• 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: Dailies
Sorted by date
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 HARRISONBURG, Va. -- Still trying to figure out what all this means. So you're saying that if I had just auctioned off a crate full of Ballys last month, we wouldn't have had to do that whole bailout thing? But seriously, it's amazing to see that we've touched off the hottest plushie trend since Pea...
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 4, 2009 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- A bit late, but I just wanted to thank everybody who showed up for our first Mid-Majority chat last Friday. There were over 200 questions, just as many as my final chat over the MLK holiday at the other place. It blows my mind that so much of the regular audience found its way ove...
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 2, 2009 CHICAGO -- So much of modern life is blocking, filtering, limiting. There is so much information coming at us every day that we must become fighters of information, lest it overwhelm and submerge us completely. We battle back with fast-forward buttons, delete keys, spam-guards, RSS newsreaders, trus...
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 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 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 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 23, 2009 "Like many Web sites that traffic partly in gossip, The Big Lead's information is not always correct." - SI.com, March 2008 CLEVELAND -- What is the truth? The truth is one part fact, one part perspective, and zero parts perspiration. The truth is the vessel, the conduit that carries it, and it cann...
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 20, 2009 WASHINGTON -- In the next several days, you're likely to read many accounts of these days by special columnists (even some sportswriters) who have spent the last few days being whisked from inaugural ball to celebrity gala, who've worn tuxedos to fine restaurants and will sit in special boxes watchi...
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 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 NASHVILLE -- I'll be honest with you: I don't know which time zone I'm in, what time it is, what I'm doing here, who I am or who I work for. After last night's Davidson-App State game, I drove 340 miles west (with two hours' worth of sleep, in 30-minute increments, taken in rest areas), back to Nash...
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 9, 2009 BIRMINGHAM -- First of all, there's a chat today over in the ESPNet SportsZone at 4 pm Eastern. With 2009 and conference play now well-entrenched concepts, we shouldn't have too little to talk about. Please join us, won't you? More importantly, this is a wonderful morning here on The Mid-Majority, a...
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 23, 2008 NATCHITOCHES, La. -- And so it's come to this. Folks are out there on the roads living like it's 2004, cramming their SUV's into parking lots and buying Christmas gifts from "brick and mortar" establishments. The third crazy night of Hanukkah is set to begin. A chain e-mail with blinking green text ...
S5 December 22, 2008 NATCHITOCHES, La. -- I can't prove this, because it came out of one of those directionless garbage-time conversations amongst us proud folks who refuse to leave any game early. But one of my most brilliant ideas ever was The Sportswriter's Thesaurus, which would give sportswriters all the material t...
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 GREENVILLE, S.C -- Nonconference Thursdays, especially the ones right before the holiday season, are tough. Some schools are out of finals and on break, others are in finals, there aren't very many games out there. So a couple quick notes: I know only a handful of you are on Twitter, but it's fun an...
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 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 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 12, 2008 CHICAGO -- First of all, chat today. When that happens, I will be in a different place, far from here. Flying today is going a lot better than the last first flight of the season. Almost missed my air ride this morning out of rainy Providence, though -- Joan as security woman ran my wallet through t...
S5 December 11, 2008 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Not to get all Good N' Plenty on you, but I am at home for the first day in 17, the last day I'll be home for 56. I've severely cut down on a lot of the deeply personal oversharing from previous years, which has resulted in a sharp and welcome decline in the number of creepy lette...
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 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 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 SOMEWHERE IN MISSOURI -- Our Ultimate Project contest ends today -- or rather, the first phase of it. There were so many great entries (over 40) that I personally can't decide on who The Mid-Majority's No. 1 work-in-progress big man should be. So we are going to put it to you, gentle readers. The fi...
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 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 26, 2008 INDIANAPOLIS -- Lots of housekeeping today. For starters, Feast Week will only be a three-course meal here on The Mid-Majority. There will be no posts on Turkey Day or Black Friday, but we'll be camped out at the Chicago Challenge watching eight games in two days so the Twitter feed will be very act...
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 20, 2008 NEW YORK CITY -- I didn't get a chance yesterday, but I wanted to thank all the folks who stopped by during the ESPN SportsNation chat component of the College Hoops Tip-Off Marathon. I ran the anchor leg and I held it down mid-major style for two hours, and I noticed a couple of things. First, havi...
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 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 11, 2008 DURHAM, N.C. -- So this is how it began. No, the picture above is not of Cameron Indoor Stadium hours before the first game, this was the first game. The 2008-09 season tipped off in relative silence, televised subregionally, radio only. The first 40 minutes of college basketball's new year were pl...
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 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 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 11, 2008 ALBANY, N.Y. -- The thing that people don't get from television is how hot it is inside a court-storming. I mean, it's sweltering and blistering (and a little humid) in there with all the body heat and kinetic energy. Oh, and loud too. Inside a court-storming, you'll find a sound that can never be...
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 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 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 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 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 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 29, 2008 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 ha...
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 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 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... Saint Mary's. In last night's G!O!T!N!, the Gaels proved that yes, they can ...
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 23, 2008 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...
S4 February 22, 2008 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 t...
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 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 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 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 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 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...
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 8, 2008 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...
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 6, 2008 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 t...
S4 February 5, 2008 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...
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 February 1, 2008 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,...
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 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 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 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 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- I never meant this to be Philosophy Week, and I apologize for all the thoughtful treatises on insignificance I've spilled recently. I'm going to blame it on jet lag, and leave it at that. I've made a key decision, and I post it here for you now primarily to point to it later once...
S4 January 23, 2008 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- I wasn't going to mention anything about this here, I was going to launch in today with a knock-knock joke about UMBC. But before my flight home yesterday, I picked up God Save The Fan by Will Leitch at a Barnes and Noble on the way to the airport. If you have a two-timeone flight...
