• Season 9 SuperTicker presented by BLAPP
#TMM9
Having recently completed its 9th season, The Mid-Majority is a community chronicle of the smaller Division I college basketball conferences. Last year, the theme was Team. Six groups of five (plus a fantasy mid-major player) were engaged in friendly Amazing Race-style competition, criss-crossing Hoops Nation to provide awesome college basketball content. Season X (2013-14) will be our final one.

Recent Game Recaps

Epilogue, The Ninth: Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Memories

So We Meet Again

Rte. 139 - End of the Line

Hanging On

A Championship in Pictures

This Time of Year

Dotson Leads Ducks to the Sweet Sixteen

Grizzlies Overwhelmed by Orangemen

Empire

Challenge 11: Final Four Memories

By George, UConn is Dead

Butler and Us

Donning the Black and Gold

Challenge 10: Tourney Memories

The Madness of the Horizon League

The Rare Ivy League Conference Tournament

MAC Madness

Anything Can Happen in the MAAC

Challenge 9: Shock The Neighborhood

A Youthful Surprise

From Worst to First

Peers and Seers

Tag: Colonial
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S6 January 26, 2010 BOSTON -- My high school, just an hour's drive north of here, wasn't big enough for a band -- unless you count the garage-rock outfits that banged out Grateful Dead covers in the dorm rooms. It wasn't until I got to college when I crossed paths with "pep band people," strange creatures who tended ...
S6 January 7, 2010 PHILADELPHIA -- Malik Rose asked me to go to Drexel. Not in person, but through a TV set. It was a somewhat elegant request, though -- it came in the form of two-point dunk shots and sweet jumpers, as he led the Dragons to a stunning 12-over-5 upset over Memphis in the first found of the 1996 NCAA...
S5 March 23, 2009 MADISON, Wisc. -- I've long felt that the word "heartbreak" doesn't do a proper job as a member of the English language. It implies shatter or malfunction, and sounds so dry. The true feeling is more of a burst -- so closely related to the challenge of capacity that joy brings, but with a method of ...
S5 March 22, 2009 MINNEAPOLIS -- You work in an office. It's a big office with hundreds of people. You all have hard jobs: everyone toils at their stations every day, struggling to put in efforts that will be recognized. When you get a pat on the back and a "good job," it always seems so fleeting... nobody remembers...
S5 March 21, 2009 It's the NCAA Tournament, and Bally's got a front row seat! Our little orange friend got so close to the first round action that the refs almost snatched him off the press row table and put him into the game! Not that he'd complain about that! Bally has never been to the Metrodome, but he's seen i...
S5 March 21, 2009 MINNEAPOLIS -- Just so we're clear, we don't care about your brackets. We know you want to talk about who you "have," about how three of your eight website entries are totally and thoroughly busted, and how you'll never win that $84.50 in the office pool now. We don't want to hear about how you...
S5 March 20, 2009 MINNEAPOLIS -- There's no day more exciting and more highly anticipated than First Round Thursday, and there's no 12 hours quite as difficult to get through. As soon as the games begin, the NCAA Tournament teaches a hard lesson about the perfection that's necessary to compete against enemies with mo...
S5 March 19, 2009 MINNEAPOLIS -- Not to get all Jean Shepherd on you, but when I started as an undergrad at the University of Oregon there were no coffee shops near campus. Then one opened up on the corner near the bookstore, and it had couches and soft music and 50 different ways to drink coffee. It was the hottest ...
S5 March 18, 2009 Let's get this out of the way: it's not the Opening Round, because that implies there's a "round." It's one game. And it's the Play-In Game, a/k/a the Notorious P.I.G., because it's for true mid-major players. And Bally... well, he's the P.I.G. P.O.P.P.A.! Bally loves going to the P.I.G. every ye...
S5 March 18, 2009 INDIANAPOLIS -- The year 2006 wasn't really all that long ago. Sure, we're dealing with problems light years beyond those we faced back then, and anybody would trade in total world financial meltdown for another "bird flu" scare. But Nelly Furtado's "Loose" feels like it just came out yesterday, inn...
S5 March 17, 2009 DAYTON, Oh. -- Back during a time when the years had smaller numbers than they do now, I went to Drexel University, a fine, upstanding and expensive mid-major school. In my studies there, there always seemed to be fellow students who skipped out on the first eight weeks of class, then showed up for ...
S5 March 16, 2009 CLEVELAND -- Lately I've been reading When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball by Seth Davis, a man I'm privileged to know and lucky to share a bond of mutual respect with. It's a tremendously fantastic book by a supremely talented writer, one that documents the famous 1979 national...
S5 March 16, 2009 Aside from reality show winners and one-hit wonders, nothing is forgotten quite as quickly as Championship Fortnight when the NCAA Tournament brackets are released. Some of the teams we've been following all season are destined for great and lasting glory, which will be fulfilled and certified once ...
S5 March 16, 2009 Bullet Points Stephen F. Austin punched Hoops Nation's final NCAA Tournament ticket Sunday afternoon, its first appearance ever. Championship Fortnight is over, and the national postseason is just ahead. Completed brackets and scores for all 23 TMM leagues are included below. Southland Texas...
S5 March 15, 2009 Bally loveslovesloves the NCAA Tournament, it's his favorite time of year! After the Play-In Game in Dayton, we'll be headed off to a first/second round pod. But where? Will it be Philly or Portland? Miami or Minneapolis? Kansas City, possibly? Boise, maybe? Greensboro is keen this time of year. Or...
S5 March 15, 2009 The State of College Basketball is a decrepit old 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 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of th...
S5 March 15, 2009 Bullet Points Seven championships were awarded on Saturday. Binghamton won its first-ever America East title; Morgan State is in the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever out of the MEAC. Temple repeated as Atlantic 14 champions; Akron is on the Big Bracket for the first time since 1986. Alabam...
S5 March 14, 2009 Bullet Points American won its second consecutive Patriot League championship, and is on to the NCAA Tournament once again. Dayton and Xavier, the two higher seeds, went down in the Atlantic 14 semifinals; this sets up an improbable 4/7 matchup between Temple and Duquesne. Other semifinal w...
S5 March 13, 2009 CLEVELAND -- Hundreds of seasons lie in ruins now, but there's never time to properly mourn them. Instead, mid-March is for celebrating mid-major championships and great victories, for getting golden tickets to the other side of the great gate of Selection Sunday. It's a time for Robert Morris' rede...
S5 March 13, 2009 Bullet Points One championship to be decided this afternoon: that of the Patriot League, which has been winnowing down its field verrrry slowly since Tuesday, March 3rd. The Atlantic 14, MEAC, MAC, Big West, Southland, SWAC and WAC are down to final fours as the last weekend of Championship Fo...
S5 March 12, 2009 KATY, Tex. -- Quick programming note: we've run into some technical difficulties here in Texas, so that marathon chat we promised has to be postponed. Next week seems a better fit anyway, since there will be an actual 65-team bracket to talk about. We'll do a regular chat tomorrow from Cleveland at ...
S5 March 12, 2009 Bullet Points Two more titlists after last night's action. Portland State defended its Big Sky title, and Robert Morris will return to the NCAA Tournament out of the Northeast Conference. The Southland Conference begins today with quarterfinals in Katy, Tex.. It's the last of our 23 conference...
S5 March 11, 2009 HOT SPRINGS, Ark. -- With our third-to-last GMHN of Season 5, we have a very special treat for you, yes we do. The image you see over and over during Championship Fortnight is students running all willy-nilly onto the floor after their beloved teams win mid-major titles. So it's only fitting that w...
S5 March 11, 2009 Bullet Points Congratulations to North Dakota State (Badlands/Summit), Western Kentucky (Sun Belt) and Cleveland State (Horizon League). All three have reserved space on the Big Bracket with title game victories last night. Two championships tonight: the Northeast Conference and Big Sky will d...
S5 March 10, 2009 Some are still under the impression that this is just another blog, that I'm sitting at home and ranting about mid-major basketball from my couch. That is definitely not the case. TMM Mobile HQ is very real, and has already logged over 22,000 miles and over 90 games this season. Put that in your pa...
