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S8 March 21, 2012 Game #8-780: Western Kentucky Hilltoppers vs. Mississippi Valley State Delta DevilsMarch 13, 2012 7:30 pmDayton, OHBBState Stats/RecapWhen I first heard that President Obama and Great Britain Prime Minister David Cameron were going to attend our beloved Quad-PIG, I immediately noted the following on... [more]
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S8 November 23, 2011 Game #8-100: Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils at South Carolina GamecocksNovember 22, 2011 7:00 pmCarolina CenterBBState Stats/RecapAs I wrote previously, some of us go from mid-majors to above the Red Line. Some, like Kyle, have gone from above the Red Line to below it. And of course there are... [more]
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S7 March 13, 2011 If college basketball has taught us anything, it's that there's nothing that becomes irrelevant more suddenly than Championship Fortnight. Once the NCAA Tournament bracket is released, the previous two weeks slip into history... very quickly. But one thing that has to be remembered: the teams that w... [more]
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S7 March 11, 2011 Bowling Green Falcons vs. Western Michigan BroncosMarch 10, 2011 12:00 pmBBState Stats/Recap
Akron Zips vs. Miami (Oh.) RedhawksMarch 10, 2011 2:30 pmBBState Stats/Recap
Buffalo Bulls vs. Kent State Golden FlashesMarch 10, 2011 7:00 pmBBState Stats/Recap
Ohio Bobcats vs. Ball State CardinalsMarch 10... [more]
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S7 March 11, 2011 h2 {margin-bottom:10px;font-size:13px;font-family:Droid Sans, arial;line-height:17px;} #droid {font-size:11px;font-family:Droid Sans, arial;line-height:13px;margin-bottom:8px;} #droid a:link, #droid a:visited {font-size:11px;font-family:Droid Sans, arial;line-height:13px;}Bullet PointsThere were no ... [more]
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S7 March 10, 2011 h2 {margin-bottom:10px;font-size:13px;font-family:Droid Sans, arial;line-height:17px;} #droid {font-size:11px;font-family:Droid Sans, arial;line-height:13px;margin-bottom:8px;} #droid a:link, #droid a:visited {font-size:11px;font-family:Droid Sans, arial;line-height:13px;}
Bullet PointsCongratulati... [more]
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S7 March 2, 2011
KINGSTON, R.I. -- The stars are beginning to flicker and burn out in the elimination games. For others, it's far from over. Here, one final look at the remaining league regular season races as we move towards getting all the rest of the Other 25 conferences in the gate and ready for bracket time. ... [more]
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S7 February 23, 2011
CHICAGO -- Every single one of the conference games going on tonight, and tomorrow, and Friday and Saturday too, were scheduled months in advance by a league office (or, in some cases, years ago). Some were circled rivalry games worth driving a day for, others were just-anothers. In early March, t... [more]
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S7 February 16, 2011
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. -- March really is here before we know it, because there's half a week missing out of February. This month wasn't designed that way -- and nothing was adjusted for our benefit or anything -- but it's still disorienting and disruptive to look at a calendar and realize that in two ... [more]
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S7 January 31, 2011
PAWTUCKET, R.I. -- What is madness? Back up, let's start this way: the reason and order necessary for understanding and mastery of one's surroundings has no room or space for such anarchic disruption. Madness is the danger where once things were safe, displacing sense and destroying sensibilities.... [more]
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S7 January 25, 2011
BOSTON -- This day contains failure. Every day does. Some failures are life-changing losses, some are spectacular flameouts, but most fall within the category of regular everyday minuses. You might now perform up to somebody's expectations today, or you might forget an important something somewher... [more]
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S7 January 4, 2011
Kyle, I just returned home from my first college basketball double header not involving a conference tournament. I drove for about six hours today to watch UNCG play in front of a couple hundred fans at Greensboro Coliseum against Richmond at noon. Followed a few hours later by a UNCW game against... [more]
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S7 December 13, 2010
CHICAGO -- Necessity is the mother of invention, but another thing that Mom does is feeds and cares for you. On Saturday night at Hinkle Fieldhouse, as "Underdawgs" author-slash-Indianapolis Star superwriter David Woods and I competed to see who could close the press room (he won), I experienced a... [more]
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S7 December 13, 2010 Mississippi Valley State Delta Devils at Butler BulldogsDecember 11, 2010 7:00 pmHinkle FieldhouseBBState Stats/Recap
Hinkle Fieldhouse. The very name oozes basketball history, if letters could ooze. For the first time in Season 7, we went to the home of the Butler Bulldogs on a mid-December Satu... [more]
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S6 February 9, 2010
Big Games
Western Athletic: at New Mexico State 70, Louisiana Tech 68
NMSU - 15-8 (8-2) [RPI: 78, State: 94] LTU - 19-5 (7-3) [RPI: 71, State: 67]