S4 January 22, 2008 SAN JOSE -- We were too busy putting the weekend's results into a semi-digestible package, as is Monday tradition, so we're hopelessly late on the latest big coaching news from the WCC. If you haven't heard already, Vance Walberg "resigned" suddenly on Jan. 18. Since then, more of the story's come o...
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 RENO, Nev. -- I'm sorry, what was that? This post is late somehow, not nearly early enough, making me tardy, irresponsible, untrustworthy? Well, from where I'm sitting, it's still morning, all bright and bushy-tailed like a Tahoe snow-bunny. TMM Mobile HQ is on Pacific time, b#%*&s! Sure, inte...
S4 January 17, 2008 DAVIS, Ca. -- We have a system here, we do a California trip every season and alternate between Southern (odd-numbered years) and Northern (even). We're going to go recover from the jet lag before charging into our annual West Coast Bias weekend, but we have some Easty bits to clean up. UNC-Ashevi...
S4 January 16, 2008 ASHEVILLE, N.C. -- I'm really all atwitter today. I've been to 52 games so far this year, but none has been as eagerly anticipated as tonight's. For the finale of my weeklong tour of the Carolinas, I'm going to see UNC Asheville square off against High Point for first-place bragging rights in the Bi...
S4 January 15, 2008 ROCK HILL, S.C. -- Tuesdays are generally going to be a bit slow around here during conference season. For all its presupposed "Big"-ness, Mondays are nearly as slight as Fridays schedule-wise, with only the MEAC, SWAC and a few WCC and SoCon games reporting. So that gives us here at The Mid-Majorit...
S4 January 14, 2008 CHARLESTON, S.C. -- It's Monday, which means no cutesy-cutesy, no how-do-ya-do, no warm-up act jokes. Nearly every one of the 245 teams in Hoops Nation played over the weekend, and we're totally committed to mention at least two percent of those. It's all basketball today. Drake. No leading score...
S4 January 11, 2008 GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Super-size fast-food. Big Dog t-shirts. Enzyte. This is America, and everything is big. Real big. We all want to be big-time, and some of us do it by leading pieces with the kind of stuttering, oddly conversational, and totally incomplete sentences that have vaulted hack sports...
S4 January 10, 2008 SPARTANBURG, S.C. -- I was going to start out today with a hilarious joke about squirrels and their nuts, but this came across the wires this morning. The Cincinnati Enquirer, a fine newspaper, ran this today: Xavier shuns mid-major award. Here's a taste for those who don't like clicking things: Ri...
S4 January 9, 2008 ELON, N.C. -- Late start today due to delayed air travel. A whole bunch of people in suits wielding Blackberries and Blackjacks, talking about internal voter metrics or somesuch, seem to suddenly be travelling from New England to the mid-South today, all at once. Couldn't figure out why. Let's go! ...
S4 January 8, 2008 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- I want to share with you an idea I had this morning. I'll do anything necessary to make this possible, but I think that next November somebody should hold a Multi-Team Event just for relentlessly uptempo teams. The naming rights are open for purchase by any beverage manufacturer, ...
S4 January 7, 2008 INDIANAPOLIS -- Making the transition from nonconference to conference season is always a little rough. Not that we're getting dragged into something we don't want to be dragged into -- they just require such different mindsets. For two months, it's all rah-rah beat the power conferences, and then i...
S4 January 4, 2008 SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- I attended my first-ever Summit League game last night. Oh sure, I've been to plenty of Mid-Continent Conference games before, but things are different now. They've got a new name, new colors, and a new clip-art logo. Are their feelings of inadequacy solved? Hope so! Folks fro...
S4 January 3, 2008 DES MOINES -- We usually leave the politics to bloggers who enjoy disseminating red-or-blue opinions and sorting through 300 comments' worth of fallout (You're in league with al-Qaeda! No, you are!), but it's been fascinating to see the caucus process in action up close. People around here take this...
S4 December 31, 2007 MUNCIE, Ind. -- Well, here it is, the last Boubacar of 2007, coming at the beginning of the final broken week of the 2007-08 season. No Boubacar tomorrow, but there will be a few special treats posted here, including our annual New Year's essay. You'll want to stay tuned for that. For now, here are ...
S4 December 28, 2007 CARBONDALE, Ill. -- The end of the holiday season means the end of holiday music, and thank gosh for that. The world doesn't need another imaginative reinterpretation of Irving Berlin (much less a hip-hop one), and I've long held that the sound of recorded sleigh bells sounds just like fingernails a...
S4 December 27, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Hey y'all, hope you had a great holiday. We sure did here at the version of TMM Mobile HQ that has its own basement. And with the lack of actual games these past three days, we also have the chance to catch our breaths and look at a few off-court stories in Hoops Nation lately. ...
S4 December 24, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- As promised, we're going to crown our ARRRGH contest winner today and give out a free stuffed Bally. We were looking for the best mid-major ARRRGH moment, the worst instance of thwarted victory, the most crushing realization that the big guys have won again and that "Hoosiers" mom...
S4 December 21, 2007 NEW YORK -- A quick few words about mid-major upsets, followed by a lot of words about mid-major upsets. I go on the electronic sports talk radio some. The hosts usually don't know who I am, don't read this site or realize that "oh, you wrote that ESPN.com story?" I don't mind any of that. What I ...
S4 December 20, 2007 KENT, Oh. -- Just a reminder that you have until Friday morning at 7-ish Eastern time to enter the Mid-Majority ARRRGH essay contest. We did the great NCAA moments during Finals Week, now it's time to recall the most frustrating mid-major collapse, defeat, buzzer-beating dropped decision you can thi...