S5 March 10, 2009 HOT SPRINGS, Ark. -- There are 248 teams in conferences below the Red Line. Only 25 or so will move on to compete for the coveted Division I title next week, have their names known by everybody, reflect in the fleeting glory that's reserved for champions. Most of our favorite teams are already packe...
S5 March 10, 2009 Bullet Points Four more champions were crowned last night, teams that will automatically continue on to the NCAA Tournament. Congratulations to Virginia Commonwealth (Colonial), Siena (Metro Atlantic), Chattanooga (SoCon) and Gonzaga (West Coast). Three autobids will be granted tonight: the Su...
S5 March 9, 2009 HOT SPRINGS, Ark. -- Our year is a blur of quick-cut transitions: from total silence to Midnight Madness, pre-season to regular season, games outside conferences to games inside parentheses. Standings grids give way to brackets, and before you know it, campaigns are cut short in early elimination ro...
S5 March 9, 2009 Bullet Points Northern Iowa has qualified for the NCAA Tournament by winning the Missouri Valley championship. Davidson was eliminated in the Southern Conference semifinals by the College of Charleston. After semifinal rounds yesterday, finals are set in seven leagues: the CAA (George Mason...
S5 March 8, 2009 Bullet Points Radford (Big South), East Tennessee State (Atlantic Sun) and Morehead State (Ohio Valley) have qualified for the NCAA Tournament. Cleveland State, the Horizon No. 3, eliminated No. 2 Green Bay in that conference's semis, and Illinois State upended Creighton in the Missouri Valley...
S5 March 7, 2009 Nevada at Boise State (Western Athletic) Taco Bell Arena - Boise, ID 10:15 PM EST This is it: the final regular season weekend, and the last Game! Of! The! Night! of 2008-09. Adieu, adieu, parting is such sweet sorrow. So is partying, which is what the virtual G!O!T!N! camera crew will be doing in...
S5 March 7, 2009 Bullet Points Cornell became the first school to punch its ticket to the NCAA Tournament. For the second straight year, the Big Red claimed the Ivy League title, beating Penn 83-59. The upsets began in earnest on Friday. Ohio Valley No. 4 Morehead State took out No. 1 Tennessee-Martin. CAA No....
S5 March 6, 2009 The State of College Basketball is a rapidly-aging 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 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of t...
S5 March 6, 2009 Bullet Points Four-time Atlantic Sun champion Belmont barely escaped Mercer, and Big South top seed Radford fought off a strong challenge from No. 4 UNC Asheville in that league's semifinals. The Big South final on Saturday is set: VMI at Radford. The three top seeds in the Northeast Confer...
S5 March 5, 2009 Dayton at Xavier (Atlantic 14) Cintas Center - Cincinnati, OH 9:00 PM EST In a conference with a geographical footprint so big you can see it from space, tonight you can boil everything down to four letters: XU and UD. Or just X and D, if you think the University identifier isn't necessary. There...
S5 March 5, 2009 NASHVILLE -- You might recall that there was a marathon chat announced to be held Friday (tomorrow) from the Valley quarterfinals. Due to a number of factors, that's being postponed. Instead, we'll try for a 12-hour chat next Thursday, and do a regular chat at 3:00 EST tomorrow that will overlap wit...
S5 March 4, 2009 NASHVILLE -- They're the greatest two weeks in Hoops Nation, these. Conference teams are racked up in brackets according to regular-season performance, we determine a championship for each league on the court, and the ultimate winner gets to go all the way to March Madness, the kind on CBS. League t...
S5 March 4, 2009 Bullet Points Championship Fortnight is under way, as the top seeds won in the Big South and Ohio Valley. The first minor upset occurred in the Horizon League, where No. 7 Illinois-Chicago outhooped No. 6 Youngstown State. Both finished the conference slate at 7-11 and were separated by tiebre...
S5 March 3, 2009 Weber State at Montana State (Big Sky) Brick Breeden Fieldhouse - Bozeman, MT 9:05 PM EST One of the first conference games we attended this season was between Northern Colorado and Idaho State, an early Big Sky test for both. Since then, there hasn't been much mention here of the only league to b...
S5 March 3, 2009 HOUSTON -- Think of it this way: this is the only time when team rankings are based in reality. It's all posturing and conjecture in November, it's a popularity contest every Monday afternoon, and it's not necessary to hash over the imperfection of a convoluted process that will take place in downto...
S5 March 2, 2009 Boise State at New Mexico State (Western Athletic) Pan American Center - Las Cruces, NM 9:00 PM EST Every year, there's one undisputed apex of Championship Fortnight, that one title game that ESPNU chops up into a 90-minute clip show and Hoops Nation remembers forever. In 2005, it was Ohio's come-...
S5 March 2, 2009 INDIANAPOLIS -- Every day we get just a little more physically vulnerable, every day another step closer to the inevitable finish line of life. The positive trade-off is that whether we've cheated the reaper by strengthening our bodies or not, our minds are always increasing in power. Every day, we ...
S5 February 28, 2009 When somebody pretending to be Tom Petty asked a question 49 minutes into our eight-hour marathon BracketBusters chat, it seemed at the time like any other funny non-sequitur we've encountered in four-plus years of doing those things. But then the Heartbreakers references kept flying for the next s...
S5 February 27, 2009 INDIANAPOLIS -- Though nobody has time to read them anymore, and the economy's so bad that folks are burning them for heat, writers aren't really considered "writers" until there's a stack of dead tree scrapings covered with their scribblings available for general purchase. Especially since writing ...
S5 February 26, 2009 Maryland-Baltimore County at Binghamton (America East) Mid-Majority Events Center - Vestal, NY 7:05 PM EST We strongly suggest that you tune in for the Morehead-Murray matchup on ESPNU tonight if you haven't seen either strong OVC contender. But here in the calm before this weekend's storm of cru...
S5 February 26, 2009 ATHENS, Ohio -- As was noted in this kind piece by the newspaper I spent my college career wishing I could work for, next week marks the beginning of what we're really here for, what this is really all about. The conference tourneys mark the third of the four seasons within a season in college baske...
S5 February 25, 2009 Dayton at Rhode Island (Atlantic 10) Ryan Center - Kingston, RI 7:00 PM EST While the titans of college basketball sportswriting are off drooling over Kansas, or boo-hooing over Pittsburgh, or whatever they do up there, they're missing out on the big fun of the high-stakes race at the top of the A...
S5 February 24, 2009 Northern Iowa at Illinois State (Missouri Valley) Redbird Arena - Normal, IL 8:05 PM EST And so we approach the end of one of the most strange, random, Bizarro MVC regular seasons in memory. Hopefully next year at this time, we'll be discussing two, three and four bid possibilities -- or rather, t...
S5 February 24, 2009 LYNCHBURG, Va. -- In the late stages of a Sunday flight from Raleigh to Nashville, after the announcement about portable electronic devices, I did what most people in need of an info-fix do: page through the Sky Mall catalog. It's only in those 20 minutes at the end when full-size Lord of the Rings...
S5 February 23, 2009 Slumdog Millionaire (a film we saw in Indianapolis hours after penning this paper plane), was easy enough to predict as a Best Picture winner, although others of these supposed lead-pipe locks would have lost you your mortgage money. And so it is with predicting the machinations of another academy. ...
S5 February 23, 2009 Tennessee-Martin at Murray State (Ohio Valley) Regional Special Event Center - Murray, KY 8:30 PM EST With BracketBusters complete, it's time to make the mad dash towards the first tourneys. In just a little over a week, a number of smaller conferences will begin elimination procedures; one of the...
S5 February 23, 2009 CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- BracketBusters VII is safely in the history books now. It was more fulfilling than a Dave & Buster's appetizer (six chips do not qualify as "nachos"), and fell somewhere between Buster the crash-test dummy and Buster Bluth on the entertainment scale. Longtime readers will r...
S5 February 21, 2009 So here we are again, it's late February and it's time for Mid-Major Christmas... BracketBusters VII, brought to you locally by Flying J Travel Plazas and Ballito's Powdered Horchata. Here's a handy clip-n'-save list of all Saturday's televised games, with links to handy print-n'-collect Basketball ...
S5 February 20, 2009 The State of College Basketball is a somewhat 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 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of th...
S5 February 19, 2009 MORAGA, Cal. -- I've come to avidly dislike "bracketology" in all its forms, I don't make any bones or excuses about that. I can't stand bubble watching or seed projecting. I respect Joe Lunardi for combining computer power and over-the-top braggadocio to single-handedly ignite a cottage industry, a...
