gets a lot more pub. And Butler's A.J. Graves might be a brother from a different mother with Drake's super walk-on Adam Emmenecker -- both don't look very much like ballplayers, but you could give the ball to either if your basketball life depended on one shot -- you could feel pretty confident you'd live to see tomorrow. Which leads us to the point that we have pulverized to a pulp. Butler 2008 is much better than last year's version, and it's because of a vastly improved inside game. All due respect to the bigs that made last season's team hang tough all the way to the Sweet 16, but Matt Howard is a huge difference-maker on this squad. With 12.8 ppg and 5.7 rpg, the Hoosier State frosh gives the B-Bulldogs the paint threat last season's team never had. The X-factor is the 6-8 Drake senior who will likely be guarding him all night, team rebounding leader Jonathan Cox (11.6 pg, 8.3 rpg). We have the feeling that whichever player gets the better of that matchup will lead his team to victory. CHARLOTTE -- That was fun. Yesterday, we proved conclusively that you can talk about mid-major basketball for six hours and that the topic will attract a couple thousand questions, not the six or seven most people would expect. There were a lot of awesome questions about everything from hoops to the Grateful Dead to Lost to truck stop showers, and I want to personally thank everybody who participated. I'm just feeling guilty (as always) that I couldn't talk to everybody. Yesterday's ESPN.com chat is now certified as the third-longest in SportsNation history, at six hours, one minute. I got a lot of messages during the Davidson-Winthrop game about The Record, which is held by a personality so big that he goes by two sets of initials: B.S. and T.S.G.. The moon shot of seven hours was a big deal in December, and it was for charity and stuff. A few wondered if there was a Worldwide Leader conspiracy to keep the record safe, or if I just wasn't capable of "Simmons stamina" (ewww). I did come up one hour short -- I had trained perfectly (voided my fluids before noon so I didn't have to go to the bathroom all day), and I would have been capable of going many hours more, deep into the night. And yes, ESPN did pull the plug on me before 6 p.m. Eastern, but there's no conspiracy. The true fact is that the questions started to dwindle at 5 p.m., the end of the workweek for all the East Coasters whose mid-major degrees earned them cushy office jobs (or cubicles). So I offer this challenge for the next time (and there will be another attempt someday): we need more support from the midwest and the Left Coast during those late hours. We'll prove that mid-major basketball matters, and that the non-EST time zones matter as well. I hope Simmons can hear Hoops Nation knocking. Our day will come.
CHARLOTTE -- Just a reminder from myself, Bally and Dunk'n Dolphin that there will be a Marathon BracketBusters Chat today at ESPN.com starting at 12 noon Eastern. I'll also likely be talking about that huge South Alabama win at Western Kentucky, and the Stephen F. Austin blowout of Sam Houston that lifted the Lumberjacks into the top 20 of our State ratings. But five hours is indeed a lot of time to fill, so we might end up discussing spring training baseball, Lost and indie rock as well. So we'll see you tomorrow, Boubacar-wise, for a full wrapup of Thursday and Friday's action. To submit a question for the big chat, click on the picture.
South Alabama at Western Kentucky (Sun Belt) If you're a league that hasn't earned an at-large invite to the NCAA Tournament since 1994, there are a few scenarios you can try to get back to two-bid status. The best and easiest is to offer a single team that wins a few games against power-conference schools in December, goes undefeated in league play, and loses in the title game. Or you could be the 2007-08 Sun Belt, with two Top 50 RPI teams that have both have dominated all other league teams, and meet two or three times during the season for classic thrillers. Not that any of this was, or could be, planned out. The Jaguars and Hilltoppers just happened to put together stellar seasons, with serious senior leadership and off-the-charts scoring. That's been the formula for WKU superstar Courtney Lee, a 6-5 senior swing with an NBA body who's scored 21.0 points per ballgame. C-Lee is tied for 26th on the national scoring chart, but our favorite yardstick for measuring his greatness is how many points he scores in terms of game-sized chunks. In coach Darrin Horn's high-rotation system, he's on the floor for about 28 minutes per game, which places him fifth in the country in "points per 40 minutes," at a whopping 29.2. Led by Lee, Western Kentucky has won 11 straight games and are 13-1 in the Sun Belt east, 21-5 overall. That single Belt loss was courtesy of South (In Your Mouth) Alabama, which topped the Toppers 65-61 on Jan. 5, winning all the little battles as well: rebounds, turnovers and fouls. But in their race for the one-seed, the Jags (21-5, 13-2) have blinked twice, at North Texas and Middle Tennessee State. Demetric Bennett, the lone holdover from the 2006 team that scorched WKU in the conference championship, is scoring 20.1 points of his own, including 17 in that first matchup. In the big picture, this game will do little to settle much of anything (even if WKU wins out, the conference tournament is at USA this year), and we're rooting for quadruple overtime. There's little doubt that you'll see these two teams again in Mobile next month, fighting over the autobid in a winner-take-all deathmatch -- but if cookies crumble right, the loser of that theoretical championship game would be Dancing too. JACKSONVILLE -- Lots and lots to get to today with a full slate of red-hot mid-major action, but first I wanted to pimp n' plug tomorrow's Gigantic BracketBusters Marathon Chat on ESPN.com. There are always hundreds of people who don't get their questions attended to during the regular Wednesday deals, so here's your chance! We'll be starting at noon Eastern and going until about 5 p.m., and you can submit your questions early. More, more, more questions! "Marathon" is just such an overused term, the season is that and not a sprint and all, and people always forget to mention . It's also generally a depressing word around here. I've run five of the 26.2 kind in recent years but came into the 2007-08 season in bad physical shape... and I'll end it in even worse shape, thanks to the toll of the road and the constant driving and sitting down this job requires. So what better way to celebrate that than five straight hours of sitting and typing! That's a total calorie burn of about 27. And whenever an ESPN.com chat longer than two hours comes up, there's always talk of The Record, the one held by a certain Mr. Bill Simmons. SportsNation has specific rules about that, and they require thousands of questions an hour to be considered a valid run. I'm not going to pretend I have any chance in hell of even approaching that, the Cult of the Mid-Majority is about 1/100000th the size of his and I don't have the number of movie references at my disposal as he does. But we're going to see how we do tomorrow, and get as many questions in before they pull the plug. Join us!