S4 December 19, 2007 AKRON, Oh. -- There are so few of us... we who overanalyze everything about college basketball, pore over pages of stats, treat our game like a gigantic 341-piece puzzle that takes five months to solve itself. Our vision is distorted because we spend so much time talking to each other; we forget tha...
S4 December 18, 2007 EMMITSBURG, Md. -- All three Ballys from Finals Week were sent out by The Official Wife yesterday, and the two from earlier contests are on their way as well. Still heartbroken that you didn't get one? Well, here's your chance. Inspired by yesterday's announcement of the new ARRRGH! award, which le...
S4 December 17, 2007 YOUNGSTOWN, Oh. -- It takes me so long to write these Boubacar intros, you can't even imagine. The pressure to write something clever and erudite is just... so immense. Usually takes about an hour just to have an idea, and that's after banging my forehead on the table until something figuraliterally...
S4 December 14, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- It had to come to an end eventually, these two weeks of sitting at home, watching basketball, cooking dinner for the Official Wife and digging out the driveway. This weekend, I go out on the road again for a seven-day, eight-game trip through Ohio, Maryland and Pennsylvania. But ...
S4 December 13, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- It's the bright early morning of an American day that will likely end with a lot fewer baseball fans. As I often say to disillusioned sports nuts tired of steroids this and Barry Bonds that, why don't you give mid-major college basketball a try? We've got close games, tons of te...
S4 December 12, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Here's the mail, it never fails... it makes me want to wag my tail. Remember me? Im the guy from the espn.com chat that was talking about why and how Rhode Island would go into the Dome and take care of Syracuse on Saturday night. After laughing in my face and down talking a ver...
S4 December 11, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Folks sometimes come up and ask me how they can get started with their very own mid-major college basketball blog. "Read mine all the way through, then do it better," I tell them. "Put me out of business, so I can go back to what I really love... 18-hour days of cross-checking my ...
S4 December 10, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- I was looking over the schedule, trying to find some games to go to this week. Maybe you were too. There's hardly anything going on out there in Hoops Nation this week. Virtual bupkis. Not enough nothing to cancel the G!O!T!N! for the week, but all across the land, the "athlete" p...
S4 December 7, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- It's taken a week, but I believe we have all the entries in our Pop Loser contest, most of which took as much time as media mail to arrive because of e-mail clog on this end. And of our 22 entries, I had to eliminate 15 of them. The point was not to point out an instance of refere...
S4 December 6, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Good morning, Hoops Nation. I've been having a bunch of fun with our new database of officials over at Basketball State. We've got a white pages listing, rankings of fouls called by teams including each ref and average call margins on home teams, and maps of all the games your fav...
S4 December 5, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- First of all this morning, a big hello-and-thank-you to the 213 members of the Upset Club. We got you one (a result, surely, of all the Northern Illinois love from yesterday) or two last night, but those e-mail boxes should be lighting up soon with lots more Upset Alerts. Maybe ev...
S4 December 4, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Less than a month into this, and the whole Boubacar concept is taking hold. I'm getting tons of e-mails describing players, plays, teams and performances as "Boubacar-worthy," "Boubacar material," "Boub-tastic." One even used the term -- I kid you not -- "Boubalicious." Surely, in...
S4 December 3, 2007 WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The "e" in e-mail was supposed to stand for "emproved" and "enstant." It was designed to be better than regular mail, because it would arrive there the second you sent it and you can feel confident enough in the system that every e-mail will be properly received. Sure, you can't ...
S4 November 30, 2007 DAVIDSON, N.C. -- Welcome to your weekend Big B, the final one of November. Hard to believe it's almost December already. Season's almost a month old. Say, how's the family? Kids alright? Good, good to hear. This weather we're having... never thought we'd still be in short sleeves and singing Christ...
S4 November 29, 2007 HIGH POINT, N.C. -- In a world of Bill Simmons this and Dennis Miller that, there is no worse crime than blowing a pop culture reference. You know what I'm talking about. I think all of us, at one time, have tried to pass ourselves off as having seen a movie (by looking at the list of quotes on iMDB...
S4 November 28, 2007 NORFOLK, Va. -- Sorry about the late post today. Full story later on, but in most of Southern Virginia, the internet is something to catch bass with. Not a slight against those good people, mind you, I'd trade it all in for a life in a place like Skippers. Life down there brought to mind a modern to...
S4 November 27, 2007 WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- The leftovers are already running out in your fridge, but they're always stocked up here at the Bread Restaurant. Personally, I recommend the cinnamon crunch bagel with hazelnut cream cheese, and perhaps a veggie grilled panini sandwich later. I'd better finish this Boubacar u...
S4 November 26, 2007 BOONE, N.C. -- The problem with taking the holiday off from posting is that things happen, build up, force a gigantic Monday post. Here, then, is your long weekend in mid-major land. Saturday, November 24, 2007. After the pitch-blah of Black Friday came a sunburst of brightness, as hungry mids ove...
S4 November 21, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- This season's been real warpy in terms of time... early start on the 5th, and now we're staring down Thanksgiving. The Official Wife™ and I are on the way out to go grocery-shopping for what used to be Unturkey day around here (Why, damn you, WHY!?!?!?) but I said, "Not yet,...
S4 November 20, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- It's a snowy Tuesday here at the office home, but that won't depress us, not in the least. Here, for the first time ever, a 100% positive Boubacar... Belmont. "They" said it wasn't a "real" upset. Oh, it's just Cincinnati. Never mind that UC has five times more money to spend on...
S4 November 19, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Wow, what a weekend. So packed with hot mid-major action that I don't have time to tell any jokes here in the intro paragraph. Here we go! Siena's Super Saints. Number 20's been an unlucky spot in the national popularity contest lately. That's where Kentucky sat when Gardner-Web...