Star of the Game: Troy Gillenwater 19 Pts (7-12 FG, 4-4 FT), 8 Reb, 2 Stl
Laroche Hits Game Winner over LA Tech, 70-68 - New Mexico State sophomore ... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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S5 January 12, 2009
Davidson at Appalachian State (Southern)
Holmes Center - Boone, NC
7:30 PM EST
Every so often, the rules must be broken. There are some very traditionally great yet somewhat diluted matchups out there on this Monday night -- the Atlantic Sun's Battle of the Boulevard is back on (Lipscomb's struggl... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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S4 March 14, 2008 Bullet Points
No autobids given out on Thursday, but high seeds fell like falling things. Texas-Arlington showed No. 2 Lamar the door in the Southland quarterfinals. In the Atlantic 14, No. 6 Charlotte defeated No. 3 UMass, and there was a six-over-three in the SWAC, as Arkansas-Pine Bluff dumped A... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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S4 January 14, 2008
Morgan State at Norfolk State
Echols Arena - Norfolk, VA
9:00 PM EST
Just another MEAC Monday. There are four remaining 2-0 teams in the conference, and two of them will be on display for your enjoyment if you're a member of the tight-knit family of ESPNU subscribers. It's part of the netw... [more]
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S4 December 15, 2007 Thanks to the 168(!) people who played along with our second non-annual Mid-Majority Finals Week. That's so many people, they'd have to hold this class in one of those auditoriums where the professor doesn't know you from Samuel Haanpaa, where you have to spend five minutes of your six-minutes durin... [more]
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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,... [more]
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S3 March 28, 2007 PAWTUCKET, R.I., Mar. 28 -- All animate organisms, from the globbiest amoeba to the most intricate human machine, share one thing in common: life. Life is what keeps you going, it's the light before the beginning of the tunnel. The meaning of life is simply this: it means so much that nobody can sur... [more]
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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.
... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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 ... [more]
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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 ... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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... [more]
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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 ... [more]
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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... [more]
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S2 January 16, 2006 Martin Luther King didn't specifically mention basketball in his 1963 "I have a dream" speech, but its echoes were felt in the 1966 Texas Western national championship and later in the inclusion of HBCU's in the NCAA's Division I. Today, many of those historically black colleges and universities are... [more]
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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'... [more]
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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 ... [more]
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S1 February 8, 2005 Missouri Valley: Southern Illinois 58, Drake 57 (story) - Faraway, so close. Sure, SIU's RPI is great, but they're really struggling right now. At Drake, they had to be bailed out by bigman Josh Warren's last-minute jumper - they shot 40% and only made two free throws all evening. The Bulldogs' seas... [more]
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S1 January 26, 2005 Missouri Valley: Illinois State 77, Evansville 58 (story) - The Redbirds have overachieved this season with explosive offense and discipline - they used a 50-point second half and extreme ball control to sink the Aces. Three-point specialist Trey Guidry scored 25 points in just 21 minutes. So what n... [more]
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S1 January 25, 2005 Missouri Valley: Wichita State 65, Northern Iowa 57 (story) - The Shockers went on an early game-breaker of a run, but UNI fought back to take the lead just after halftime. Big Paul Miller hit a shot to make it 31-30, and WSU never looked back. Wichita State (14-2, 7-1 MVC) takes a half-game lead ov... [more]
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S1 January 18, 2005 Southern: Georgia Southern 102, Chattanooga 84 (story | play-by-play) - Throw out the record book! The SoCon team record for three-point goals made in a game was set last night in Statesboro, Georgia, where the Eagles (8-7, 4-2 SoCon) nailed 22 to bring down the North division-leading Mocs. Diminuti... [more]
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S1 January 9, 2005 West Coast: St. Mary's 66, UMPFN 61 (story) - Well, that didn't take long - now the folks who compile those goofy "mid-major polls" have to pick someone else. Homestanding St. Mary's used Mr. Three to take down the Unnamed Major Program From the Northwest, knocking down 16 of them. Senior guard Paul... [more]
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