California-Santa Barbara at Pacific (Big West) Play ball! Off we go to the Left Coast, where the Big West race has become Revenge of the Cal States. Northridge (9-2) and Fullerton (10-3), probably more well-entrenched as baseball schools (and the alma mater of guys like Adam Kennedy and Aaron Rowand, respectively), are ruling the basketball standings as college hardball season gets underway. But don't forget about those two teams, both currently steps behind at 8-4, who've been in the Big West basketball conversation for years now. UCSB hasn't been to the Dance since 2002, but does have the most overall wins of any Big West team this year with 19. The Gauchos, picked by many to win this league, have one of the most productive backcourts in mid-majordom -- heck, the country! -- in terms of hitting 3's and forcing turnovers. Led by electric Alex Harris (20.4 ppg, 46.6 percent 3FG%), Santa Barbara's guards have put the team at fourth nationally in 3-point shooting (41.3 percent) and third in opponent turnover rate (26 percent). With a backcourt like that, who needs forwards? Actually, UCSB does have a pair of good 6-8 specimens. Chris Devine is a 6-8 junior who's chipped in 13 points of his own and offers 5.3 rebounds per contest, and Ivan Elliott is solid at 9.5 ppg and a team-leading 5.8 boards. Pulling hosting duties tonight is Pacific (17-8, 8-4). The Tigers, they of two straight Round of 32 appearances in 2004 and 2005, have been up and down this year, and are currently on a low cycle with two straight losses at Fullerton and Irvine. Easily the hottest-shooting team in the league, leading the Big West in nearly every meaningful timed offensive category (the nicest way possible to gloss over 65 percent free throw shooting I could think of). Just like in the world-beating days, Pacific hits about half its shots, and can nearly match UCSB 3 for 3 with its 40.9 percent beyond-arc mark. And whatever the Tigers accomplish in the next month, 2008-09 is going to be special. Their three double-figure scorers, led by 6-1 Steffan Johnson (15.3 ppg), are all juniors. BOCA RATON, Fla. -- We've been mentioning the Atlantic Sun prominently this season, what with all the early upsets and Belmont's run at a third straight title and all, but we haven't talked much about its most improved team. Stetson has never achieved the NCAA Tournament since Glenn Wilkes (552 wins) brought the school up from NAIA in the Seventies. But they're pretty decent this year. At 13-15 overall, the Hatters have a chance to break .500 for the first time since 2000-01, and they have a solid player in junior Garfield Blair, a 6-5 Orlando native who makes half his shots and leads the team in rebounds as well. Stetson's been hanging around fourth-place position in the league all year (8-5 at the moment), and had a big 12-point home win against East Tennessee State 10 days ago. And contrary to what I've heard about the idea that non-ACC or SEC basketball in Florida not being able to draw fruit flies, Stetson fans are great. There was a good weekday crowd last night, even for a nonconference game with Savannah State, and the atmosphere was rich and homey. A guy with a hoop walked around inviting kids to take a shot with a plastic ball, and you'd get a balsa-wood airplane if you made it. There were cheerleaders in windbreakers. That's right, windbreakers! 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 in a simulation of 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. This is the full 246-team chart (updated hourly), and this is a recording. As of 2/19/2008, 1 p.m. ET Here, then, are the 10 most likely teams from our level to go to the NCAA Tournament and win games there. If you're just joining us, our computer index rewards well-rounded play, recent momentum, road wins and all the things that matter in March. We're going to be super-pithy in this week's version, focusing on what's left to do before the conference tournaments. Drake celebrated its first Valley regular season title in 37 years, and has three conference games to go before it takes its No. 1 seed in St. Louis at Arch Madness. All three teams the Bulldogs must face have already been vanquished: 8-7 Bradley at home tonight is perhaps the toughest test (that was a one-point win on the first go-round), then a visit to Missouri State (6-9) next Tuesday and Senior Day with sad-sack Wichita (3-12). Oh, almost forgot! There's also that ginormous BracketBuster this Saturday at...
Last Thursday, Dansby helped lead Belmont to its sixth straight win to take control of the league race. At East Tennessee State, the team that the Bruins beat to earn the 2007 autobid, Dansby shot 12-for-15 for 28 points, and added eight rebounds in a 87-75 victory. Two days later, the team completed a road sweep by winning at USC Upstate by 10. Dansby was the Bruins' most efficient and productive player on that day, scoring 16 points and grabbing 10 rebounds. For his efforts, he was offered the Atlantic Sun's weekly honor. Shane, a native of Pegram, Tenn. and a former player at Murray State, has made the most of his opportunities as an Bruin upperclassman. He's the team's second-leading scorer with 14.3 ppg, and leads Belmont in boards with 6.1 per contest. Last week's A-Sun Player of the Week nod was his second of the season, and Belmont sports information director Greg Sage notes that Dansby's saved his best performances for the league's best. Against A-Sun teams with winning records, he's averaged 18.8 ppg, 7.5 rpg and has shot 58.4 percent from the floor (including 45.5 percent from 3). If Belmont is to return to the Big Dance for a third straight year, our current Mid-Majority Baller of the Week will likely be a big part of the drive.
North Carolina-Greensboro at Davidson (Southern) It was an instant classic, with all the necessary ingredients. It had two great performances by two great players, a come-from-behind surge and a thrilling finish. Last Wednesday's regionally-televised SoCon battle between Davidson and UNCG was one of the games we'll remember for years, with a career high 41 points by Wildcat star Stephen Curry, a 27-and-12 double-doubling showcase for UNCG standout (and former MMBOW and interview subject) Kyle Hines. Hines' effort, though, was in a losing cause, as Davidson erased a 20-point first-half deficit to win 83-78, keeping its perfect SoCon season intact. Tonight is Round 2 at Davidson, just six days later. The Wildcats will put their 15-game win streak and unblemished 17-0 league record on the line again, although they've already clinched the regular season title and the league tourney No. 1 seed with three games to go. Don't think that they'll take it easy, though -- this game is on ESPN2, with Selection Committee members watching, and there's still the sliver of a chance that this team could sneak in as an at-large team should they win out. Very unlikely, what with a 2-6 nonconference record and near-misses against UNC, Duke and N.C. State, but if losing close ones to ACC teams counted for anything, that entire conference would be admitted to the Dance. Plus, memories are still relatively fresh in this series about the 2005 SoCon semifinal that ruined Davidson's perfect 16-0 season and sent the Wildcats to the NIT instead. That 73-68 UNCG win was the last time the Spartans beat DC -- Hines was a role player on that team, scoring 10 points in the victory. But as a senior, he's developed into the best player in program history, with a 74-game streak of double-figure scoring and 43 double-doubles. Hines has collected school records in points (2,060) and rebounds (993), and with seven boards tonight, he'll become the 95th player in Division I history to join the 2000-1000 Club. It's a club much more exclusive than the "Mile High Club," and you could fit all those players on an Boeing 717. DELAND, Fla. -- Last night on press row at Florida A&M in Tallahassee, my inbox full of nasty notes from Penn fans (more about that later on), I was reminded once again about the key differences between Ivy League and MEAC basketball. And there are differences, even though both conferences would likely split the theoretical Ivy-MEAC Challenge I'd give up a year's salary to see. You're a bandleader, it's a second-half media timeout, and your student section needs to be fired up for the final stretch. What do you play? The Penn band will play Hoops Nation's national anthem, "Rock 'n Roll, Part 2" by Gary Glitter. Fans of the soon-to-be-deposed Ivy champions will get so geeked, so excited, that they will carry the tune through after the time out is over, the haunting strains echoing through the Palestra as play resumed, punctuated occasionally by a rousing "You Suck!". Fans at FAMU do the same sort of thing. Last night as the soon-to-be-deposed MEAC champions fought tooth-and-nail with Coppin State (a battle they'd eventually lose, 89-88), a tune rose up during a media timeout from the band, passed to the students as the game continued. Just as in the Palestra, the Gaither Center rafters echoed with an a capella version of the song that had been begun by a subset of the Marching 100. But the song was very different -- no Seventies glam rock here. It was "Da Butt." You can have your "Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk" -- nothing is as bone-chilling and soul-stirring as hearing a student section in full voice sing Hey yeah-ee yeah. Yeah-ee, Yeah-ee, Yeah-ee Yeah. It's something I'll always carry with me... the sight of hundreds of FAMU students doin' da butt. All. Night. Long.