S4 November 16, 2007 MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- Well, that concludes the first full week of the 2007-08 college basketball season. Just so you know how things will work from here on out, no Boubacars on Saturdays or Sundays, one catch-all G!O!T!N! for all three days, and Bally will show up sometime over the weekend. Mickel...
S4 November 15, 2007 BOWLING GREEN, Ky. -- "Yo," my mid-major "peeps." Before we kick off this morning's Boubacar action, I just wanted to let you know that we're running a free preview of Basketball State today. It's one of your last chances to grab a 12-month subscription at the early season price before it goes up ne...
S4 November 14, 2007 LOUISVILLE -- In our third installment of the Boubacar this year, let's wrap up the sights and sounds (both literally) from the Columbus pod of the NIT Season Tip-Off. Wisconsin-Green Bay. I knew coming in what Columbia was about (and, perhaps, what Columbia's 2016-17 team is going to be about as...
S4 November 13, 2007 But, how do we SAY "Boubacar"... is it "BOW buh car", "Boo buh car", or something else?? If we're going to properly use this in the future, we need to know.... Rod, Asheville NC COLUMBUS, Oh. -- "Boubacar," as I've heard it on TV, is "BOO-buh-car." It's a highly exalted name of West African origi...
S4 November 12, 2007 COLUMBUS, Oh. -- Daily roundups have been a Mid-Majority staple over the past three-plus years. They were known as "Daily Dribblings" during the first season, weren't given titles in Year Two -- an open pander to the surrealist Samuel Beckett fans who make up a good portion of my audience. Finally, ...
S3 March 12, 2007 Bullet Points http://schools.basketballstate.com/TAMCC class=optn>Texas A&M-Corpus Christi won the Southland final, and Championship Fortnight has come to a close. It's Tournament Time! The Last Bracket All brackets on the Bracket City page have been replaced with the completed versions. ...
S3 March 11, 2007 Bullet Points Albany, Long Beach State, Miami (Oh.), Florida A&M, Jackson State and New Mexico State, welcome to the dance. All won their respective conference tournament championships, and are all super-great. LBSU is the only double-champion from Saturday, following up a regular-season title w...
S3 March 10, 2007 Bullet Points Holy Cross is back in the NCAA Tournament after beating Bucknell in the third consecutive Bison-Crusader title game. It's not a rivalry unless both teams get to win. Nevada was sent out of the WAC tourney with a freaky foul moment against Utah State. In other No. 4-over-1 action, Toled...
S3 March 9, 2007 Bullet Points Most action played according to seed yesterday, but there were a few upsets: Morgan State over South Carolina State in the MEAC's 4-5 game, and both low seeds won in the SWAC, including No. 6 Arkansas-Pine Bluff. Yeah, there were a couple of pretty surprising upsets too. Lamar knocked ...
S3 March 8, 2007 Bullet Points Central Connecticut State from the NEC is going dancing, and so is Weber State of the Big Sky. Both are double champions of their respective leagues, and both just plain rock. No autobids tonight. Deep breath... No surprises in the MAC quarters, or the SWAC and MEAC early rounds, but ...
S3 March 7, 2007 Bullet Points Wright State are double-champions of the Horizon League, having beaten a Butler team that's been all up in the national grill this season. Do you take the Raiders seriously yet? Oral Roberts, repeat double champions of the mighty mighty Mid-Con, and North Texas has claimed the champion...
S3 March 6, 2007 Bullet Points Three championships were settled yesterday. All hail Virginia Commonwealth, double champions of the grand old Colonial, who held off a pesky George Mason team. And congratulations to Niagara, which beat Siena to claim the MAAC tournament championship. Oh yeah, andUnnamed Major Program ...
S3 March 5, 2007 Bullet Points In Sunday's only championship game, Creighton beat Southern Illinois to win the Missouri Valley autobid. Cinderella 2: Electric Boogaloo... George Mason upset Old Dominion in the CAA semis out of the No. 6 seed. Siena upset Marist in a No.5-over-1 job in the Metro Atlantic semis, and S...
S3 March 4, 2007 Bullet Points We have four champions on the busiest day of Championship Fortnight: all hail Winthrop of the Big South and Davidson of the SoCon, double champions both. Second seeds who rose up to claim tourney championships and dance tickets: Eastern Kentucky of the Ohio Valley and Belmont of the At...
S3 March 3, 2007 Bullet Points In the first real shocker of Championship Fortnight, Appalachian State was upset by College of Charleston in the SoCon semifinals. Four leagues crown champions today on the ESPN family of networks. The Big South, Ohio Valley, SoCon and Atlantic Sun seasons will conclude with autobids b...
S3 March 2, 2007 Bullet Points No. 6 seed Virginia Military Institute has advanced to the Big South final after defeating the tourney's Nos. 2 and 3 seeds. Furman, the No. 5 seed in the SoCon, advanced to the semifinals by defeating No. 4#North Carolina-Greensboro. The Atlantic Sun quarterfinals played according to ...
S3 March 1, 2007 Bullet Points Three top seeds survived in the Patriot League quarterfinals; the only upset was No. 6 Army upending No. 3 Lehigh. Five campus-site Sun Belt games are complete heading towards the tourney at Lafayette, La.. In a minor upset, No. 9 seed Middle Tennessee State beat No. 8 Troy. The three-...
S3 February 28, 2007 Bullet Points Two defending champions were eliminated: Wisconsin-Milwaukee of the Horizon League and Murray State of the OVC. Two upsets in the Big South: the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds, Liberty and Coastal Carolina, fell at home in the quarterfinals. A minor upset in the Ohio Valley quarters, as Samford...
S3 February 27, 2007 Bullet Points Today is the first day of Championship Fortnight, with three leagues getting under way with elimination games. The Big South and Ohio Valley kick off with campus-site quarterfinals, and the Horizon League begins with a three-game first round. Brackets The intriguing thing in the Big...