S5 February 18, 2009 Drexel at George Mason (Colonial) Patriot Center - Fairfax, VA 7:05 PM EST Leagues at our level generally prefer their parity limited, and to put their best team forward. But the Colonial race, once a three-team race with a round-robin that decided momentary supremacy, is now a deathcore mosh pit....
S5 February 18, 2009 SAN LUIS OBISPO, Cal. -- Morning really is a relative concept, isn't it? It's always morning somewhere, or 5 p.m., or the night time (a/k/a "the right time"). And it just might be Morning in America all over again, depending on what economic time zone you're in. I write this to you as the a.m. hours...
S5 February 17, 2009 Evansville at Creighton (Missouri Valley) Qwest Center - Omaha, NE 8:05 PM EST The Bizarro Valley race is, and I think we can all agree on this, mercifully about to end. There are only three regular-season games to go, and then we can get to the important business of sticking all these teams into ...
S5 February 17, 2009 SAN JOSE -- Hundreds of votes have been counted, and Lester Hudson now has a nickname. (Figures it would be the one with the cool poem attached to it.) In this space, all future references to Tennessee-Martin's future NBA star will include "Done Ruthless," which is a fantastic anagram of his name, o...
S5 February 14, 2009 Quinnipiac at Robert Morris (Northeast) Charles L. Sewall Center - Moon Township, PA Saturday, 7:00 PM EST The Northeast Conference has always been a favorite, and it's one of the key collectives that deepened my love for mid-major college basketball. Big metropolitan areas, tiny schools, and high...
S5 February 13, 2009 Thursday, 1:05 PM -- I don't know what made me think this, but I went to the Hyatt Regency first and looked for anything that said "Mock Selection." There was an NCAA Life Skills conference on the second and third floor, so I asked somebody at the ballroom reception where it was. "Who are you, and ...
S5 February 12, 2009 The State of College Basketball is a kinda-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 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the F...
S5 February 12, 2009 Temple vs. Saint Joseph's (Atlantic 10) The Palestra - Philadelphia, PA 7:00 PM EST It's super-exciting in the grand old Atlantic 14 this week, no? Those who tuned into ESPN Classic last night looking for a rerun of the Cheap Seats Superdogs/Superjocks episode were treated to a thrilling ballgame ...
S5 February 12, 2009 INDIANAPOLIS -- Well, here we are. Today is Mock Selection III, and I still have no idea what I did to deserve an invitation -- or why I've been listed as representing Basketball State all along. It's a real thrill, even though we've had to detour from our regularly scheduled travel and will be goin...
S5 February 11, 2009 Long Beach State at California-Riverside (Big West) UCR Rec Center - Riverside, CA 11:00 PM EST Don't worry, we'll be doing plenty of breakdown of Dayton-Xavier tomorrow (or you can get a very fine BBSU-aided preview here). But one league we haven't talked about too much this season is the Big Wes...
S5 February 11, 2009 LITTLE ROCK -- Just one more day until that whole Mock Selection thing, and we're still chewing over this wonderful binder full of information. After decades of hearing this or that from NCAA representatives every March, it's nice to see this stuff printed in black and white. From a 7,000-foot persp...
S5 February 10, 2009 NATCHITOCHES, La. -- Tomorrow I'll drive the four hours back up to Little Rock, jump on a jetliner and return to the hub-and-spoke center of Hoops Nation, the city of Indianapolis. On Thursday at 1:30 p.m., I'll walk into the Hyatt Regency with 19 other journalists and engage in the third annual NC...
S5 February 9, 2009 Sure, we have our favorites. There are players who we enjoy watching endlessly, the mid-major stars who have stood in this space for the past five years and have gone on to great and lucrative levels. The next one in that class could be the 6-2 senior guard from a little school in the Tennessee back...
S5 February 9, 2009 Stetson at East Tennessee State (Atlantic Sun) Memorial Center - Johnson City, TN 7:00 PM EST The Atlantic Sun is providing many of these mid-major hot-shot conferences a clinic on how to organize its standings. You want three teams up top with gaudy records, a strong .500 midsection, and a couple...
S5 February 9, 2009 BATON ROUGE -- When the ax started falling in the SEC last month with midseason firings, the thought around here was that it was kinda cute. Four such severances in four years seemed like another indication that the pressures of BCS basketball were getting to be more in line with those of the pros, ...
S5 February 8, 2009 Charles Kuralt once said, "Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything." While we consider each Flying J a roadside attraction unto itself, the wise old sage of America's roads had a point. Last Tuesday, we asked you to nominate...
S5 February 7, 2009 Presbyterian at Radford (Big South) D.N. Dedmon Center - Radford, VA Saturday, 7:00 PM EST There are some fascinating contests that will shape league races on Saturday, mostly games that pit a runaway leader with a team that may or may not be capable of knocking them down a half-peg -- most specif...
S5 February 6, 2009 The State of College Basketball is a gracefully-aging 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 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three o...
S5 February 5, 2009 Tennessee-Martin at Austin Peay (Ohio Valley) Winfield Dunn Center - Clarksville, TN 9:00 PM EST One of the greatest hidden coulda-shouldas of Championship Week 2008 occurred on the first Friday, when Tennessee-Martin and junior star Lester Hudson came just one point short of upsetting NCAA-bound ...
S5 February 5, 2009 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Let's get this out of the way first: when the first place team loses to the last place team, it's definitely not good for the league profile. And when the overwhelming preseason favorite takes one in the collective stomach from a team that long ago unanimously passed a team rule b...
S5 February 3, 2009 Northern Iowa at Bradley (Missouri Valley) Carver Arena - Peoria, IL 8:05 PM EST The Great Unknown is a scary thing, isn't it? We pattern-seeking creatures require some sort of assurance that future events will mirror the results we've already seen. Staring into the anti-void of endless possibilit...
S5 February 3, 2009 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- BracketBusters pairings are out, and we're temporarily reunited with our own bed and desktop computer, so it's a good time for a game reset. Who am I? Why am I here? Seventy-five percent of what The Mid-Majority is about during the regular season is analysis. There are check-ins o...
S5 February 3, 2009 The picture on the left does not depict the hot club dance move or the new way the kids these days are expressing their excitement, it's just a snapshot of the most pure and perfect shooting mechanics in Division I right now. (And as you can see in the background, it's making the girly-girls go craz...
S5 February 2, 2009 Arkansas-Pine Bluff at Jackson State (SWAC) Williams Athletic Center - Jackson, MS 8:30 PM EST Tonight in the Swickity, a battle between two 6-2 teams looking up at defending regular season champion Alabama State. If either were to win the conference's coveted ticket to the Big Dance, they would u...
S5 January 31, 2009 Saint Mary's at Portland (West Coast) Chiles Center - Portland, OR Saturday, 9:00 PM EST Most of the games we feature on G!O!T!N! are the sorts of contests that feature interesting matchups or players, or tilts that will determine the direction of league races. But once or twice a season, there's ...
S5 January 30, 2009 The State of College Basketball is a sorta-newish 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 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of th...
S5 January 30, 2009 INDIANAPOLIS -- Every once in a while, I receive a hit through the feedback form, written in a language I don't understand. Sometimes these are in French, or German, cast in a Cyrillic alphabet or rendered in simplified Chinese. I'd like to think these are messages of support, and they indicate to ...
S5 January 29, 2009 This is totally unprecedented. In nearly five years, there has never been more than one G!O!T!N! at a time. But tonight, there's no way to choose. Maybe you can pick between these supergood gems, but we can't. Nevada at Utah State (Western Athletic) Dee Glen Smith Spectrum - Logan, UT 9:05 PM EST ...
S5 January 29, 2009 CHARLESTON, Ill. -- Being an East Coaster with a family tree that only extends thin branches into the midwest, freezing fog is definitely a new experience. Yesterday morning, driving the long straight Interstates of Iowa headlong into the sun, the sky was thick and golden, just like heaven would pro...
S5 January 28, 2009 Silver Jews - "People" CEDAR FALLS, Iowa -- Since 2004, I've gone through a lot of different bags, pens, cell phones, cameras, iPods and Moleskines. The only item that I currently carry around the country that came with me on trips four years ago is a taped-together copy of "Actual Air" by poet and...
