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#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

Tag: Palestra
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S6 January 29, 2010 PHILADELPHIA -- They say the difference between home and the road is that when you're at your own place, you clean up. That the difference between a guest and a friend is that a friend will help with the dishes. So when I slept over at the Palestra on Wednesday night, a place I consider to be the ...
S6 January 28, 2010 PHILADELPHIA -- The Palestra, the concrete and steel Cathedral of College Basketball, opened in 1927 at 215 South 33rd Street, near the edge of the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. Since then, it's hosted 52 NCAA Tournament games, hundreds of Big 5 and Ivy League tilts, and thousands of c...
S6 January 11, 2010 PHILADELPHIA -- On June 6, 2001, the Philadelphia 76ers beat the Los Angeles Lakers 107-101 in overtime. It was Game 1 of the NBA Finals, and the Allen Iverson-led Sixers catapulted to a quick series lead. It was a promising harbinger of a championship, since the game was out west, on the road. Ph...
S5 February 12, 2009 Temple vs. Saint Joseph's (Atlantic 10) The Palestra - Philadelphia, PA 7:00 PM EST It's super-exciting in the grand old Atlantic 14 this week, no? Those who tuned into ESPN Classic last night looking for a rerun of the Cheap Seats Superdogs/Superjocks episode were treated to a thrilling ballgame ...
S5 February 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 December 31, 2008 The State of College Basketball is a new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the Final F...
S5 December 10, 2008 Dayton at Creighton Qwest Center - Omaha, NE 8:05 PM EST Even though they rarely play each other, Dayton and Creighton just go great together. Not only do they rhyme, they're both small schools in non-power conferences that have the kind of remarkable infrastructure, organization and long-term vis...
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 9, 2008 Ninth in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season. I have no Wikipedia entry of my own, not even a stub. If I understand the process correctly, you have to be either rich or a character on The Simpsons to get one of those. Being neither, and therefore not su...
S4 March 6, 2008   Xavier at Saint Joseph's (Atlantic 10) Alumni Memorial Fieldhouse - Philadelphia, PA 9:00 PM EST Xavier (25-4, 13-1) comes into tonight's G!O!T!N! on an 11-game win streak, has an RPI of six, and is the only team in the entire Atlantic 14 that could leave for a 10-day all-expenses-paid vac...
S4 March 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 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 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 12, 2008   Princeton at Pennsylvania (Ivy League) The Palestra - Philadelphia, PA 7:05 PM EST Even the great rivalries have their down years, and it's usually because one or the other team involved is down. Even the most diehard Penn fan will admit that the P&P games have been somewhat lackluster...
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 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   La Salle (Atlantic 10) at Pennsylvania (Ivy) The Palestra - Philadelphia, PA 7:00 PM EST When there's no games featuring conference frontrunners or prospective NCAA teams that are facing soul-baring tests, we here at G!O!T!N! studios usually revert to the game we'll be attending. Since we'...
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 December 18, 2007   Elon at Chattanooga (SoCon) McKenzie Arena - Chattanooga, TN 7:00 PM EST Tonight in the grand old Southern Conference, we have two league-undefeated teams going at it. The Phoenix and Mocs are both 5-4 overall, but Chattanooga has won its first three of its 20-game SoCon schedule, while El...
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 3, 2007 Philadelphia Lift up your downcast eyes, woman; there is a special place in heaven for you. O truck stop waitress, you sustainer of the long-distance voyageur, Cinderella of the service industry, underfoot guardian and caretaker of the linoleum empire... one day, when you finally fall from your wea...
S4 November 16, 2007 Because no website has ever thought of anything like this before -- to my knowledge, at least -- TMM will be running an interview series at the end of each week throughout the college basketball season. I know, I know, this has been done before, in other places. But we'll be chatting with coaches, p...
S4 November 5, 2007 In 1995, five years into my stay out in Oregon, I became homesick for the opposite coast, the one I grew up on. The feeling started as confusion and frustration, which grew into a acute sense of not belonging, culminating in a crystalline realization. I missed hockey. My New York Rangers had won th...
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 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 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...