Gonzaga at San Diego (West Coast) For tonight's G!O!T!N!, we go all the way out west for an ESPN2 matchup between two teams separated by a half-game (and Saint Mary's) in the West Coast Conference. We could have easily chosen URI-Xavier (hott) or New Jersey Tech's try for 0-28 (coldd), but when you have two conference one-loss teams, you have to preempt regularly scheduled programming. Yes, San Diego (15-11, 8-1) is playing remarkably well lately, especially since the Kentucky win on Jan. 29 that put the Toreros on the national scene. There was a bit of an emotional letdown after that that pulled them right off the radar -- losses to Marshall and Cal State Bakersfield -- but they've been fantastic in league play. The biggest reason for that is the emergence of 6-0 junior Brandon Johnson (16.9 ppg, 3.4 apg) as a serious offensive force. In past years, he was always the guy who would take a lot of shots he shouldn't have -- witness his combined 7-for-34 shooting in the 2006-07 Gonzaga series -- and who'd shoot his way into deeper slumps trying to shoot his way out of them. This year's different. With the confidence of his new head coach Bill Grier (who'd spent a decade and a half in Zagland), the offense belongs to him. The January WCC Player of the Month went 10-for-19 for 26 points in the first meeting, a 80-70 loss up in Spokane. We don't talk too much about the G-Men (20-6, 9-1), mostly out of respect for their label-transcending accomplishments... but there are a few ways to beat them. They do foul a bit more than the average team does, but the Toreros aren't the kind of free-throw shooting team (61.6 percent in league games) that could take advantage of that. Best case scenario: a big night from Johnson, a riled-up and raucous home crowd, and second-leading scorer and leading rebounder Gyno Pomare (14.2 ppg, 7.2 rpg) more involved than in the first meeting, and hope that Gonzaga bites itself at the line late. And USD does have some history beating Gonzaga in the Slim Gym, like that 72-63 title game win in 2003 that forced a two-bid WCC. Can you expect to see clips from that game during tonight's broadcast? Yes, yes! TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Plenty of folks have the day off for the holiday today, but we have a patriotic duty to provide you with a Supersized Boubacar that takes into account all the action from the weekend that was. We'll get to that in a second, but I wanted to share with you my most recent fantastic idea: The Mid-Majority Network.
TMMN, a broadband network that may be available on cable and satellite in the upcoming unlimited-bandwidth 3,000-channel era, would be very simple in production and delivery. Nothing but mid-major scouting tapes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. At games, you always see those team staff with the handy-cams making recordings for future review and exchange (they're always aiming the camera at the scoreboard during time outs, I love that). In the future, folks will just make a DVD copy and send it to us. We'll show it all on our network. Imagine tuning in at 2 a.m. on a Friday and seeing Troy playing Florida Atlantic in a Sun Belt showdown from two weeks ago. If that doesn't interest you, maybe we'd have some WCC or Big South at 4 a.m.. TMMN would be ignored by 99 percent of the population, but it would instantly become the only entertainment option for pro scouts, assistant coaches and nutty fans. Some would simply throw out their remotes and watch TMMN all the time. If anybody knows anybody who can help make this happen, please drop a line. I haven't been this excited about something since Friday.
And Arnone, 74, has had plenty of good basketball to call in recent years -- CCSU won the Northeast Conference hoops title in 2000, 2002 and 2007, and has produced a long line of league POY's and first-teamers under the direction of former Central player and UConn assistant Howie Dickenman. We were able to catch up with the legendary voice two weekends ago in New Britain, just after a game in which the young Blue Devils had overwhelmed current first place team Wagner by 26 points. We spoke about his announcing style, the many roles he's taken on at the college and in the community, the history of CCSU basketball, and the way the game as a whole has changed since he's been gently informing audiences about it over a speaker system. Take a listen to a man who came from a coal-mining town, became a war hero, and went on spend a lifetime of loyalty to a tiny Nutmeg State school, achieving legendary status as simply The Best.
Oral Roberts at IUPUI (Summit League) The sands in the regular-season hourglass are now primarily in the bottom chamber, and so there are plenty of games this weekend full of one-seed implications and general position-jockeying. We're looking forward to see how Siena and Loyola plays out in the MAAC (we'll be there, incidentally), especially in light of the 29-point pounding LC put on SC back in January. Stephen F. Austin (8-2) and Northwestern State (7-3) go at it in the Southland, and Ohio and Kent is super-meaningful in the MAC East. But none of these games has very much on the return matchup of one of the hottest G!O!T!N!'s so far this year. Highlights are here, if you didn't get to see it. The Jaguars of Indiana-Purdue-Indianapolis, those double-trouble Badlands Conference boys, are bringing more PU than IU these days -- a Boilermaker-like win streak without the Hoosier-type recruiting violations. IUPUI has won seven in a row to hit 20, the third time in a decade of D-I life the school's hit that plateau and the first since that NCAA year of 2002-03 (also known on campus as the "pants-ripping belly-flop" year). And their last loss was to these very same Oral Roberts Golden Eagles they will face tomorrow -- that 64-63 thriller at the Mabee Center, which IUPUI would have won if a Gary Patterson jumper from the top of the key with under 10 seconds left had found the mark. The Jags don't miss many; at 50.9 percent, it's the second-best floor-shooting team in the nation (Boise State). This is also Division I's most efficient offense, scoring 1.151 points scored per possession. ORU (18-5, 13-0) is two games clear in the BLC loss column and is perfect in calendar year 2008, not losing since a Dec. 29 loss out at longtime play-pals Utah State. All of this earned them a nice home BracketBuster against Creighton, which you'll be able to see at 3 p.m. next Saturday on the Deuce. Oral Roberts fans love to present oral arguments that Robert Jarvis (12.5 ppg, 86.7 percent FT%, 2.3 apg) is a shoo-in for league POY in his junior season, and the team's defense has been so good, it could shut up any team at this level. As for this matchup, the G'Eagles have also only lost to IUPUI once in the past nine meetings, a stretch that runs back to 2005. Which advantage will win out, history or home court? The conference hangs in the balance. PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Admittedly a little nervous this morning, we were thinking of just shutting the site down and ending with this, because there's never going to be a better post here than that one. So how do we follow up the most sublime moment in Mid-Majority history? Photoshop-manipulated pictures of a stuffed basketball talking to a bobblehead. Typical, just typical. Last Friday, as part of our season-long string of contests in which the grand prize is a real-life replica of our site mascot, we asked you to submit a LOLBally for consideration. Seventy-six of you did just that, and after a celebrity panel of judges weighed in and debated over five finalists, we have a winner. Bob C. from Massachusetts, step up and claim your Bally for this here masterpiece:
In journalism school, they fill your mind with a lot of ideas about interviewing, stuff about asking leading questions and guiding the flow of the conversation and all that. But every so often, you have to just roll the tape, keep your mouth shut and let a legend unspool his remarkable life story for the public record. Mr. Pulliam was ever so gracious to give us an hour of his time before Drake traveled to Southern Illinois this week; he spoke about the parallels between the magical Drake basketball teams of 1969 and 2008, the $800 blue leather suit that brought the team luck on its recent 21-game winning streak, and the importance of friendship on a championship basketball team. We also reveal an exclusive, shocking surprise -- he and I are, in fact, both men of the cloth. Listen, too, as he talks about why he turned down his childhood dream (a career with the Boston Celtics or Dallas Cowboys) in order to fulfill his destiny as a destroyer of racial barriers.
Sacred Heart at Wagner (Northeast) We love us some NEC, and we have a fantastic game tonight between first place Sacred Heart (11-2) and second-place Wagner (10-2), two squads in a virtual loss-column heat. Both teams have already locked up bids in an eight-team conference tourney for an 11-team league (my goodness, we're talking like that already), and folks with satellite dishes and the DirecTV Sports Pack will be able to witness the battle for themselves on MSG. Then they'll be able to see the 60-minute boildown any time they want on Friday afternoon with the constant repeats, but that's just how MSG rolls. Wagner won the first meeting up in Connecticut 70-63, but that was an eternity ago on Jan. 5. Sacred Heart, picked by many (including us) to survive the Northeast Conference, has been unstoppable in February, winning eight straight games to jump to the top of the NEC. This year's Pioneers are a sort of mini-Drake, if you will. After the graduation losses of some high-output scorers, this year's version has three main producers who rarely reach the teens. Not the best rebounding or shooting team, but SHU shares the ball extremely well, and is stingy with the basketball, averaging just 13 turnovers per contest. Sophomore guard Chauncey Hardy, who impressed as a freshman with his double-figure scoring, has improved his consistency, and has led the team in scoring in Heart's most recent two wins against Saint Francis (NY) and Monmouth. While many writers were obsessed with Seahawks head coach Mike Deane's goofy seatbelt chair (which he's put away since a few weeks ago), they might have missed the story of Wagner captain Jamal Smith, who collapsed in practice three years ago and was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, the same condition that claimed Hank Gathers' life and befell our good friend, VMI head coach Duggar Baucom. After a long and difficult recovery (Smith is claustrophobic and didn't take to the MRI machine that well), he's back and producing. Now a junior, he's scoring 11.3 ppg and is a key cog in a formidable starting lineup that boasts five 750-point career scorers. All that experience is paying off, with a strong record and two straight overtime wins at Mount Saint Mary's and Quinnipiac. This team is winning with heart (literally) and poise, and doesn't need gimmicks to get attention. Give them a look. PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- If you're an eagle-eyed reader, or just someone who can see things that are orange against a tan background, you have likely noticed the new Welmer-Whelliston Widget™ on the right side of the page.