S3 February 26, 2007 BOZEMAN, Mont. -- That's right, waah-waah. This is the final Daily Paragraph, the last K-Dub's Krazy Fact of the Day of the season. That's because (not-so-Top Five) Tuesday, February 27 is the honorary first day of March. It's tourney time! The Horizon League, Ohio Valley and Big South kick off thei...
S3 February 23, 2007 NASHVILLE -- Look, nobody has to tell me about how long the season is. I've been out on the road for all but two weeks since November 10, and it's taking its toll mentally. Two nights ago, I had a dream that I was organizing Oprah's music collection; she was telling me she couldn't decide whether to...
S3 February 22, 2007 CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. -- Before we get too wrapped up in Championship Week this and NCAA Tournament that, in seeding whichever and Billy Packer whatever, I'd like to take time out to offer a small tribute to some special people. This is a tribute to the 508 fans who attended last night's Division I ga...
S3 February 20, 2007 CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- We all love BracketBusters, and there's no denying that the event had a gigantic impact on the college basketball-o-sphere over the weekend. Southern Illinois was able to make a big road statement in a showcase game (a win at Butler that would have been 44-41 without all the fr...
S3 February 16, 2007 INDIANAPOLIS -- It's the eve of mid-majordom's national holiday, and for this fifth edition of the event we're getting the whole family involved. Yo dad, those repairs on the car can wait. There are 14 great televised mid-major matchups to watch! It's the perfect time to bring Junior onto the couc...
S3 February 14, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- I've been talking to folks around the country these past few days, and have had a really hard time convincing them that the Northeast is where it's at. It's not all Friends and the Hamptons and day trips to Times Square... you pay for all that glamour with high gas prices, frost h...
S3 February 12, 2007 BALTIMORE -- OK, OK, OK, OK. I've read your e-mails, I've received your calls and media inquiries. The big question of the weekend is not what happened in the huge mid-major games these past few days, but what are we to do about this? And this? Let's get the easy punchline out of the way first: Ther...
S3 February 9, 2007 DALLAS -- Big, big weekend in Hoops Nation. Huge. Make sure to check out these six big showdown/throwdown/hoedowns at the top of league tables this weekend. As a bonus, we're offering some sample pregame warmup music for your iPod, so you can truly get pumped up for these hot matchups. Holy Cross (...
S3 February 8, 2007 ARLINGTON, Tex. -- It's true what they say, everything's bigger in Texas. The hats, the Cadillacs, the stars at night, people's butts, the food. I went into a convenience store this morning and saw an 84-ounce fountain soda for sale, I couldn't even get my hand around it much less fit it in a cuphol...
S3 February 6, 2007 LOS ANGELES -- I'm not going to get all weird on you and tell you that covering basketball is tantamount to some kind of athletic event, but boy-oh-boy can it take a physical toll. Last night, I ventured out to Gersten Pavilion (a/k/a "Hank's House") to take some notes on theUnnamed Program From t...
S3 February 5, 2007 LOS ANGELES -- There are three important national holidays on the official calendar of Hoops Nation™. First and foremost in importance, of course, is Selection Sunday in March -- the day that the entire college basketball year leads up to. A second is coming up in a couple weeks: that glorious...
S3 February 2, 2007 PHOENIX - O, layover... Haven of annoying cell-phone talk, home of heavily made-up airline employees yet unhelpful gate agents (that'll be seventy-five bucks to fly standby, please), opportunity to gorge oneself on 3,000-calorie Cinnabons, chance to catch up with increasingly irrelevant color period...
S3 January 31, 2007 Here, then, are all the pairings for BracketBusters 2007. You can click on a matchup to learn more about the two teams and how they, well, match up. Albany at Boise State (TV) Appalachian State at Wichita State (TV) http://bbstate.com/games/66467>Austin Peay at Akron http://bbstate.com/games/664...
S3 January 30, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Before we begin our supersized DP, I just want to share with you something I wrote yesterday. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (fourth edition, 2004, published by Houghton Mifflin) defines the word "champion" as "One that wins first place or first prize in...
S3 January 29, 2007 I'm bogged down with BracketBusters stuff today in advance of the pairing announcement tonight (at 6 pm ET), but I'll be back tomorrow with the weekend recap, the announcement of the BB contest winners, and a special Top Five Tuesday about the Busters. See you then! ...
S3 January 26, 2007 CHARLOTTE -- A couple of quick housekeeping things up front: my ESPN.com chat today is at a special this-week-only time of 2 pm ET; I'm switching timeslots with Joe Lunardi. Come on by! As of Friday morning, we've had 82 entries in Bally's BracketBusters Racket, the fun game where you can win valua...
S3 January 25, 2007 BOONE, N.C. -- As of press time, 63 of the available 100 entries in Bally's BracketBusters Racket, the only contest in the world that lets you choose all 51 BB matchups, have been snapped up (the limit is in place 'cause I'll be hand-validating the entries, but call it a "soft cap"). Remember: the d...
S3 January 23, 2007 COOKEVILLE, Tenn. -- Over the past 20 days or so, the vast majority of my incoming hoops-related mail (and Friday chat questions) have had to do with the mid-major conference selections that I submitted to the Worldwide Leader the other week. It's great that they get people talking about mid-majors ...
S3 January 22, 2007 CULLOWHEE, N.C. -- Lots to get to today, just like every Monday. And if you haven't signed up to play Bally's BracketBusters Racket yet, you have a lot more to get to than I do. Roll the HTML! The Big Games! at Virginia Commonwealth 80, Old Dominion 75 (Colonial) (box) -- The VCU Rams are the only...