S5 January 27, 2009 I just wrapped up paying for every single one of my remaining rental cars, plane flights and weekly hotels for the rest of the 2008-09 season, which was a great relief and a testament to the wonderful support you've given the site. So the least I could do is turn the floor over to you for a while, a...
S5 January 27, 2009 Northeastern at Virginia Commonwealth (Colonial) Siegel Center - Richmond, VA 9:00 PM EST How many eyes do you need to finish this fight? You're gonna eat lightning, and you're gonna crap thunder! See that look in their eyes, Rock? You got to get that look back, Rock. Eye of the tiger. Get him a b...
S5 January 27, 2009 OMAHA -- It's been half a forever since we gave away a Bally. It's mostly due to a backorder situation, something that will be rectified when we head home for a couple of days next week. There are two people out there still waiting on their orange globular friends, and those will be forthcoming. Sor...
S5 January 26, 2009 The Citadel at Samford (Southern) Pete Hanna Center - Birmingham, AL 8:30 PM EST It's easy to get caught up in the Davidson excitement. The Wildcats are 9-0, scoring 81 points against 67 allowed in league play, and they have this one player who can shoot lasers out of his toes or something. They'r...
S5 January 26, 2009 OMAHA -- You know what I don't understand? Hubris. How anybody could believe that they're the center of the universe, or better than everybody else, or the owner of unassailable opinion, has always been beyond my comprehension. Walking the world demands humility, and is full of reminders why our liv...
S5 January 24, 2009 OMAHA -- Every so often, I'll get a long note from one of you detailing exactly when you found The Mid-Majority, the post you first discovered, and occasionally you'll remind me of something that I completely forgot I wrote. I'm always taken aback, floored and flattened by these letters, mostly beca...
S5 January 22, 2009 EMMITSBURG, Md. -- They call them the blues because of blue notes, those tones hidden in between the in-between places there on the pristine straight streets of the music scale. Each one of us has had the blues at one time or another, stuck in the gutter, the ditch, the rut, been down soooo loonnngg...
S5 January 21, 2009 David Byrne & Brian Eno - Everything That Happens PHILADELPHIA -- It was written nearly 30 years ago, but "Once In a Lifetime" remains the most concise four-minute statement on modern humanity that rock musicians have ever come up with. There are two mantras and a zen koan within it but at its l...
S5 January 19, 2009 Jackson State at Prairie View A&M (SWAC) Baby Dome - Prairie View, TX 8:30 PM EST Last Monday was Laundry Day, the regular weekly laundromat trip an endless road trip like this requires. I stopped off at a faded old strip-mall laundromat in Gastonia, N.C., just west of Charlotte, before drivin...
S5 January 16, 2009 INDIANAPOLIS -- As we begin every Friday around here, a reminder that there's a chat over at ESPN today at 4 p.m. It's about American mid-major collegiate basketball, and I'm in it and so are you, and there's this one part when we're chillin' in my basement listening to old Wilco records. It's like ...
S5 January 15, 2009 The State of College Basketball is a new-esque 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 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the F...
S5 January 15, 2009 INDIANAPOLIS -- It is so cold, so unstoppably frigid, that the view outside the window is completely frozen in place like a badly composed painting: the skyline, the cars on the roads, the birds in the sky, the smokestack steam. All perfectly still. Also suspended in invisible amber is our weekly Ba...
S5 January 14, 2009 Steely Dan - Kulee Baba (demo) INDIANAPOLIS -- In 1980, Steely Dan released Gaucho, a seven-song album full of disco-jazz pop songs about getting laid and drugs and revenge, all set in Los Angeles. All three are popular enough themes that the record went double-platinum. Due to various production pr...
S5 January 13, 2009 Northern Illinois at Ball State (Mid-American) Worthen Arena - Muncie, IN 7:00 PM EST I've probably said this before, but if you're a mid-major conference and you're smart, schedule games on Tuesday nights and Sunday afternoons. (And Friday nights, if your geographic footprint is small enough that...
S5 January 12, 2009 Before the 2007-08 season, Josh Akognon transferred from Washington State to Cal State Fullerton with two years of eligibility remaining -- his point production doubled, and he set school single-season records for 3-point field goals and free throw percentage. That's an indication that maybe he wasn...
S5 January 12, 2009 BOONE, N.C. -- I'm going to get into my grandpa rocking chair and tell you what's wrong with pop music. I'm sorry that you had to get this from a basketball writer, but that's just the way it worked out. Most music specifically released for public consumption is far too dependent on context and repu...
S5 January 8, 2009 Wright State at Butler (Horizon League) Hinkle Fieldhouse - Indianapolis, IN 7:00 PM EST Tonight marks the first slate in which every college basketball game nationwide is a league contest. We have action in the CAA, SoCon, NEC, OVC, Horizon, America East, Sun Belt, Badlands Conference, Big West, ...
S5 January 8, 2009 BIRMINGHAM -- Normally in this space, I'll meander on about some philosophical thing or some other non-basketball topic, and then field a pile of back-channel comments about what a horrible job I'm doing and how I should just give up. This is exciting for me, because I get to play out this daily scr...
S5 January 7, 2009 High Point at Winthrop (Big South) Winthrop Coliseum - Rock Hill, SC 7:00 PM EST This is a season for big changes in mid-majordom, and most are not necessarily the positive kind that our president-elect talks about. There have been massive shifts in power as multi-bid conferences like the Valley, ...
S5 January 7, 2009 ATLANTA -- One of the upsides to spending so much time in basketball arenas is that my connection to popular music remains simple, true and direct. In this atmosphere, with athletic competition on the floor and fans demanding two hours' worth of entertainment, organized payola can't find purchase. I...
S5 January 6, 2009 He was a breakout superstar from 2007-08 who came out of nowhere to lead a perennial OVC flounder to a salmon-jump in the standings. He was a juco transfer who learned how to study and landed at Tennessee-Martin, and nearly left after a year in the wake of an impressive showing at pre-Draft camp. In...
S5 January 6, 2009 NASHVILLE -- A lot's happened in the past 48 hours. I've driven 1,450 miles through high Colorado mountain passes, endless Kansas, Oklahoma hailstorms. I've watched Southwest Airlines' careful domino-stack of hourly gate departures collapse under the weight of a weather delay, into a maelstrom of sc...
S5 January 5, 2009 Hofstra at Northeastern (Colonial) Matthews Arena - Boston, MA 7:00 PM EST During George Mason's Final Four run, when head coach Jim Larranaga said that the initials "CAA" stood for "Connecticut Assassins Association," he wasn't kidding. The Colonial earned two double-bid years, as well as nationa...
S5 January 2, 2009 Creighton at Illinois State (Missouri Valley) Redbird Arena - Normal, IL Saturday, 8:05 PM EST We don't often keep the G!O!T!N! camera crew in one place for any significant time, but after the events of New Year's Eve afternoon, we have a situation in the Valley that requires additional monitoring...
S5 January 2, 2009 POCATELLO, Id. -- First of all, we have a chat today over at ESPN SportsNation at 4 p.m. Eastern, or 2 p.m. Mountain Standard. Don't forget! One last blast of mid-major mystery before we turn our attention solely to conference races, and forget that the top eight conferences exist -- a luxury we'll ...
S5 December 31, 2008 The State of College Basketball is a 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 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the Final F...
S5 December 31, 2008 Evansville at Illinois State (Missouri Valley) Redbird Arena - Normal, IL 3:05 PM EST Much of today's action is of the afternoon variety, because Americans are conditioned to party like rock stars on New Year's Eve. And as 2008 comes to a close with a full slate of Valley games, here's one game th...
S5 December 31, 2008 LOGAN, Utah -- It's the final day of the year, the end of the holidays, and a bad day to buy a calendar (they'll be 50 percent off tomorrow). Here in college basketball world, the ringing out of the old has more to do with crossing the bridge between nonconference and league play -- happily so -- an...
S5 December 30, 2008 Cleveland State at Wright State (Horizon League) Ervin J. Nutter Center - Dayton, OH 7:00 PM EST Teams in most conferences are just now finishing their city games, guarantees and D-II walkovers. Not the Horizon, it's gone full-bore into league season and has pretty much completed its quest for nat...