And the best part of this? It's all for charity. OK, so it's not. I'm keeping all the money. But the widget is updated in real time, every night. Welmer leads by 14 now (just wait until my 25 games in seven days during Championship Week, though), and he was at Northwestern calling a Big Ten game while I was sick at home on the couch watching hoops on TV, The Official Wife of the Mid-Majority™ feeding me cocktails of NyQuil and Dasani. I don't know how he does it, stays on his feet all season. I need him to refer me to his general practitioner.
As you've probably gathered, we were in MAC and Horizon League country last week. There was a lot of snow, but Bally lives in my bookbag on the road and is generally unaffected by weather. It's warm in there.
William & Mary at North Carolina-Wilmington (Colonial) We'll be closely tracking the Rhode Island-Temple battle on the A-14's second tier, as well as the tough test for Drake at Southern Illinois, but tonight's G!O!T!N! spotlight falls on two teams from the Colonial that could be considered both "enigmatic" and "mysterious." Both are currently in the No. 3 and No. 4 positions in the league standings behind VCU and Mason, which is nowhere near where anybody thought they'd be at this point. Let's try and figure out why. William & Mary (13-10, 9-4) is in third place, and no team has benefitted more from the CAA's staggered schedule (necessitated by 18 conference games with 11 opponents). The Tribe has only ventured into the current top two once so far -- a beatdown by VCU in early December -- and won nine of 10 at the expense of teams like Georgia State, Drexel and Hofstra. That's not to say that any of these wins are cheap, mind you, W&M has clearly differentiated itself from the bottom of the pack we pundits always relegate it to. Not the most imposing team physically (it's last in the CAA in rebounds), but they shoot the 3 well, spread the scoring out and play decent perimeter D. Then there's UNCW (15-10, 8-5), which has already lost to W&M in the house of pain that is Kaplan Arena, despite a double-double by Canadian mammoth Vladimir Kuljanin. The Seahawks have already double their 2006-07 win total of seven, thanks to a senior-laden team with a quartet of final-year double-figure scorers led by 16.0 ppg scorer T.J. Carter, who wasn't around for last year's 7-22 diaster due to injury. Now, imagine how good this team would be if they played a little defense... the days when UNCW put up a firewall at the timeline are long gone since the Brad Brownell era, and the Seahawks are the worst in the CAA at forcing turnovers. And if you want to get geeky about it, each opponent possession averages 1.023 points allowed, which is among the worst in the country. PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- We've been promising this for a few days before getting sidetracked with actual news, but we have a winner in our "Hunan: Return of the Phoenix" contest, which challenged you to come up with a movie to fit an existing title. Our champion is Tom from Omaha, who submitted a totally believable synopsis of a film that combines Creighton basketball, goofiness and fantastic historical film references. P'Allen Stinnett (the P stands for Phoenix) is an expert in the ways of shaolin hoops, who is recruited by a large midwestern college to infiltrate a secret organization called "The Valley" by participating in a tournament. Along the way, he meets Dane "The Dragon" Watts and Booker "Fu" Woodfox, who also have skills in the ways of the ball. Then it turns out that the tournament is rigged against them, and there are some awesome fight scenes with referees. The end of the movie is a dunk contest in a hall of mirrors with the evil conference overlord, and our hero wins by using "Hunan," which is a way of dunking with your mind. I can totally see Doug Elgin as a kung-fu movie villain. So Tom wins a real-life stuffed Bally, and we're looking forward to some snapshots of the li'l orange dude from the Qwest Center. Furthermore, we'll be announcing the winner of our LOLBally contest later in the week, and you can sneak your submission in under the deadline if it's good. No rules, man. 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 in a simulation of 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. This is the full 246-team chart (updated hourly), and this is a recording. As of 2/12/2008, 3 p.m. ET 1. Drake (Missouri Valley), 107.39 22-1 (13-0) [1] Clarification is always a good thing... we've only received one hate-mail letter about the Atlantic 14 since putting up the starburst at the top of the index page (and I quote: "whut flavor crack r you smoking, a-10 isnt mid major" A: Blueberry-Banana!). Now, I think I'm able to articulate what we're doing here with The State rankings. It's not a predictive formula, it's not something to take to the sportsbook in February. Our stat-basket formula, carefully calibrated to last year's Final Four, is measuring how well-rounded teams are -- as such, we are indexing the relative ability of teams to survive in a one-and-done situation. And in March, isn't that all anybody wants to know? Which Achilles' heels might end up with spears in them?
Townsend missed only four of his 19 shots from the floor last week during Northridge's NoCal swing, which is pretty good. OK, it's awesome. In 38 minutes of play in a 78-73 overtime loss at Pacific last Thursday, the Phoenix native hit 5-of-7 shots for 12 points. But up the road at Davis on Saturday, Townsend brought a bitter, sour taste to the Aggie Pack's "Candy Madness" by hitting 9-of-11 shots for a game- and career-high 21 in the Matadors' 77-57 pullaway win. And all that's impressive enough, but we haven't even got to the rebounds yet. In the Pacific game, he nabbed 13 boards. But on Saturday at UCD, he muscled and tussled his way to 22 caroms, two short of the school's 37-year-old school record and tied for the fourth-higest total of anyone, anywhere in Division I this 2007-08 season. The performance was dubbed as one of the finest in school history and Tremaine was, quite understandably, the Big West Conference player of the week. Mr. Townsend is having a fantastic year in his first campaign at Northridge, after transferring in from Saddleback Junior College in Arizona last summer. He's an inside-outside threat who averages 10.5 ppg, and is often the fourth option in a deep Matador rotation. Tremaine leads the team with 9.2 rpg, shoots 55.6 percent and has earned seven double-doubles on the season, including the two from the weekend that was. He claims that he once scored a basket for the other team in a game, but that's not happening lately -- he's helping lead the Matadors to what could be a dream season. Congratulations, Tremaine, you're the Mid-Majority Baller of the Week.
Princeton at Pennsylvania (Ivy League) Even the great rivalries have their down years, and it's usually because one or the other team involved is down. Even the most diehard Penn fan will admit that the P&P games have been somewhat lackluster during this recent swan-dive of a decline that Princeton's suffered in the past several seasons, and I've actually detected -- gasp! -- sympathy for the Tiger-men on the part of the Quaker faithful in the days not-so-long gone by. But here's what we're wondering: now that the long string of Penn championships appears to be over in the face of a New Cornell Reality, how will this rivalry react? If there's no league to play for, no title at stake, will the entire focus of the season be beating the other? Will everybody just stop caring? We don't have very much experience with this, so we don't know... Penn and Princeton have lorded over the Leaves so long that an entire generation has never seen both teams, to put it bluntly, suck simultaneously. Princeton (5-14, 2-2) is backing away from the hybrid approach of Joe Scott with the summer hiring of Sydney Johnson, and Glen Miller just doesn't have the horses in Year Two at Penn (7-14, 2-2). So instead of the Cornell-Columbia road weekend being an opportunity for fans of the P's to slip out of town on a relaxing ski trip, it's two quick and painful losses for both teams. And if you've been reading along these last few years, you know how dearly I love The Palestra and this rivalry, and it's been the thrill of a lifetime to become an honorary member of Penn's Red and Blue Crew these past few years. We're currently back at home recuperating from our 11-day ass-pounder of a Midwestern trip, and will only be present in spirit tonight. But we're definitely thinking of you as you paint those rollouts this afternoon. Make 'em good!
PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- We'll get to all the Bally ephemera tomorrow, promise, but we're mulling over the BracketBusters TV announcement from yesterday. We wanted to share it with you if you didn't get the memo or are on the wrong mailing list. So here, then, is the final lineup for Mid-Majorpalooza 2008. All times Eastern, becuse it's the bEST. Friday, Feb. 22 7 p.m. Davidson at Winthrop - ESPN2 Saturday, Feb. 23 11 a.m. Virginia Commonwealth at Akron - ESPN2 Sunday, Feb. 24 6:30 p.m. Wright State at Illinois State - ESPNU
Utah State at Nevada (Western Athletic) So tonight we have a rare Monday tilt in the Wickity WAC, made possible by an extreme-weather postponement on Jan. 5. (Snow in Nevada? We here at TMM are not exactly shocked about that.) It's Utah State, the 18-6 (8-1) leaders of the conference, traveling to four-in-a-row NCAA participant Nevada hanging in at 7-3 (15-8 overall), the latest in a four-year series of Pack-Aggie G!O!T!N! selections. If there's a trend this year in the Western Athletic Conference, it's extreme youth. There will be more freshmen and sophomores on the floor this evening than your average fraternity spring rush, with 12 underclassmen in total across the two squads. We've been saying this for a while, but despite the WAC's obvious one-bid status, whichever team wins the autobid this year is instantly the favorite for the next two seasons... because there's nothing like championship experience on a young team to ensure future success. And perhaps that lucky team will be Utah State, winners of three straight and 13 of its last 14. An early 0-5 road start dug them into a hole, but the Aggies are starting to fire on a regularly complete set of cylinders. Despite its youth, the team is the fourth-best shooting team in the nation at 50.5 percent (the defense is another story). Senior leader Jaycee Carroll, he of WAC-high 21.5 ppg and 50.7 percent 3-point shooting (77-of-152), is showing the padawan Aggies the way. On the other side is Nevada, which has a senior leader of its own, Marcelus Kemp. The 6-5 guard is second in the WAC scoring race at 19.2 ppg, leading a Pack phalanx of four double-figure underclassman scorers. Sophomore sensation JaVale McGee (13.4 ppg, 7.8 rpg) is the kind of tall (6-11) inside-outside threat that Nevada fans have come to love and expect after enjoying now-departed Nick Fazekas for so long, and the team as a whole is beginning to find the defense that championship teams tend to have. Since that 95-80 home embarrassment to Boise State, the Wolf Pack have held all but one opponent to sub-44 percent shooting. That one, of course, was USU, which torched Nevada for 54 percent in a 77-63 rollover in Logan just nine days ago. Payback time, or just pay-more? HAMDEN, Conn. -- We have been, and we stand, accused. Accused! Of having too much fun around here, of shifting the focus off basketball and running too many contests, pictures of pretty girls, cartoons and snapshots of pet basketballs. So we're going to put on our super-serious faces, talk in our super-low "business" voices, and get through this jam-packed Monday Boubacar without telling any jokes. At least we'll try to.
Western Michigan at Ohio (Mid-American) You might think the East-West thing in the Mid-American Conference is just some random divisional fabrication of convenience. You're forgetting something -- this is Ohio on one side, and Michigan on the other. Folks from both places talk about the opposite state as if people on the other side of the line were descended from gophers, and we hear there's a collegiate American-style football game every fall that gets Ohioans and Michiganders pretty riled up. OK, so having Toledo in the West makes it a little more complicated, but look at the current situation in the MAC. The top four East teams are basking in national love, playing televised BracketBusters, while the three directionals from Water-Winter Wonderland leading the obscure and "weak West." So Ohio and Michigan have all sorts of new reasons to hate each other. And no team is in better position to salvage Michigan's MAC pride than West leader Western (7-2), the hottest offense in the conference (75.9 points per game in 2007-08) and destroyers of Akron on Wednesday. The Broncos, winners of three straight, now set their sights on another Eastern power on Saturday: Ohio. The 6-3 Bobcats are still smarting from a 63-56 loss at Eastern, but still hold the second-highest RPI in the conference (52), five spots behind Kent. Ohio's defense has become rock-solid and consistent since MAC play began, but extreme swings in offensive efficiency have dictated whether the team wins or loses on any given evening -- for instance, in the loss at EMU, no Bobcat scored in double figures. The winning formula may be simpler than that: when powerful senior forward Leon Williams gets the ball a lot, they win. The Bobcats are 7-1 when he takes at least 10 shots. CHICAGO -- We're holding off on announcing the winner of our Hunan: Return of the Phoenix movie contest, because there are two sterling entries that we're having trouble choosing between. Right now, we're in the process of sending them to friends and asking them to tell us which one makes them laugh more. We'd let you decide, but lack the proper computer savvy to set up a poll on this "blog" contraption. But we're starting a new contest today! It's a lot easier than the last one, and we're giving you until next Tuesday to complete the task. If you're just joining us, the prize for every TMM contest this year is a stuffed Bally (the cute orange basketball with arms and legs that's the mascot and undisputed star of the website). Like those swords in the Marines, these are earned and never given (OK, so Will Leitch has one, but that's it). We appreciate your bribes, barters and offers, but you've got to win one. This new contest tests your LOL abilities. You may be familiar with lolcats or any other variation on the theme, which Wikipedia (always right) defines as "an image combining a photograph of an animal, most frequently a cat, with a subjectively humorous and idiosyncratic caption in broken English referred to as Kitty Pidgin, Kitteh, or lolspeak." Superimposed text, usually in the Impact or Arial Black typefaces (white with black borders), describes what the subject is "saying." It's the funniest thing since Tex Avery cartoons, and The Official Wife™ and I are attending the big ROFLCon once the season is complete. Your job is to create a LOLBally based on a snapshot of our orange friend, one we provide. Fire up your Photoshop, then send in your submission to lolbally at midmajority dot com. (Please note that this is an auto-box, and any other mail to this address won't be read or returned.) After the jump, the base image -- once again, contributed by our good friend Rod in Asheville.