S3 January 19, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- No mailbag this week, because quite frankly most of the letters this week were way too personal. Look, I'm a basketball writer, when did my mortgage, my stock portfolio and my "size" suddenly become fair game? Oops, wrong mail folder. Anyway... Every year around this time, we sta...
S3 January 18, 2007 NEW BRITAIN, Conn. -- It's a seasonably warm Thursday morning in Mid-Majorland, let's get right to it! Conference Shootaround! Colonial: Virginia Commonwealth stretched its CAA record to 7-0 (15-3 overall) at the expense of North Carolina-Wilmington on Wednesday, and The Dub stands for Woeful righ...
S3 January 16, 2007 NEW ORLEANS -- We discussed this a little yesterday, but there's a growing drumbeat sounding across Hoops Nation; thunder in the distance, if you will. I'm talking, of course, about the potential fall from grace by the sore thumb in our midst, the eternal oddball, the one voted Most Likely To Succee...
S3 January 15, 2007 LORMAN, Miss. -- BracketBusters season starts in just under two weeks, and that's why we here at the Mid-Majority have put together this little map, so you can start scouting out the home teams (orange) and away teams (grey) and dream about matchups leading into the pairing announcement on Jan. 28. ...
S3 January 12, 2007 NATCHITOCHES, La. -- Mid-majors are often the Scrappy-Doos of college basketball (Let me at'im! Let me at'im!), which is probably part of the reason they're so annoying to major schools. But I disavow any such implied connection -- I hated that character as much as you did. Generally, I had a lot o...
S3 January 11, 2007 NATCHITOCHES, La. -- Let's begin today with dispatches from television's hottest mid-season replacement, "How Weird Was My Valley." Kyle, are the Sycamores really this good? This was a team that I thought would be with Illinois State at the bottom of The Valley, but they have a great RPI, and some ...
S3 January 9, 2007 NASHVILLE -- I guess it's basic human nature that we try to build fences and walls, to divide the included from the excluded, to protect what's inside from what's outside. There's nothing worse than the idea that the world doesn't make sense -- that's the fundamental building block of organized reli...
S3 January 8, 2007 JACKSON, Miss. -- Mondays from here on out will be busy times as we continue to track all the hot hot conference action, so let's all take a deep breath and let's get to it. Conference Shootaround! Missouri Valley: Yesterday in lovely Springfield, Missouri State broke both an eight-game losing str...
S3 January 5, 2007 I REALLY HAVE NO IDEA WHERE THIS IS, Ala. -- Travelling the highways and byways (mostly byways) of SWAC country is always a strange adventure. One of the most odd things about Alabama is that everywhere you look, there are references to the three American Idol stars the state has produced. This morn...
S3 January 4, 2007 HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- Just a reminder: make sure you get in on the action as The Mid-Majority expands its feature list in 2007 in return for warm, soft cash. We're halfway to unlocking mobile boxscores, a quarter of the way towards the team mileage maps, and we've also a chunk into the Tournament Geni...
S3 January 2, 2007 MOREHEAD, Ky. -- Let's take a quick look at happenings in Mid-Majorville on the last day of 2006 and first day of 2007. at Southern Illinois 73, Wichita State 68 (MVC) (Jan. 1) -- If you haven't noticed, the Shockers have had a real frustrating run of bad luck and sub-Shocker play recently. It star...
S3 December 29, 2006 POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. -- I'll tell you what holiday hell is. Last Saturday, heading back home to Providence from another mid-major excursion, I was stuck at New York's Kennedy airport on a scheduled three-hour layover, which suddenly became a seven-hour layover when the schedule started backing up. T...
S3 December 28, 2006 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- If you're a native New Yorker, or just someone who lives in a town with a Tribune-owned television station, you probably know about the Yule Log. It's that close-up shot of a fireplace that goes on for a commercial-free two hours and plays Christmas music. I've loved The Log for y...
S3 December 22, 2006 BOWLING GREEN, Ky. -- First, a few noteworthy results from the past couple of days, and after that a couple of quick mailbags. Delaware State 65, at Buffalo 62 Yo, Andy! A win at Buffalo is good, especially if you're from the MEAC! The Hornets shot 63%, and won despite the fact that Buffalo outrebo...
S3 December 20, 2006 MARTIN, Tenn. -- First of all today, I want to welcome the newest member of the Mid-Majority family, the "vs. Others" page. Every team now has one -- even yours! -- and it's got all sort of cool stuff on it like records and results against current conference opponents, as well as records against oth...
S3 December 17, 2006 MURFREESBORO, Tenn. -- After the lull of Finals Week, a literal explosion of college basketball action over the weekend! Here are a few results of interest and note from around Hoops Nation. Butler 68, Purdue 65 (Sat.) -- The Bulldogs keep doing what they do. They kept hold of the ball (only 13 tur...
S3 December 15, 2006 Kyle, it seems like mid-majors still aren't getting any respect. It doesn't matter how many games CAA or Missouri Valley teams win, it's either a "step towards respectability" or some kind of fluke. How many steps is it going to take? John, Falls Church VA I'll start this like I always do, with ...
S3 December 8, 2006 WEST LONG BRANCH, N.J. -- Let's go straight to the mailbag, no delay, no bullpoop. Kyle, all these heroic recaps of "mid-over-major" results are great and everything, but what about the December games that really matter, the early conference stuff? Stan K. You're right, Stan. It's easy to get caug...
S3 December 5, 2006 PHILADELPHIA -- Just a quick check of the tally board: mid-major wins are still ahead of last year's total at this time, 60-54. Seven of those came on "Black Saturday," when you had such corkers as Wichita State's 64-61 nailbiter over Syracuse, in which they held on after building a huge first-half ...