S5 December 30, 2008 LOGAN, Utah -- Yesterday's GMHN closed with a query to the cosmos as to why there will be nearly 300 fewer mid versus major games in 2008-09 than there were in 2007-08. And when I end a daily post with a question, I should expect that my mailbox will contain a few answers. And they arrived! Response...
S5 December 29, 2008 The holidays wiped out half the week's schedule (in a good way, of course), but some players made the most of the four-day week. And just to be clear, a shortened week does not mean that the award is less than 100 percent full strength, the same way that some fans tried to undercut the importance of...
S5 December 29, 2008 Davidson at College of Charleston (Southern) Carolina First Arena - Charleston, SC 9:00 PM EST As the egg nog wears off all across Hoops Nation, it's time to start operating the heavy machinery that will move us from non-league to conference season. Thanks to the result of a few summer phone calls...
S5 December 29, 2008 LOGAN, Utah -- Whenever I travel to this part of the country, the Tetris-stack of states that makes up the intermountain west, I feel a great sense of unease. This goes back to when I lived in western Oregon for seven years, and would occasionally come further inland, but my advancing age allows me ...
S5 December 22, 2008 Belmont at Austin Peay Winfield Dunn Center - Clarksville, TN 8:00 PM EST One crisp spring Saturday in Nashville, we shuttled between two Music City arenas to watch two conference champions crowned -- first, the Austin Peay hoopsters took out Tennessee State to win the OVC crown, then two hours la...
S5 December 19, 2008 Illinois-Chicago at Illinois State Redbird Arena - Normal, IL 8:05 PM EST Here's a very interesting tilt between two Illinois programs who have been dormant in recent years, but are having breakout seasons heading into play in their respective conferences. If the NCAA field ends up being littered ...
S5 December 19, 2008 GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Just a reminder that there's a chat today at 4 pm over at ESPN, so come on by. Mediocrity is a touchy subject around here, generally because the word mediocre shares the same Latin root as mid-major, which confuses people into thinking that basketball at our level is just, you kn...
S5 December 18, 2008 Western Kentucky at South Alabama (Sun Belt) Mitchell Center - Mobile, AL 8:05 PM EST The teams in the Sun Belt may not have scheduled well (coming off a two-bid year, the conference RPI is 22 and the noncon record is 49-55), but the league office sure did. Nothing like a mid-December matchup of t...
S5 December 17, 2008 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 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the F...
S5 December 17, 2008 Akron at Virginia Commonwealth Siegel Center - Richmond, VA 7:30 PM EST The best thing about BracketBusters, in my opinion, is the BracketBusters return game. Sure, the chance for TV exposure in February is nice, but that only affects the handful of teams angling for NCAA consideration. All 100 or...
S5 December 17, 2008 CLINTON, S.C. -- What's the value of a score? The market has it much less than the 1/1000th of a cent that manufacturer's coupons are worth -- interested parties expect to get them for free, that a score should cost the same over a computer network as it does transmitted from mouth to ear. Is "Tenne...
S5 December 16, 2008 Cal State Bakersfield at South Dakota State Frost Arena - Brookings, SD 8:05 PM EST Tonight I will be covering North Florida at Clemson, one of those ultra-rare instances when the No. 1 RPI team plays the last-place RPI team. To include that here would break the only two rules of the G!O!T!N! (rec...
S5 December 16, 2008 CLEMSON, S.C. -- It's Tuesday, which means that we give away a Bally. Last week's question was an intermediate-level brain buster that a lot of people got right: name a team that lost twice to a conference regular-seaosn champion in January and/or February, then took its revenge at the conference to...
S5 December 15, 2008 Usually, this feature is reserved for players at our level who a.) have great performances in games that matter and b.) win. But sometimes we have to make an exception, or one-and-a-half. Ben Woodside of North Dakota State is our fifth Mid-Majority Baller of the Week for the 2008-09 season. On Frida...
S5 December 15, 2008 Louisiana-Monroe at Louisiana-Lafayette (Sun Belt) Cajundome - Lafayette, LA 8:05 PM EST Some schools had finals last week, some are heading into it now. The rolling parade of all-nighters and books means that the two middle weeks of December are a piddling pastiche of guarantee games, mid-on-mid ...
S5 December 15, 2008 CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Let's get this out of the way first: the Atlantic 14 owned this weekend. Pwned it. The A-14 was in yr weekend, steelin yr basketballz. This conference put such a stamp on the last two days that the second weekend in December should be a three-day hoops holiday, by proclamation of...
S5 December 10, 2008 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 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the F...
S5 December 10, 2008 BALTIMORE -- Last Thursday, I saw my first conference tilt of the year. It was at the Truman-era art deco palace known as Memorial Auditorium, one of my favorite places to see a game, and the Badlands Conference clash featured the homestanding UMKC Kangaroos hosting the Oakland Super Golden Crisp Gr...
S5 December 9, 2008 San Francisco at Pacific A.C. Spanos Center - Stockton, CA 10:00 PM EST Tonight we have two western teams on the road back to respectability -- one's trail, however, is a little longer than the other. San Francisco, the center of the WCC's Jesuit triad, will always have a better NCAA Tournament re...
S5 December 9, 2008 LEXINGTON, Va. -- I think we can chalk up the weekend voting on the Ultimate Project contest an unqualified, unmitigated disaster. There were more complaints about the voting mechanism (clicking through either brought up a "please log in" screen or a full-screen ad to start your own poll) than actua...
S5 December 8, 2008 Fairleigh Dickinson at Monmouth (Northeast) Boylan Gym - West Long Branch, NJ 7:30 PM EST In tonight's only league game, we have a couple of case studies in how difficult it is to maintain success, much less consistency, at the low-RPI end of the mid-major pool. In 2005, Fairleigh Dickinson's Hors...
S5 December 8, 2008 LOUISVILLE -- This week marks the one-month milepost of the 2008-09 season. Most of the action we've seen has consisted multi-team tournaments of questionable merit or importance, early league games, and power-conference teams beating the snot out of mid-majors. While we've made a lot of the signifi...
S5 December 5, 2008 Albany at Siena Times Union Center - Albany, NY 7:00 PM EST When you think great mid-major city games, there are matchups like Loyola and UIC in Chicago (also being contested on Saturday), or maybe the NEC's Battle of Brooklyn between St. Francis and Long Island. But don't forget a pairing with a ...
S5 December 4, 2008 Saint Mary's at Kent State Memorial Athletics Center - Kent, OH 7:00 PM EST It was the BracketBuster game few stayed up to watch, but its effects had a resounding impact on the way the 2008 bracket was shaped. Al Fisher (28 points) helped propel the Golden Flashes over the nationally ranked Gaels ...
S5 December 4, 2008 KANSAS CITY -- Later today, I'll be posting the first version of the State of the Other 22, the mid-major (and A-14) subset of the complicated ratings system I put together last year (with the help of some great coaches who helped define the important ingredients) on the Basketball State site. The r...
S5 December 3, 2008 SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Tonight I'll be making my first visit to Missouri State's brand new JQH Arena, which was just christened within the month. I've been really excited about this for a couple weeks now, for a few reasons. I like shiny new things as much as any American, but most of all I'm curious a...
S5 December 2, 2008 CARBONDALE, Ill. -- The fact is that sometimes in this business, you just have to kick a little ass. I'm really sorry when my turn comes up, it isn't in my upbringing to upbraid people. But when I announced last week's contest, I thought I could count on folks to be creative on their own. It didn't ...
S5 December 1, 2008 Most fans know him for "the Dagger" against Duke two seasons ago, but he's been making opponents say "dang" for the better part of three years. Over the past seven days, he put together one of the most impressive three-game stretches seen in Hoops Nation so far this season. Eric Maynor is our third ...
S5 December 1, 2008 TERRE HAUTE, Ind. -- It's the first of December. Do you know where your college basketball team is? (Arkansas State, by the way, is here in town.) More importantly, do you know what it is? So much of this right now, at this point of the season, is involved in figuring our what is real and what is tr...