S2 January 26, 2006 After a rough December against tougher opposition, Penn is ramping up at the right time: January. Last night at the cozy Philly Palestra, the Quakers overcame an old Big 5 nemesis and A-14 foe in LaSalle. Four Penn men scored in double figures to give coach Fran Dunphy his 10th win of the season and...
S2 January 13, 2006 Non-conference is officially over: the Ancient Eight are in the house! Tonight marks the annual Friday kickoff for Hoops Nation's brainiest, zaniest, no-postseason-tourney-iest league. Every game counts in the 14-Game Tournament®, and tonight's Palestra tip-off counts more than some other...
S2 November 26, 2005 Time to make amends. Last week, in front of thousands of people, I said that Drexel didn't have a chance against the likes of Duke. If they play that same type of steady, grinding, athletic (if unspectacular) team-ball for the rest of the year, they could certainly make things miserable for all the ...
S1 March 21, 2005 Game 100: (5) Michigan State 72, (13) Vermont 61 NCAA Tournament, Second Round (Austin Bracket) Sunday, March 20, 2005 DCU Center - Worcester, MA Fitting then, that this is the final chapter: the Vermont Catamounts, the feel-good story of the year, fell to the Michigan State Spartans. It's a happy ...
S1 March 16, 2005 Fairleigh Dickinson Seed: 16 1st Round Opponent: Illinois Record: 20-12 (16-5 Northeast Conference) Big Nonconference Wins: December 9 at eventual MAAC two-seed Rider (76-74) 100 Games Project Appearances: #65 Key Players: Big Gordon Klaiber and little Tamien Trent are the inside-outside mechanism ...
S1 February 13, 2005 Game 056: at Pennsylvania 73, Columbia 66 Friday, February 11, 2005 The Palestra - Philadelphia, PA Every game counts, but the sad flipside of the Ivy League season is that it is cruel and short: only fourteen games over six weeks. Each team gets three weekends at home, two midweek contests against...
S1 February 11, 2005 Game 054: at Pennsylvania 70, Princeton 62 (OT) Tuesday, February 8, 2005 The Palestra - Philadelphia, PA It begins simply enough: a messenger delivers a long white tube from floor level, he bounds up the short and wide stairs. The folks in the upper left corner know exactly what to do with it - t...
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...
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...
S1 February 7, 2005 When the final gun sounded at the Super Bowl yesterday, the city of Philadelphia was again spared the property-damaging bonfire a quarter-century in the making. While the majority of American sports fans will be spending the day mourning and mothballing their screen-printed replica jerseys, a few of...
S1 February 2, 2005 Game 047: at Pennsylvania 83, Brown 60 Saturday, January 29, 2005 The Palestra - Philadelphia, PA When stripped to its essence, the object of our game is to score more points than the opposition. When the contest is over, the point totals of the two competing teams are compared, then the officials ...
S1 February 2, 2005 Game 046: at Drexel 88, James Madison 60 Saturday, January 29, 2005 Daskalakis Athletic Center - Philadelphia, PA They ended up sending me a bunch of admissions brochures, but Malik Rose was a far better ambassador for Drexel University than any glossy-print booklet could ever be. I remember sittin...
S1 February 1, 2005 Game 045: Duquesne 72, at LaSalle 67 Saturday, January 29, 2005 Tom Gola Arena - Philadelphia, PA The last time I saw Duquesne play, I was chowing down on a pile of Dayton Arena nachos. About a thousand people were in attendance as the Dukes gutted out a tight upset win over East division four-seed...
S1 January 28, 2005 Game 043: at Rider 75, Manhattan 46 Thursday, January 27, 2005 Alumni Gym - Lawrenceville, NJ Nobody ever mistook Alumni Gym for a Hoops Cathedral. Thick clumps of dust and mold cling to its crusty stucco walls and ceiling, and the low-hanging fluorescent cage-lamps assure that a migraine headache ...
S1 January 27, 2005 Missouri Valley: Southwest Missouri State 92, Southern Illinois 77 (story) - The homestanding Bears took a 14-point lead into halftime, and stepped on the gas out of the break with an 11-4 run. Despite what the two teams' records would indicate, this was a classically-styled "romp" - a 57%-38% field...