S3 November 28, 2006 VALPARAISO, Ind. -- For every upset of a major program by a mid-major (and there have been 44 so far this season, as compared to 36 at this time a year ago), there's a tantalizing near-miss. Like last night at the venerable old Athletics and Recreation Center, where the Brown and Gold of Valpo nearl...
S3 November 25, 2006 CHICAGO - The holiday season. What a putrid, disgusting thing it's become. Housewives maiming each other over "door-buster" sales, crappy holiday music, pointless religious debates over nomenclature, and all those Lifetime movies starring Valerie Bertinelli about the little town that found the true ...
S3 November 21, 2006 PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- Calendar years. Every 12 months, it's a different one. Crazy stuff, that. But aside from the numbers, here's the only real difference between this basketball season and last season. Last season, ESPN's non-Andy Katz blog was telling you all about how great all these mid-major upse...
S3 November 20, 2006 PAWTUCKET, R.I. - By November 19, 2005, there had been 16 games in which a school from one of the eight major conferences had been beaten by a school from one of the 23 other D-I conferences*. [*Unnamed Major Program From the Northwest excluded] This year, on that date, there have been 26. This i...
S3 November 17, 2006 RICHMOND, Va. - Thank you for your repeat business. Before we get to the mailbag, credit where it's due. Oral Roberts 78, Kansas 71 (Wed.) -- Kansas is undoubtedly the greatest program in the history of college basketball, with links that go as deep as the game's origins themselves. But lately, Bea...
S3 November 14, 2006 ROANOKE, Va. (en route to Charlotte) -- Hello again, friends, and welcome to your mid-major Pre-Hump Day. Before we get to yesterday's action, though, something's been bugging me. I was driving through Maryland this morning, and out of nowhere a beer ad jingle from the Eighties jumped from the dee...
S3 November 13, 2006 BLOOMSBURY, N.J. (en route to Charlotte) -- Hello again, friends, and welcome back to TMM's regular schedule. This here is The Daily Paragraph, which is specifically designed to be triply too clever for it's own good: it's a play on existing basketball literature, is a sarcastic/ironic attempt at on...
S1 March 13, 2005 Bullet Points Six more teams are in: Vermont (America East), Ohio (MAC), UTEP (WAC), Delaware State (MEAC), George Washington (A-10), and Utah State (Big West). Championship Week concludes today with a pair of games: the SWAC and Southland finals. It's Selection Sunday, the holiest day of the colle...
S1 March 12, 2005 Bullet Points Congratulations to Bucknell, orange-clad kings of the Patriot League. Eight-seed Boise State continued to rip through the WAC bracket, knocking off Fresno State one day after dispatching 1 Nevada. Today marks the grand crescendo of the mid-major season. With finals in the America East...
S1 March 11, 2005 Bullet Points Western Athletic regular season champions Nevada dropped a shock decision to Boise State, clearing the way for a two-bid WAC. There won't likely be many other two-bid mid-major leagues except for, say, the Missouri Valley... apparently the new RPI isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'...
S1 March 10, 2005 Bullet Points Two more Dance tickets were printed and punched last night: Fairleigh-Dickinson out of the NEC, and Montana from the Big Sky. Defending champion Florida A&M was ousted from the MEAC tournament. After a last-second bracket reshuffling due to three forfeited games, the SWAC gets it ...
S1 March 9, 2005 Bullet Points Oakland of the Mid-Continent Conference pulled the low-seed surprise of the year, taking down 1 seed Oral Roberts in the league's title game by a 61-60 score. Two other proud conference champions, and two overjoyed satellite campuses: Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Louisiana-Lafayette. The P...
S1 March 8, 2005 Bullet Points Four champions are crowned: Creighton (MVC), Niagara (MAAC), Old Dominion (CAA) and UMPFN (WCC). Three more tonight: the Sun Belt, Mid-Continent, and the Horizon league matchup of Detroit and Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The run of the Oakland Golden Grizzlies of the Mid-Con continued, they'...
S1 March 7, 2005 Bullet Points No finals yesterday, four tonight. The Missouri Valley, as expected since the beginning of the season, was no cookie-cutter cakewalk for top seeds. Both 1 Southern Illinois and 2 Wichita State went down, but the Salukis remain bulletproof on Selection Sunday. Two defending conference ...
S1 March 6, 2005 Bullet Points Four Dance tickets were punched: Winthrop, Eastern Kentucky, Central Florida and Chattanooga. Despite the two-digit numbers that the Selection Committee will hand them one week from today, all are champions. One-seeds fell like mighty trees. Arkansas-Little Rock, the E1 in the Sun Bel...
S1 March 5, 2005 Bullet Points Two one-seeds went down: Tennessee Tech lost in the OVC semifinals, and Davidson was eliminated in the Southern Conference semis. Four automatic bids will be handed out today, as the ESPN networks begin a schedule of court-stormings every two hours or so. We have the Big South's matc...
S1 March 4, 2005 Bracket Wrap Southern: The favorites prevailed, but all their SoCon South division-mates have been wiped out. (recaps) (S1) Davidson 67, (N4) Elon 53 (N2) North Carolina-Greensboro 73, (S3) Georgia Southern 71 (N1) Chattanooga 77, (N5) East Tennessee State 70 (N3) Appalachian State 63, (S2) Charle...
S1 March 3, 2005 Mid-American: Miami (Oh.) 70, Kent State 45 (story) - Total domination. The RedHawks (18-8, 12-5 MAC) sent a message to the rest of the league, and to the Selection Committee as well, saying that they'd sure like to be invited to that Dance thingy if there's room on the list. But they didn't ask nic...
S1 March 2, 2005 Bracket Wrap Big South: The way is now even clearer for the dominant one-seed in this league; after the campus-seed quarterfinals, the BSC bracket is blown apart. (7) Charleston Southern 66, (2) Liberty 60 (story) (6) High Point 98, (3) North Carolina-Asheville 93 (OT) (story) (4) Birmingham-Sout...