S5 November 25, 2008 Mount Saint Mary's at George Mason Patriot Center - Fairfax, VA 7:00 PM EST There's plenty of hot mid-on-mid action tonight. There's our game, for example, out in Bucknell as the Bison host Old Dominion, at which we'll all party like it's 2005. The best excuse for a city game in Boston takes place...
S5 November 25, 2008 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Tuesdays mean no lollygagging, goldbricking or hanging out in the alley. This is contest day, and we have a prize to give out: a real live stuffed Bally. And in order to keep 99.9 percent of Hoops Nation from feeling sorry for itself, we have another contest on deck. Hello, Bally ...
S5 November 24, 2008 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- For my money, the greatest movie about rock and roll music ever made is Stop Making Sense, the 1984 Talking Heads concert film directed by Jonathan Demme. The movie strikes a very personal note for me, because I take a 40 long jacket. Manufacturers don't tend to make that size, so...
S5 November 21, 2008 NEW YORK CITY -- Madison Square Garden IV, indeed the fourth venue to have had this name, is a layer cake built on the corner of 7th Avenue and 33rd Street. It opened in 1968, four years before I was born. By the time I started going to games there, in the mid-1980's, its internal workings were as ...
S5 November 19, 2008 PHILADELPHIA -- This blog has been involved in several pet causes... heck, this entire thing is a pet cause. But TMM is getting involved in a new charitable campaign that strikes to the heart of what's important in Our Game. This is all about getting Drexel students to adopt proper rollout procedure...
S5 November 18, 2008 Nevada at San DiegoJenny Craig Pavilion - San Diego, CA10:00 PM EST The Western Athletic and West Coast took completely different paths last season -- the WAC, a perennial multi-bid league despite its allocation of most of its resources to football, languished in the 20's of the RPI scale and sque...
S5 November 18, 2008 PHILADELPHIA -- Drexel hosts Penn today at 10 a.m. as part of ESPN's Mega Mammoth Opening Day Explosion. This'll be the last morning game we attend, at least until the next NAIA tournament or summer AAU spectacubash. For that reason, we'll be short with this (MMBOW and G!O!T!N! will be forthcoming l...
S5 November 17, 2008 PITTSBURGH -- When something like this happens, when 111-103 happens, when a little military school from western Virginia marches into venerable old Rupp Arena and runs the home team off its own floor, it's never about the victor. That's just the way these things work. The tale, as it's commonly bei...
S5 November 14, 2008 PEORIA, Ill. -- Remember back when you were a kid, it was a hot summer day out in your backyard... you had your 1980's NBA-style short-shorts on with no shirt, just hanging out in the grass your daddy just mowed fresh that morning. Not a care in the world. Then you got really thirsty, and you were t...
S5 November 13, 2008 CARBONDALE, Ill. -- It's a day with no games (at least none to attend), and one for catching up on e-mail, writing stories, plugging leaks over at Basketball State and picking up roadtrip supplies at Wal-Mart. It's also probably best that there's a breather after last night's Lazarus act by Southern...
S5 November 12, 2008 CARBONDALE, Ill. -- When I switched on the local TV this morning, there was a reel of clips from a Murray State exhibition game, the Racers were beating up on Bethel College. In the inbox, news that Stephen Curry had lit up the scoreboard for 41 points... iin a non-counter against Lenoir-Rhyne (ei...
S5 November 10, 2008 (Originally posted November 13, 2004) It is designed to do a lot of things, but it certainly is not designed to break your heart. The game begins in the late autumn, when everything else has shriveled and fallen and died. Its blossoms come slowly in winter's course like crocus starts popping throug...
S5 November 8, 2008 Eighth in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season.Since the invention of the printing press and discovery of binding, it's been the dream of everyone who strings words together to write a book. A longform work of 80 or 100 thousand words that can be touched,...
S5 November 6, 2008 Sixth in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season. Here in early November, we're still at least a month away from the non-stop barrage of "Year In Review" specials, all those tidy bow-snapping recaps that attempt to impose order on a loosely-joined, selectiv...
S5 November 1, 2008 First in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season. It's not supposed to work out for the best, and the system is designed to anticipate failure. On March 21 in Birmingham, the four lower seeds wore their extra digits like anchors, eliminated one after another...
S4 April 1, 2008 Seriously, what's the big deal about fearlessness? It's made out to be this incredible and rare trait that only a select few possess. People forget that it's our natural, default state of being. We enter the world too naive to fear anything; over time, we develop a profile of all that scares us. Som...
S4 March 30, 2008 We received a lot of messages in response to the query as to whether or not I should wear the "Just Balls" tie to the game today. With a 2-to-1 split in favor of donning autographed neckgear, the votes against stuck out and haunted my sleep. Several people brought up the possibility of a double-reve...
S4 March 29, 2008 When ESPN.com brought me on in the summer of 2005, my good friend Sarah bought me a Ralph Marlin "Just Balls" tie. It was one of those nice timely things that good friends do -- they buy you things having to do with what you're celebrating just as you're celebrating them. Little did I know that it w...
S4 March 29, 2008 DETROIT -- The alarm clock went off this morning, like it normally does... but we're still trying to figure out when, exactly, we fell asleep. Around 6 p.m. yesterday? That timeframe makes more sense than what we were hallucinating about. Davidson? A No. 10 seed? Slaughtering the Big Ten champs in B...
S4 March 27, 2008 One of the great things about the day before an NCAA subregional, regional or Final Four is that the public can come and watch the teams practice for free! This is enormous Ford Field in Detroit, which is normally used for American-style football. The stadium will have 72,000 available seats for t...
S4 March 27, 2008 There are 16 teams left to fight over the National Championship, each with just four more wins to go to achieve the ultimate prize. Strangely enough, they spent widely disparate amounts of money to get here. As my new friend TuckyBill likes to say, "mid-major" is just another name for "more bang fo...
S4 March 26, 2008 Bowling Green At 2:45 p.m. Central Time on Tuesday, the message came in, with a time stamp that indicated it had been left an hour earlier. "The plane leaves around 3 p.m.," the sports information director said. "We'll see you down there at the airport." I'd have received the call on time if I...
S4 March 25, 2008 If you've been reading this site with any sort of regularity this year, you know about my Face Off with one Mr. Steve Welmer, the most-travelled official in Division I. And all the e-mails have been really great, people are really getting into it. This is one part Amazing Race, another part Cannonba...
S4 March 23, 2008 Two brave, fighting groups of men... two long dormant small-college basketball legacies reborn... two tourney champions turned Sweet survivors. The Sun Belt and the SoCon, two leagues the general public can't tell apart from each other, are sending representatives to the NCAA Regionals. Hoo-zah! ...
S4 March 22, 2008 Back by popular demand, it's another chart of who's got money and who doesn't. Basing your prognostications on athletic budgets isn't a perfect method -- you would have gone 24-8 in the first round, which seems about average for all those suffering from Tampa Madness (you would have had WKU over Dra...
S4 March 21, 2008 O Wildcats, dispatchers of Zags, plain-sight stealers of ACC-level recruits! You play a fair game, you play a square game, and you win in everything! Davidson's red and black machine won its 23rd game in a row, but its first at the NCAA tournament since 1969, when ol' Lefty Driesell paced the Wildca...
S4 March 21, 2008 ...
S4 March 21, 2008 BIRMINGHAM -- On mornings like this, after days like that, I'm envious of people who can simply move on with their brackets and think about the next round's matchups. For those of us who cover the mid-major schools, we'll be reliving this day over and over again for the next year. The true underdo...
S4 March 20, 2008 Well, here we are in Birmingham. I'm watching practices, asking dumb questions in press conferences, eating all the Cheetos at the media buffet spread, and waiting for the upsets to start happening on TV. While I'm doing Real Serious Work, Bally is living it up VIP style at the Big Dance. Follow a...
S4 March 19, 2008 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 F...