Wright State at Cleveland State (Horizon League) There are quite a few intriguing games out there in Hoops Nation on this Thursday. Western Kentucky takes a trip to North Texas' Super Pit to try and knock off the defensing Sun Belt champs -- something East co-leader South Alabama couldn't do last week. Cal State Northridge (15-5, 7-1) tries to hold onto its tenuous position atop the Big West at Pacific. And Oral Roberts will defend its perfect 10-0 Badlands Conference record against one of the only teams in the league capable of beating the G'Eagles, that being Oakland. But, as we are wont to do occasionally, we're pulling rank and beaming the G!O!T!N! spotlight on the game we're going to. We've earned that right, and it took years! This is, in basic terms, a battle for second place in the Horizon League between two 7-4 teams that have both beaten Butler (and could do it again in March to force a two-bid situation). Those Bulldogs may be streaking with four straight wins, but Wright's on a six-game run marked by the same slow, sloggy play we can to know and love last year. The Raiders will grind the tempo down to a near-halt, pick the perfect 3, and hit it. They're making 40 percent of their bombs, 11th best in the country. Their two leading scorers, Vaughn Duggins and Todd Brown, have combined to hit 83 of them. And they're sophomores, so it's very likely that they'll inherit the "best backcourt in the Horizon" tag when Graves and Green are done with it. Cleveland State... what can we say? The states of Wisconsin and Illinois have conspired to stop its season-opening 7-0 run, as a trip to Green Bay and Milwaukee started it, followed by two drops against UIC and Loyola. It's a simple prognosis, really: they've stopped scoring points and are giving up a lot more. During the seven-game streak, more points than possessions and less given up per opponent drive, and in the past four games it's pretty much been the opposite. But they can still seal the perimeter like nobody's business -- a HL-leading 27.5 percent 3-point tries allowed -- and that'll come in handy tonight against the Wright sharpshooters as they try to replicate the positive 65-63 result from Jan. 12. CLEVELAND -- There are a lot of subtle differences between higher-strata conferences and the leagues at our level. For instance, when a team in the ACC or Pac 10 is having a bad year, the media is still going to write about it, no matter what. The stories usually come with the angle of, "what's going on at Kentucky?" or "how come Florida State is such a disappointment all the time?" When you're playing in a certain price range, failure is interesting enough to generate national column inches. That isn't the case down here. If a team is having a bad year, they're out of sight and out of mind. To wit: we have a non-televised BracketBuster coming up at Old Dominion, with Bucknell providing the opposition. The visiting Bison have represented the Patriot League as automatic qualifiers two out of the last three years, and ODU has gone to the NCAA twice since 2005 as well. The Monarchs were so good last year, they got in as an at-large team. But in 2008, both are struggling in the shadows, twin examples of how hard it is to maintain success -- and the public interest -- when you don't have SEC-type resources. George Washington, which has been to the NCAA's three years running, isn't even near the national radar right now because of its 5-13 record. There are no five-minute "what's wrong with the Colonials?" pieces on College GameNight. Why is that? (While we're on the subject of Bucknell, our best wishes to Pat Flannery and Co. Get well soon, coach.) The conferences down here are different not only from a publicity standpoint, but because of what the selection committee demands a non-BCS league table should look like. Conferences are given higher seeds depending on the shape of their standings... if a league has a clear frontrunner, a Davidson or a Butler, the league champion is rewarded with a lower seed number. If there are six or seven solid teams, as is the case in the MAC or Atlantic 10 this year, the conference stands to be punished for its parity. But that's what a limited-entry market like the NCAA Tournament requires: separation. And that's why a night like last night, with top teams in those league getting knocked off and creating multi-loss logjams in the standings, is bittersweet. Sweet because it's great to see leagues full of strong, tough teams that are capable of winning on any given night, but a bit sour because it limits the number of NCAA bids. A perfect conference in the eyes of unattached fans (like us) is one where every team finishes .500 after two months of close, thrilling games. But this is a bid-driven world, one that requires stratification for widespread respect. It's just the way things go.
Edible State I read somewhere once that nine out of ten new restaurants fail, that the crowded market and the high first-year costs conspire to ruin nearly all new ventures. This statistic, most assuredly, does not apply to Texas. On a warm late January night, wearing shirtsleeves, I cruised through the northwest Houston suburbs in a powder blue Kia Rio, modern country music on the two-speaker radio, manual windows rolled all the way down. Reflected in the windshield as I leaned forward, endless neon lights that would rival even the Las Vegas Strip. But these signs were advertising strip steaks, chicken strips, batter-fried fish sticks.
Chains of Love The Donner Party, those westbound settlers who were looking for gold to pan and ended up as each other's dinner, was a contingent cut in half by the towering gateway that separates two areas that came to be Nevada and California. Donner Pass is named for the group that was 87 strong on the east side of the mountains in the summer of 1846, and only 48 when survivors emerged the next spring. A 7,840-foot mountain can be cruel like that. One hundred and sixty-one winters later, a college basketball reporter zoomed up that oversized hill, ears popping to the rhythm of a rock and roll song on the radio. He -- I mean I -- had rented a gold-colored Kia Rio at San Jose International Airport earlier that day, and after a three-hour stop at a UC-Davis game, took to the mountains. Late one clear and cold Thursday night in January of 2008, I pulled over at a mountainside rest area, kept the engine running for heat, and dreamed high country dreams. As is tradition here at TMM, we've put together a full rundown of all 50 announced BracketBusters matchups. Mostly because we know that it's incredibly difficult to find a complete list of all the non-TV games, which are quietly announced by the schools after ESPN unleashes the televised matchups. This year, we've got a link to a preview page for each matchup (courtesy of our alter-ego friends at Basketball State) that shows rosters, stats, recent meetings (if any) and a bunch of other stuff. After the jump, the full list.
Vermont at Binghamton (America East) It's a noticeable slight that we've only been to one America East game all year (we'll be fixing that soon enough). If we weren't at this battle between MAC conference leaders, the MMEC is where we'd want to be. Tonight in the Mid-Majority Events Center (a building we've long claimed naming rights to since they haven't been sold), we have the two 6-3 teams currently chasing 7-2 UMBC for the conference's top spot. And admittedly, the prize in this league could very well be a trip to Dayton to play one of the historically black conference champions in the play-in game. The conference's RPI is 27, the non-conference record is 38-72, and only two teams (UMBC and Vermont) have overall winning records. The highest ceiling available for the champion right now seems to be a regular bottom seed and a date with a No. 1, which is rarer than you might think for this once-proud league. Since 1980, it's been slotted at No. 16 just five times. Vermont was racked hard by bad luck in the nonconference portion of the schedule, having to work around a list of injuries that could have filled out a Star Wars opening title sequence: Tim McCrory (foot), Evan Fjeld (hand), Joey Accaoui (groin) and Marqus Blakely (foot). Left with mostly guards, the Catamounts stumbled to a 3-7 mark before the roster started to reform. Since Dec. 22, they're 8-3, and have developed as the premier defensive team in the conference. Vermont allows just 40.2 percent shooting and .948 points per possession, and it's still a young team. Only two senior contributors will graduate, which is bad news for everyone else. Blakely, a sophomore, scores 19.2 points and grabs 9.6 rebounds a game, and is only getting better. Oh, alright, let's look at that dunk one more time. Binghamton, in its first year under Kevin Broadus, was our original league pick but suffered from a schedule that was just too hard for a retooling program. The team was in a 1-7 hole by exams, and have turned things around to the tune of 9-4. A five-game win streak just went by the boards against Hartford on Saturday. The Bearcats are the best 3-point shooting team in league games at 43.5 percent, but the man who has the name most conducive to the 3, Lazar Trifunovic, hasn't made a single one. He's a 6-8 sophomore who leads the team in points (16.0) and rebounds (7.9), and he leaves the tri fun to the others.
KALAMAZOO, Mich. -- At 7:48 p.m. Central Standard Time on Tuesday night, I became infected with The Knowledge. After nearly 48 hours of conscientious objection, of no TV or radio or websites other than Google Maps, of looking the other way when passing by USA Today newsboxes, I now know who won the Super Bowl. The record, and the mythical title of Last Man in America To Know, will have to wait for another year. Because, surely, if a campaign is going to go down in flames, this is how it should go down. There are no words. Thank you, Valpo. 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 in a simulation of 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. This is the full 246-team chart (updated hourly), and this is a recording. As of 2/5/2008, 1 p.m. ET Let's put this year's Bulldogs season in Valley perspective and stark relief. Now that they've won against each of the other nine teams (and have already recorded sweeps against Creighton and Indiana State), they have broken a lot of losing streaks against a lot of teams. Coming into this year, Drake had lost to Missouri State 10 times in a row, Creighton six times, and Bradley three. And, of course, there was that 17-game drought against Southern Illinois. Get this: over the last decade, Drake has only enjoyed winning records against two MVC teams, their former cellar-mates Evansville (12-9) and Indiana State (13-8). This really is a special year.