S1 March 1, 2005 Missouri Valley: Northern Iowa 67, Wichita State 66 (story) - It's painful watching them keep losing, because it heightens the twin possibilities that the Valley will only get a single bid and the Big East will get (shudder) eight. Six-three Panther guard Ben Jacobsen lit up the scoreboard with 24 p...
S1 February 28, 2005 Mid-American: Bowling Green 57, Miami (Oh.) 56 (story) - Despite the fact that the game's telecast was cancelled after an hour's delay because BGSU's Mawel Soler shattered a backboard during pregame warmups, Falcon senior forward Josh Almanson's jumper with six seconds remaining was a shot heard 'ro...
S1 February 27, 2005 Ivy: Pennsylvania 80, Columbia 72 (story) - Congratulations to the Quakers! The first ticket to the NCAA Tournament was punched last night as Penn (17-8, 10-1) clinched the Ivy League regular-season title. They stormed to a win on the Lions' home court, bolstered by 68% second-half shooting and a ...
S1 February 25, 2005 Atlantic Sun: Central Florida 58, Gardner-Webb 55 (story) - G-Webb (15-11, 12-7 ASun), who finished ninth and out of the conference tournament last year, could have clinched the regular-season title and the tourney one-seed right there on their home floor. The Runnin' Bulldogs From Boiling Springs c...
S1 February 24, 2005 Mid-American: Akron 55, Miami (Oh.) 49 (OT) (story) - Six-four RedHawk guard Chet Mason had the game of his life, with 23 points and 15 rebounds... but as the sportswriters like to say, it was not enough. Despite sending the game to overtime on a last-second three by William Hatcher, Miami (17-1, 11...
S1 February 23, 2005 Mid-Continent: Missouri-Kansas City 77, Oral Roberts 70 (story) - In front of a roaring partisan paid attendance of 7,132, UMKC (15-9, 11-2 MidCon) held off the visitors in what the Kansas City Star pegged as "the most important game in its 18-year Division I era." After a seesaw opening to the seco...
S1 February 22, 2005 Northeast: St. Francis (NY) 110, Fairleigh Dickinson 103 (story) - Nope - not an overtime game, and not something straight out of the Atlantic Sun Conference. The two teams created an old-school NBA score in just 40 minutes despite each shooting just a little over 50% - needless to say, the game's ...
S1 February 21, 2005 America East: Northeastern 63, Boston University 48 (story) - It's a dog-eat-dog world, and nowhere is that more true than in this conference. The Terriers of BU (19-6, 13-3 AE) stifled junior sharpshooter and former MMBOW Jose Juan Barea (2-for-17, 10 pts) on Senior Day, and held on to a lead for n...
S1 February 20, 2005 Nevada 74, Vermont 64 (story) - You can either contain Taylor Coppenrath or not (18 points here), but the real key to beating Vermont (19-5, 14-1 AEast) is stopping sharpshooter and former MMBOW T.J. Sorrentine. T.J. had 24 total, but only nine of those were in the second half. Nevada's (20-5, 11-2 ...
S1 February 18, 2005 Atlantic Sun: Gardner-Webb 67, Belmont 58 (OT) (story) - G-Webb (15-9, 12-5 ASun) used a five-minute rally to storm back from a 12-point deficit late in the second. The homestanding Bruins controlled the flow for 35 minutes, and that included a 12-0 run midway through the second half to break the ga...
S1 February 17, 2005 Colonial: George Mason 74, Old Dominion 58 (story) - Shall I compare last night's performance by the Old Dominion Monarchs to a summer day? Hell, no. The CAA leaders shot just 33 percent from the floor, because their hosts did a lot of spear-shaking on the defensive end. By handing ODU their second ...
S1 February 16, 2005 Shootaround! Mid-American: Two games last night in the East division. In yesterday evening's G!O!T!N!, Buffalo (16-7, 9-6 MAC) kept Kent State in check on their home court, 77-66. Turner Battle had 22 points and helped power a 17-5 second-half run that brought Buffalo back from a nine-point halftim...
S1 February 15, 2005 Mid-American: Akron 81, Toledo 79 (OT) (story) - It was a clash between teams with MAC high-seed aspirations. But most games this year in this league are like that. Eight of the 13 teams currently have winning records, mostly because Marshall and Central Michigan are so awful. But this was no Valent...
S1 February 14, 2005 So it turns out that Hot Sh*t Saturday was a great success. Six games, all good. Thrillers, comebacks, overtime, great shooting, great defense... HSS had something for everyone. Let's review: Big West: Pacific 64, Utah State 63 (story) - With 31 seconds left, homestanding Utah State was leading 61-...
S1 February 11, 2005 Big South: Winthrop 69, Liberty 61 (story) - I'd like to introduce you to a young man named Torrell Martin. He's a 6'5" sophomore shooting guard for the Winthrop Eagles who can shoot. During the Winthrop Gauntlet - a six-day, four-game stretch from hell - Martin has been completely lights out: 19 po...
S1 February 10, 2005 Firstly, a big "yo" to all Philadelphia Inquirer readers who scoped Janet Paskin's piece instead of the sports-section leader about Donovan McNabb's vomit. Welcome to TMM, here's the first page. Despite both what The Official Wife Of The Mid-Majority™ says and Herculean efforts by the gentlema...
S1 February 9, 2005 Big South: Winthrop 72, High Point 55 (story) - The Winthrop Gauntlet, as mentioned yesterday, is a four-game, six-day stretch; they'll take any break they can get. Last night, they took advantage of the indefinite suspension of HP's star forward (and defending Big South Player Of The Year) Danny Ga...
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