S4 March 19, 2008 We had quite a few mail inquiries and chat questions yesterday about the chat that was published in my weekly blog for the Worldwide Leader. For those of you who are ESPN OutSiders, I listed the top five largest financial disparities in both overall athletic expenses and men's basketball budgets. Pe...
S4 March 18, 2008 I remember my first March Madness office pool. The year was 1992, I was about to leave my teenage years behind. I had just nabbed my first real actual journalism job, working for out-of-state tuition as a junior copy editor at a farming magazine in Oregon. I recall that the whole bracket thing was a...
S4 March 17, 2008 I can't think of anything that captures the essence of modern corporate America better than Selection Sunday. Four and a half months of sweat and blood spilled by on-court workers is distilled into numbers and charts, spreadsheets and presentations. Merits are debated by people in suits in a locked ...
S4 March 17, 2008 Bullet Points In the final final in mid-majordom, Texas-Arlington emerged as surprise Southland champs. All hail! We had 78 entries into our "guess-the-play-in-matchup" contest on Saturday, and not a single correct answer. The correct pairing, as we all know now, is Coppin State (MEAC) against Moun...
S4 March 16, 2008 Bullet Points The autobid picture is nearly complete, as seven champions were named on Saturday. Kent State and UMBC followed up their regular-season trophies with tourney rings, in the MAC and America East respectively. In a low-seed shocker, No. 7 Coppin State upset No. 1 Morgan State in the MEA...
S4 March 15, 2008 Bullet Points Bow down before the altar of American, poxy fules. The Eagles are going dancing out of the Patriot League for the first time in school history. Today will see the crowning glory in seven conferences. The America East, Atlantic 14, MAC, SWAC, MEAC, WAC and Big West will all have champi...
S4 March 14, 2008 ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- It's fitting that we're here in Jersey -- just as there were 86 episodes of The Sopranos, there were exactly that many daily weekday posts this year. This right here is the final edition of the season -- this 86th Boubacar, too, was "Made in America." Not that this is the end...
S4 March 13, 2008 It was a special number once, an emotional milestone, an achievement of a lifetime. Four years ago in this space, I attended exactly one hundred college basketball games in a single season and wrote something faintly humorous about each one. It was a journey that culminated in a loss. Because it alw...
S4 March 13, 2008 ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- I don't know if I'm ripping the cover off some secret clandestine something, or exposing some horrible underbelly of The Business here. But one of the best things about Championship Fortnight is the media gifts. Yes, many conferences bestow presents upon us ink- and pixel-sta...
S4 March 13, 2008 Bullet Points Make way on the big bracket for two more mid-major champions: Mount Saint Mary's, surprise winners of the NEC out of a No. 4 seed, and Portland State, double-champions of the Big Sky. There were three exciting finishes in the Atlantic 14, with La Salle, Dayton and Charlotte pulling ou...
S4 March 12, 2008 ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. -- As we promised earlier this week, we're going to take one last look at some seasons that may not have resulted in a Dance card or a lot of national headlines, but were breakthroughs or returns to form. Here, then, are eight teams that few saw coming... in alphabetical order. ...
S4 March 12, 2008 Bullet Points Three more automatic bids were awarded last night. Full 100 percent congratulations to Butler, double-champions of the Horizon League, as well as Oral Roberts, three-time titlists of the Mid-Con cum Summit cum Badlands Conference. Western Kentucky is back in the Dance from the Sun B...
S4 March 11, 2008 Bullet Points Scissors and ladders were indeed used last night, as four mid-major champions ascended to thrones. Davidson streaked to a third consecutive title in the SoCon, George Mason survived the Colonial tourney, Siena is the double-champ in the MAAC, and San Diego stole the WCC title from Gon...
S4 March 10, 2008 ALBANY, N.Y. -- Yes indeed, the regular season is over. Everybody's into their conference tournaments now, and four are over already. And since The Boubacar is a regular-season thing, we'll be winding down this particular portion of the entertainment this week. But first and foremost, I wanted to l...
S4 March 10, 2008 Bullet Points All hail Drake, double-champions of the Missouri Valley Conference. Not only did the Bulldogs capture their first MVC tourney ever, it was the first time in 10 years the regular season champs survived Arch Madness. Four finals tonight: we'll have autobids delivered in the Colonial, Me...
S4 March 9, 2008 Bullet Points Three autobids were given out yesterday. All hail mighty Winthrop of the Big South, Austin Peay of the Ohio Valley Conference, and the Atlantic Sun's Belmont. All are off to the Big Dance! One final today -- the championship of the Missouri Valley Conference. Drake and Illinois State...
S4 March 8, 2008 Bullet Points Today, three autobids to the NCAA Tournament will be awarded! The Big South, Ohio Valley and Atlantic Sun will crown champions. The No. 6 was a lucky number yesterday -- surprising Tennessee State moved to the finals of the OVC, Northern Iowa upset No. 3 Southern Illinois in the MVC, ...
S4 March 7, 2008   Kent State at Akron (Mid-American) James A. Rhodes Arena - Akron, OH 7:00 PM EST So it's come to this. The final G!O!T!N! of the year, the last contest our virtual crew will travel to on the last day of the regular season. Everything's pretty much been settled as far as the MAC race goes (...
S4 March 7, 2008 NASHVILLE -- There is nothing in the world more fun that this fortnight, this extended Championship Week. Days full of games, wave after wave of cheerleaders, pep bands, student sections and players' moms. Every two hours new ones come along come, a blurry time-smear of orange, red, green, blue, gol...
S4 March 7, 2008 Bullet Points There was an upset in the Atlantic Sun quarters, as No. 6 Gardner-Webb routed No. 3 Stetson. The Big South final is set: UNC Asheville and Winthrop, the league's top two seeds. The game will be played Saturday. In the MVC first round, No. 8 Indiana State and No. 7 Missouri State adva...
S4 March 6, 2008 Jason Thompson isn't the kind of talent you often find at the mid-major level. Heck, there aren't that many players in the power conferences like him. He's a 6-11 specimen who can shoot mid-range jumpers just as well as he can lay it in, and can muscle his way to any rebound, anywhere. Entering this...
S4 March 6, 2008   Xavier at Saint Joseph's (Atlantic 10) Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse - Philadelphia, PA 9:00 PM EST Xavier (25-4, 13-1) comes into tonight's G!O!T!N! on an 11-game win streak, has an RPI of six, and is the only team in the entire Atlantic 14 that could leave for a 10-day all-expenses-paid vac...
S4 March 6, 2008 NASHVILLE -- There's a little Fighting Camel in all of us -- that piece of our soul that's tragically misunderstood, a little out of place. It's the part of you that's told you'll never make it, never achieve your dreams. Silly camel, you aren't supposed to fight for or win anything... you're suppos...
S4 March 5, 2008 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 F...
S4 March 5, 2008 NASHVILLE -- Our day-long drive down from our Rhode Island home down to Music City was like the 2007-08 season in intricately-styled microcosm. There were a lot of miles driven (about a thousand), hours upon hours of XM radio (we like the new "Thriller" channel) and spotty cell reception just about ...
S4 March 5, 2008 Bullet Points The first two upsets of Championship Fortnight occurred yesterday. The OVC's No. 6 Tennessee State won at No. 3 Morehead State, while Horizon No. 8 Loyola (Ill.) shocked No. 5 Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The Big South's four top seeds won to set up Thursday's semifinals. OVC No. 4 Tenness...
S4 March 4, 2008 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- M is for March, and madness, and mania, and magic; any etymologist knows they all came from the same source, Ma-, a Anglo-Saxon derivative meaning "super-awesome." M is also for Mid-major. It's our time, and this is our year. With so many struggling power-conference teams trying t...
S4 March 3, 2008   North Carolina A&T at Hampton (MEAC) Convocation Center - Hampton, VA 8:00 PM EST Morgan State has pretty much run away with the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference race, clinching the No. 1 seed last week and winning a 39-36 American-style football game at defending regular-season titlist...
S4 March 3, 2008 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- The calendar does not deceive you, it's been March for two-plus days now and we haven't seen one conference tournament game. We'll take care of that tomorrow (the Big South, OVC and Horizon get underway), but this in-between day gives us a chance to catch our collective breath and...