Drake at Illinois State (Missouri Valley) Yes, everybody knows about the 19-game winning streak. But here begins the true grind for Drake, three games which will test their mettle like no stretch has. OK, fine, whatever, so we've been saying things like that all season... but in the next two weeks, the 20-1 (11-0 MVC) Bulldogs will play road games against top-100 RPI teams that also happen to be above .500 in the Valley, in places that have reputations as arenas where losing streaks go to die. Next Wednesday, it's Southern Illinois and their legendary SIU Arena crowd, and then it's on to Northern Iowa, which we still say is the most dangerous matchup in the league for this team. But tonight, it's a trip to Redbird Arena to play second-place Illinois State, a team that just two weeks ago was a fellow undefeated. A 79-73 Drake win in Des Moines changed that, and it was the beginning of something of a confidence crisis for the Redbirds. Stripped of their own nine-game win streak, Illinois State went on to lose two of its next four, and the pair it won -- at home versus Indiana State and on the road at Missouri State -- were hardly dominant, two victories won by a combined four points. So what happened? Wasn't the rebounding -- they've won the boards battle in each game. The floor shooting is still the Valley's best. They're beginning to droop defensively, and have given up at least a point per opponent possession every time out since Drake. That didn't happen in their previous 12 games. Finding new angles on Drake is getting more and more difficult the longer the streak continues, but it's a good time to talk about a player that slips through the publicity cracks from time to time. I'm talking about Leonard Houston, the 6-3 four-year senior guard who was a bit player for three years until really coming into his own in this dream season. He had his best shooting night of the year in the first Illinois State game (7-for-11 for 18 points), and he's doubled his scoring average and is the team's second-leading point-getter (and the Valley's No. 3) at 14.7 ppg. Despite all that, he's only led the team in scoring on a per-game basis once. That's how balanced this team is! And ladies, he's into long walks on the beach and eating s'mores. It's hard not to love these guys, but Illinois State will do its best to resist their charms. VALPARAISO, Ind. -- We're in Day Two of the annual Super Bowl info-moratorium, the first time in seven years we've made it through until Tuesday without knowing any details of the "big game" or who won. It's a combination of old-fashioned obliviousness and modern technology that's making this happen. My temp-spam filter has already zapped 37 rogue incoming messages containing the words "Super," "Patriots" or "Giants." There were a few close calls, though. After I posted my dare to the public to try harder in getting the news to me yesterday (we're all about degree of difficulty here at TMM), there were eight voicemails from people I haven't heard from in ages -- still marked as "new." And since it was one of my rare motel stays, by 4 p.m. I was getting kinda hungry in the bunker. In order to stay away from the ESPN that was surely on the TV's at the Applebee's next door, I called Pizza Hut and had them bring a pie over. Twenty minutes later, the driver arrived. "So, what'd you think of the game last night?" asked the small man, a dead ringer for Curtis Armstrong, while I was scribbling my signature on the receipt. "One more word, and you're not getting a tip," I replied. He had no idea what I was talking about. I don't know if I'm going to make it through until Wednesday and break my personal record. I have a game tonight, and that's a sporting event, and I'm sure there will be an offhanded remark about the Super Bowl in there somewhere, like an oblique reference to the Manning family (this being Indiana). Or somebody in the stands will be carrying a big sign with the score on it, I don't know. But I was really good at tuning out the presidential race until two weeks ago, and still don't know what happened in the Lost season premiere (don't ruin it, it's on the TiVo when I get home)... I just have no idea why ignoring the Super Bowl takes so much effort.
There's more than one Bally, and that's because we occasionally hold contests here and give away real-life versions of the cartoon buddy who goes everywhere with me on my travels. Like, for instance, our Hunan: Return Of The Phoenix movie treatment contest, which might be extended an extra day because the entries are so awesome, and we want more, more, more awesomeness. Anyway, speaking of awesomeness, there's a secret e-mail address on the polybag that the orange guy comes in, along with an invitation to take him to games and send in pictures. And as you might know, UNC-Asheville beat Winthrop 71-56 on Saturday, and it was a crucial (and awesome) Big South game that provided separation in a league that WU has lorded over for seeming centuries. But longtime reader and local legend Rod in Asheville, in bringing a certain friend to the game, set the Bally bar about as high as it could go. Anybody who sends in snapshots from here on out will have to face the inevitable comparisons to Rod's entries, and I just hope that this doesn't dissuade anybody from future submissions out of pure shame. After the jump, we have Bally with hot girls, and that's what you -- the future picture sender-inner -- have to compete with. I'm just going to sit back over here in the corner, and let Rod take the story from here.
You're unlikely to find anyone anywhere who had the kind of week McCalebb did, as the 6-0 guard put in his two best performances of his senior campaign so far. In a road loss at Florida Atlantic last Wednesday, he did everything he could to secure a win -- 33 points on 11-for-19 shooting (as well as 8-for-12 on foul shots), eight rebounds, five assists. But it was when the Privateers returned home on Saturday to play Troy that he turned in his season's masterpiece. In an 82-73 win, McCalebb had another 33 points -- this time shooting 10-for-14, including five of six from downtown. He drained eight of his nine one-pointers, and contributed five boards, five dimes and four steals. It's mindboggling that just 326 people witnessed the performance (those numbers are always skewed northward, too). But we're sure there were at least a couple NBA scouts at the media table that weren't counted in that number. He's the leading scorer in the Sun Belt at 23.2 ppg, which puts him at eighth nationally. McCalebb also leads the conference in steals at 2.5 spg (19th nationally). But what the stat sheet doesn't show is his immense loyalty. With the talent he possesses, he could be playing -- starting! -- at an SEC school, and he's had plenty of opportunities to bolt for more televised pastures. The local product has stayed at home in New Orleans despite having played for three different coaches at UNO in the last three years. The previous two abandoned UNO for higher-paying assistant gigs these past two summers, and under Joe Pasternack (another New Orleans native), McCalebb is fashioning a final college season to remember. Congratulations, Bo, you're the MMBOW (that rhymes).