S1 January 26, 2005 Game 041: Pennsylvania 67, St. Joseph's 59 Tuesday, January 26, 2005 The Palestra - Philadelphia, PA Let me tell you, those 27-game road trips are the worst. It seems like I've been traveling forever, hopping from arena to arena on my silly little quest to see a hundred college basketball games bef...
S1 January 22, 2005 Like the saying goes, we do indeed get letters. Dude, you're only at 37 and you have two and a half months left. You're never going to make it to 100. Good luck though. Dave Champaign, IL Thank you for writing, highly-ranked power-conference friend. If I am between 45 and 50 by the end of January...
S1 January 12, 2005 Southland: Southeastern Louisiana 56, Sam Houston State 54 (story) - We sold this yesterday as big O versus big D, and the defense won. (I've also heard that it wins championships, but the evidence is inconclusive.) Southeastern kept the Bearkats' normally streaky offense in check, and backup guard ...
S1 December 6, 2004 Metro Atlantic: Loyola (Md.) 97, Niagara 89 (story) - Bottom beat top in the MAAC. Shane James, a member of the Canadian junior national team, went 9-for-9 to lead Loyola, who outshot the Purple Eagles 55%-39% and scored 37 of their points on 58 free throws. Despite the fact that Niagara's bruising ...
S1 December 5, 2004 Game 013: Drexel 57, St. Joseph's 49 Saturday, December 4, 2004 The Palestra - Philadelphia, PA Dear Mr. or Ms. St. Joseph's Hawk, Hello. How are you doing? I hope you don't mind that I'm participating in the ridiculous tradition by writing a "concept" piece in the form of a published open letter,...
S1 December 5, 2004 Game 012: Temple 53, Villanova 52 Saturday, December 4, 2004 The Palestra - Philadelphia, PA My Uncle Pete is about as cool as the side of the pillow that's directly under some sweaty guy's butt. A while ago, I heard him use the phrase "jump the shark" while referring to Penn State football. I hope...
S1 December 5, 2004 Game 011: Pennsylvania 78, LaSalle 67 Saturday, December 4, 2004 The Palestra - Philadelphia, PA Carlos Castaneda's primary life mantra, "fly past the eagle and be free," probably wouldn't go over too well in Philadelphia, a town stuck in a perpetual heartbreak cycle with its football team. But h...
S1 December 3, 2004 Indiana State 62, Birmingham Southern 55 (story) - The prohibitive favorites in the Big South - and champions of the recent Marist Classic - went to Indiana and got beat by the worst team in the Valley. The Sycamores (or the "Trees" if you're cool) did the Panthers in with stingy perimeter defense, ...
S1 December 2, 2004 Game 010: at Pennsylvania 65, Bucknell 52 Wednesday, December 1, 2004 The Palestra - Philadelphia, PA As anyone who goes to one of its affiliated schools (or anyone who's read The Last Amateurs) can tell you, the Patriot League was created primarily to give Ivy League schools some early-season foot...
S1 November 28, 2004 Game 009: at Harvard 85, Northeastern 75 Saturday, November 27, 2004 Lavietes Pavilion - Cambridge, MA One of the things that makes our game so great is that no amount of athletic skill will guarantee victory. Teamwork, guts and guile can go a long way - sometimes all the way. We have plenty of exa...
S1 November 17, 2004 Game 002: Pennsylvania 74, Quinnipiac 60 Tuesday, November 16, 2004 The Palestra - Philadelphia, PA A couple of weeks ago, the Official Wife Of The Mid-Majority and I were out a-walking hand-in-hand across the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. We paused to admire the blocky brick facade of ...
S1 November 9, 2004 One Sunday afternoon in early February, I found myself sitting in a cold, half-empty gymnasium in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. I was watching Rider and Loyola - two of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference's perennial doormats - fall all over each other. It was halftime, and the two squads had barely...
S1 November 9, 2004 My earliest basketball memory: it's a cold winter morning in New England, November 1983. I'm eleven years old, and I'm pulling a Greg Ballard Washington Bullets home jersey over my spindly torso (the only one at the sporting goods store that fit me). I'm taller than the other boys in the neighborhoo...
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