S4 February 28, 2008 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 practi...
S4 February 27, 2008   American at Navy (Patriot League) Alumni Hall - Annapolis, MD 7:00 PM EST 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 a...
S4 February 27, 2008 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 ta...
S4 February 26, 2008 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 F...
S4 February 25, 2008 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 wit...
S4 February 24, 2008 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. Artis Gilmore scored a total of 15,579 points...
S4 February 23, 2008   Drake at Butler Hinkle Fieldhouse - Indianapolis, IN (ESPN BracketBusters) 5:00 PM EST 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 a...
S4 February 21, 2008   South Alabama at Western Kentucky (Sun Belt) E.A. Diddle Arena - Bowling Green, KY 8:00 PM EST 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...
S4 February 21, 2008 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 dea...
S4 February 20, 2008 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...
S4 February 19, 2008 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 F...
S4 February 19, 2008 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...
S4 February 18, 2008 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...
S4 February 15, 2008 We've certainly certainly said this before, but we strongly believe that "Jasper" Joe Arnone, Voice of the Central Connecticut State Blue Devils, is the finest arena announcer in Hoops Nation. He is to college basketball what Yankee Stadium's Bob Sheppard is to baseball, but with Vin Scully's friend...
S4 February 15, 2008   Oral Roberts at IUPUI (Summit League) IUPUI Gym - Indianapolis, IN 7:00 PM EST 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 forwa...
S4 February 15, 2008 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 pictur...
S4 February 14, 2008 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 foot...
S4 February 14, 2008 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. I can't believe the response to this since I announced it a couple weeks ago...
S4 February 13, 2008   William & Mary at North Carolina-Wilmington (Colonial) Trask Coliseum - Wilmington, NC 7:00 PM EST 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...
S4 February 13, 2008 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 ...
S4 February 12, 2008 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 F...
S4 February 12, 2008 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 bask...
S4 February 11, 2008   Utah State at Nevada (Western Athletic) Lawlor Events Center - Reno, NV 10:05 PM EST 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, t...
S4 February 11, 2008 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 su...
S4 February 7, 2008 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 goin...
S4 February 7, 2008 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 stron...
S4 February 4, 2008 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 litt...
S4 February 2, 2008 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 pa...
S4 January 31, 2008   Murray State at Austin Peay (Ohio Valley) Winfield Dunn Center - Clarksville, TN 8:30 PM EST Hot times in the OVC, the conference that loves conference play so much it drafted up a 20-game schedule, with all 11 teams playing home-and-home with each other. Good thing, too, because it's wort...
S4 January 31, 2008 DENTON, Tex. -- While making the long drive up I-45, which is a long drive for someone with nothing to think about, I was pondering the names we give things. A lot of them don't quite fit, and bleed into general use because once people have agreed on a title for something, it's tough to get everybod...
S4 January 30, 2008 The grand old Mid-American Conference has been tragically misunderstood this decade. A league that's produced some of the most competitive, exciting and thrilling hoops at the mid-major level has had a lot of trouble with respect on the national scene, not having received a second bid to the NCAA To...
S4 January 30, 2008   Texas-Arlington at Sam Houston State (Southland) Johnson Coliseum - Huntsville, TX 8:00 PM EST It's you, me and the Southland Conference tonight, here to witness the next chapter in the timeless Lone Star rivalry of Huntsville and Arlington. Huntsville is the state's prison capital -- one ...
S4 January 30, 2008 HUNTSVILLE, Tex. -- We promised you a Badlands Conference logo winner, and by gosh, we are going to deliver. Finally. After three weeks. We were looking for a logo to replace the up-arrow that the former Mid-Continent Conference chose when it changed its name over the summer. We don't particularly ...
S4 January 29, 2008 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 F...
S4 January 29, 2008   Virginia Commonwealth at George Mason (CAA) Patriot Center - Fairfax, VA 7:00 PM EST Tonight, we have a rematch of a CAA title game that was so hot, John Feinstein handed an NCAA bid to the 18-15 Patriots after they lost. (Logic somehow prevailed.) Bally had both these teams going to the 2...
S4 January 29, 2008 HOUSTON -- It's only of those slow post-Monday Tuesdays here in Hoops Nation, a perfect opportunity to get some site housekeeping done. We have one contest in search of a winner, for those of you with long memories... the Badlands Conference logo contest from earlier this month. We'll anoint the cha...
S4 January 28, 2008 We're in Texas, so it's only fair that we shine the spotlight on some Lone Star hoops. Because of Texas-Pan American's longstanding independent status and virtual unlikelihood of making the NCAA Tournament, you don't hear much about them in the mainstream press... and with the 15th smallest athletic...
S4 January 28, 2008   Morgan State at Hampton (MEAC) Convocation Center - Hampton, VA 8:00 PM EST Tonight, we have a real treat, a Chesapeake Bay battle at the top of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. Representing Virginia is Hampton, the hottest team in the conference at 6-0, winners of six straight. In the...
S4 January 28, 2008 HOUSTON -- I was thinking over the weekend, while I wasn't at any games, about all the games I go to. A total of 57 games so far this year, headed for yet another 100-game season. Having done 100 twice now, it's tough to find triple-digit motivation anymore. Need to turn it into some kind of contest...
S4 January 25, 2008 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- I tried to make it simple, I tried to offer the sound-bite answer. I tried to simplify things on the far side of complexity, because 'tis a gift to be simple. But I attempted to shave with Occam's razor, but ended up having to wear a small piece of toilet paper, attached with spit...
S4 January 24, 2008   Dayton at Xavier (Atlantic 10) Cintas Center - Cincinnati, OH 8:00 PM EST Like the new header? Yeah, it's come to this -- doing stuff just to see who complains. More about all of that tomorrow. For now, we have a hot game in the conference that gives fans 40 percent more than advertised, t...
S4 January 23, 2008   Akron at Kent State (Mid-American) Memorial Athletics Center - Kent, OH 7:05 PM EST Kent State has the strongest MAC legacy in the past decade by far -- the Flashes are working on a 10th straight 20-win season, and their four NCAA appearances have yielded four wins. Three of those, of cou...
S4 January 22, 2008 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 F...
S4 January 21, 2008 It's never going to end. We might try to fight it, we may try to ignore it, but every year it's going to come back. I'm talking, of course, about the endless debate of what a "mid-major" is and what one isn't. Within the past few weeks, we've had weigh-ins here, here, here and on countless blogs. W...
S4 January 21, 2008 A 6-0, 185-lb. junior point guard from Houston, Texas had the shooting night of his life -- or most people's lives -- on Saturday. In a 96-75 blowout of James Madison, George Mason's Dre Smith scored a career-high 34 points on astonishing 11-of-12 shooting. But, as you might have heard already, 10 o...
S4 January 21, 2008   North Carolina A&T at Delaware State (MEAC) Memorial Hall - Dover, DE 7:30 PM EST The news channels say that this is a day for "remembering" and "celebrating" the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. which has always struck me as a superficial invitation that may or may not include par...
S4 January 21, 2008 MORAGA, Ca. -- One of the most-asked question types I get is in regards to these datelines. Where am I? Where have I been? How many games am I up to? I know it's all pleasant small-talk, and folks are just trying to make conversation, but I've been meaning to put together a one-webpage answer to ans...
S4 January 18, 2008 Until the night of Nov. 7, 2007, most college basketball fans didn't know Gardner-Webb from a weed whacker. But with a 84-68 thumping of Kentucky at Rupp Arena, the little school in Boiling Springs, N.C. was thrust into the national spotlight. It was the first major story of the 2007-08 season, the ...
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