Gonzaga at Saint Mary's (West Coast) We get a lot of questions as to why we actually mention Gonzaga by its actual school title now, as we got a full two years out of the "Unnamed Major Program From the Northwest" title and its associated UMPFN acronym. That's a lot of mileage for one gag. It originated back in 2004 when (much like this year with the Xaviers) a lot of fans out there got all cranky about being lumped in with the lowly mid-majors, and we gave them their wish by making letters out of them. Truth was, we were and still are totally jealous of what they've done in Spokane, turning a basketball backwater into a national powerhouse in one short decade with devoted resources, a team concept, outstanding recruiting and timely success. This was hard work, not lightning in a bottle -- it could theoretically happen anywhere, from Canisius to Morehead State. But it hasn't, despite all the talk about programs wanting to be the "next Gonzaga" -- lots of wannabes have ended up on the endless lose-fire-hire treadmill instead. And yes, the Zags would be in a power conference if it wasn't for the school's lack of football, and it's the only school in the BracketBusters leagues that you can say, straight-faced, is an "exception." So tonight, it's another WCC clash in Moraga, Calif. with the Gaels, and they'll bring a 17-5 (6-0 in league) record to the table, along with the league's best and most efficient offense, defense and ball-sharing abilities. Sophomore big-guard Matt Bouldin (12.7 ppg, 4.0 rpg) is shaping up to be the next Superzag, and he absolutely shot the lights out every time we saw him live as a freshman. Speaking of frosh, there's also 6-10 Austin Daye (11.5 ppg), who shoots 90 percent from the line despite his size. Everywhere you look on this team, you see someone who can beat you. Which will make things all the harder for Saint Mary's (18-3, 5-1) tonight, despite getting to play in front of the "Gael Force" student section. But for the first time since the Nineties, SMC has three major scoring options at different sizes, A being its Australian aborigine point guard Patty Mills (14.9 ppg, 3.7 apg), who will get his first taste of the rivalry tonight. There's a lot of history in this series, and Gonzaga's been the school's measuring stick for the Gaels for years now with series splits in 2004-05 and last season. They've been ranked twice this year after a big victories over Oregon and later a stretch of 10 wins in 11 games, but a nationally televised (ESPN2) win over their longtime league rivals would signal that this team is truly ready for the big time. MEADVILLE, Pa. -- It's a lot of effort trying to live a life free of American-style football, the lengths you have to go to in order to pretend it doesn't exist. It's come to this, it really has, and I can't believe it myself. But I made it through the night, Hoops Nation. I'm shacked out in a little hotel room well off the main drag, trying to completely avoid the Super Bowl news outside. The TV is off, the iPod is providing the entertainment, the RSS newsreader site in a dusty corner of the hard drive, unlaunched. The calls are being carefully screened and all e-mail is coming through on a need-to-know basis. I'm going as long as I can without knowing who won last night or what the score was, and with any luck, I'll make it through 'til Tuesday. [UPDATE 2:01 PM ET: I'm still in the dark about the final result, but I appreciate all you folks who've taken it upon yourselves to bomb my e-mail box and comment form. Try harder, suckas!] Good thing there was a day and a half's worth of full of great weekend hoops to serve as a distraction, however temporary. Roll tape! NEW BRITAIN, Conn. -- If you've been reading along, you know how we feel about American-style football, which has its big over-bloated title game this weekend. The sport has come to define American maleness and took over the true title of "America's pastime" long ago -- not actually strapping the pads on and playing, but sitting around watching it. Seriously, now. If being a manly-man in America means a.) sitting around getting fat on Thickburgers while watching rock-em-sock-em gladiator combat on TV, b.) alienating your wife on weekends, and c.) secretly popping Levitras in the bathroom when nobody's around, I want to run off in the woods with Robert Bly. (Whatever happened to him? Dude had some good points.) Anyway... I have a little game I've played for the past 25 years or so, and it's an annual test of my ability to stay off the grid. It goes like this: I see how long I can go without knowing who won the Super Bowl, and then how long I can last without having the final score trickle through the elaborate screens and defenses. Last year, when I was in California, I didn't find out the winning team until Monday morning, when I saw a color picture of Peyton Manning with his arms raised on the cover of a newspaper (Doh!). The final score got through when I heard it on a radio news broadcast played over a truck stop P.A. system about two hours later. My record was three days, back in 1988 when the Bengals played the 49ers. I was able to hold out against all Super Bowl-related information until Wednesday afternoon, but then again I was at a boarding school on the top of a remote hill in New Hampshire. This was literally the middle of nowhere, untouched by culture. I'm sure there are people there who still think Reagan's in office. It's been a while since I've made it until Tuesday, but I'm going to do everything I can this year. No Google Reader, elaborate spam filters on the e-mail and feedback form, and I'm stocking up on supplies so I don't have to walk near any newsstands (Doh!). And you can be sure of one thing: I'm getting the hell out of New England. PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- I report to you today that there really is such a thing as Travel Hell, but it's more of a fluid state of mind and matter than an actual place. (OK, so it's more like Travel Heck, since nobody died.) A 300-mile drive from Denton, Tex. to Houston that started at 12:30 a.m. Central, punctured and punctuated by a carefully-timed 20-minte nap, allowed us to get the rental car back to Hobby in time and make our 6:30 flight. Too bad there was no flight, since Chicago airports had placed a moratorium on new landings. The weather map looked like a blue goo-monster had swallowed up most of the Missouri Valley Conference. Hope everyone there's okay. We were rerouted through Philadelphia instead, and the complete clusterhump that the U.S. airline system had devolved into meant an extra hour's worth of delay on the layover. When we finally got to Providence, we had to wait an extra two hours for our luggage to catch up with us, and when it did it looked like it had been riding on the top of the plane instead of in the cargo hold -- battered and soggy, its ballistic nylon pushed to the very edge of its waterproofing. Bally swears that he'll never fly Southwest Airlines again, but that's just the "air rage" talking. Our devil-deal states that we have to make posts here every weekday, so we're dropping in to say hello. But we'll catch up tomorrow with a special Saturday Boubacar, something that's never been done before in the long history of the site. Until then, travel safe and sleep tight, Hoops Nation. |
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63
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 |
109 |  |
26,514 |  |
season over |  |
119/887 (13.4%) |
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Butler. All hail your Horizon League regular-season champion Bulldogs, who at 15-2 have claimed one of the titles that eluded them last year. They did that by holding off recent nemeses and 2007 double-champions Wright State, 
WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. -- One of the great traditions in college basketball is Senior Night, the last home game of the regular season. All outgoing seniors, no matter if they were four-year starters with awards and all-league selections, or guys who played the parts of opposing players on the practice squad, averaging 0.2 points and 0.1 rebounds in limited minutes. 
Saint Mary's. In last night's G!O!T!N!, the Gaels proved that yes, they can win a slow-paced game. As in the previous meeting with San Diego, the Toreros made sure that the contest unfolded at a methodical and grimy pace. And as in this weekend's BracketBusters loss to Kent State, SMC's primary under-the-basket threat 
There were a lot of great performances over BracketBuster weekend -- 
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Sometimes I just have to pinch myself (even though dreams can be complicated enough that I wouldn't wake up if I did). Three years ago, I was just another computer programmer with a college basketball blog, and the next thing I know I'm talking over BracketBusters highlights with the legendary 
Most basketball fans know the 7-2, 240-lb. "A-Train" as one of the greatest centers ever to play the game, a 12-time All-Star who played five seasons in the American Basketball Association before pounding the paint for 11 seasons for the Bulls and Spurs. 
The two-time Atlantic Sun champion Belmont Bruins were a bit undersold last summer, as they lost two 6-10 seniors who earned the lion's share of the team's rebounds last season. The Bruins have suffered a bit on the boards, but they're getting a lot of them from a player that last year would have seemed an unlikely source, and have kept on winning. Shane Dansby, a 6-4 junior, is our fifteenth Mid-Majority Baller of the Week.
We've certainly 
In 1969, Drake achieved the Final Four with a 26-5 record. Adolphus (Dolph) Pulliam was the emotional leader of that team, and his Bulldogs lost in the national semifinals to UCLA and Lew Alcindor by a single point. After his senior season, he was drafted by multiple professional basketball and football teams, and three decades later, he's the Director of Community Relations and Development at the Des Moines school. In 2003, then-coach Dr. Tom Davis invited Pulliam back into the program, asking him to provide commentary on Bulldog radio broadcasts and be generally available to the players. Now that Davis has retired and handed the reins over to son Keno, Pulliam has remained an important link to the program's past, an important advocate and friend to the team in every way.
I can't believe the response to this since 
There's no doubt that Cal State Northridge, a school with just two winning seasons since joining the Big West in 2001, has gone from pity-party to postseason candidate in short order. At 16-6 overall and 8-2 in the conference, the first-place Matadors are on track for their first Big West men's basketball championship and CSN's first NCAA appearance since a Big Sky autobid in 2001. For that, you can credit coach Bobby Braswell for successfully mixing in productive new players, and one of them we will honor here today. Tremaine Townsend is our fourteenth Mid-Majority Baller of the Week.
New Orleans made a big splash early, with headline-grabbing nonconference wins over N.C. State and Colorado. Sun Belt play has been less than kind, though. A recent three-game losing streak has put the Privateers in a 5-6 hole, far behind streaking Western Kentucky and South Alabama. But they might be on the dark-horse radar once again, thanks to the recent efforts of their superstar guard. Bo McCalebb is our 13th Mid-Majority Baller of the Week.
