• 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: West Coast
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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...
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 10, 2009 HOT SPRINGS, Ark. -- There are 248 teams in conferences below the Red Line. Only 25 or so will move on to compete for the coveted Division I title next week, have their names known by everybody, reflect in the fleeting glory that's reserved for champions. Most of our favorite teams are already packe...
S5 March 10, 2009 Bullet Points Four more champions were crowned last night, teams that will automatically continue on to the NCAA Tournament. Congratulations to Virginia Commonwealth (Colonial), Siena (Metro Atlantic), Chattanooga (SoCon) and Gonzaga (West Coast). Three autobids will be granted tonight: the Su...
S5 March 9, 2009 HOT SPRINGS, Ark. -- Our year is a blur of quick-cut transitions: from total silence to Midnight Madness, pre-season to regular season, games outside conferences to games inside parentheses. Standings grids give way to brackets, and before you know it, campaigns are cut short in early elimination ro...
S5 March 9, 2009 Bullet Points Northern Iowa has qualified for the NCAA Tournament by winning the Missouri Valley championship. Davidson was eliminated in the Southern Conference semifinals by the College of Charleston. After semifinal rounds yesterday, finals are set in seven leagues: the CAA (George Mason...
S5 March 8, 2009 Bullet Points Radford (Big South), East Tennessee State (Atlantic Sun) and Morehead State (Ohio Valley) have qualified for the NCAA Tournament. Cleveland State, the Horizon No. 3, eliminated No. 2 Green Bay in that conference's semis, and Illinois State upended Creighton in the Missouri Valley...
S5 March 7, 2009 Bullet Points Cornell became the first school to punch its ticket to the NCAA Tournament. For the second straight year, the Big Red claimed the Ivy League title, beating Penn 83-59. The upsets began in earnest on Friday. Ohio Valley No. 4 Morehead State took out No. 1 Tennessee-Martin. CAA No....
S5 March 6, 2009 The State of College Basketball is a rapidly-aging ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of t...
S5 March 6, 2009 Bullet Points Four-time Atlantic Sun champion Belmont barely escaped Mercer, and Big South top seed Radford fought off a strong challenge from No. 4 UNC Asheville in that league's semifinals. The Big South final on Saturday is set: VMI at Radford. The three top seeds in the Northeast Confer...
S5 March 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 February 27, 2009 The State of College Basketball is a relatively 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 ...
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 23, 2009 CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. -- BracketBusters VII is safely in the history books now. It was more fulfilling than a Dave & Buster's appetizer (six chips do not qualify as "nachos"), and fell somewhere between Buster the crash-test dummy and Buster Bluth on the entertainment scale. Longtime readers will r...
S5 February 21, 2009 So here we are again, it's late February and it's time for Mid-Major Christmas... BracketBusters VII, brought to you locally by Flying J Travel Plazas and Ballito's Powdered Horchata. Here's a handy clip-n'-save list of all Saturday's televised games, with links to handy print-n'-collect Basketball ...
S5 February 20, 2009 The State of College Basketball is a somewhat new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of th...
S5 February 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 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 31, 2009 Saint Mary's at Portland (West Coast) Chiles Center - Portland, OR Saturday, 9:00 PM EST Most of the games we feature on G!O!T!N! are the sorts of contests that feature interesting matchups or players, or tilts that will determine the direction of league races. But once or twice a season, there's ...
S5 January 30, 2009 INDIANAPOLIS -- Every once in a while, I receive a hit through the feedback form, written in a language I don't understand. Sometimes these are in French, or German, cast in a Cyrillic alphabet or rendered in simplified Chinese. I'd like to think these are messages of support, and they indicate to ...
S5 January 29, 2009 This is totally unprecedented. In nearly five years, there has never been more than one G!O!T!N! at a time. But tonight, there's no way to choose. Maybe you can pick between these supergood gems, but we can't. Nevada at Utah State (Western Athletic) Dee Glen Smith Spectrum - Logan, UT 9:05 PM EST ...
S5 January 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 The State of College Basketball is a sorta newish ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of th...
S5 January 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 15, 2009 The State of College Basketball is a new-esque ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the F...
S5 January 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 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 17, 2008 The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 344 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the F...
S5 December 17, 2008 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 9, 2008 San Francisco at Pacific A.C. Spanos Center - Stockton, CA 10:00 PM EST Tonight we have two western teams on the road back to respectability -- one's trail, however, is a little longer than the other. San Francisco, the center of the WCC's Jesuit triad, will always have a better NCAA Tournament re...
S5 December 9, 2008 LEXINGTON, Va. -- I think we can chalk up the weekend voting on the Ultimate Project contest an unqualified, unmitigated disaster. There were more complaints about the voting mechanism (clicking through either brought up a "please log in" screen or a full-screen ad to start your own poll) than actua...
S5 December 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 18, 2008 Nevada at San DiegoJenny Craig Pavilion - San Diego, CA10:00 PM EST The Western Athletic and West Coast took completely different paths last season -- the WAC, a perennial multi-bid league despite its allocation of most of its resources to football, languished in the 20's of the RPI scale and sque...
S5 November 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 7, 2008 Seventh in a series of nine daily essays leading up to the 2008-09 college basketball season. For a nation that takes its freedom so seriously, we sure are confused about it. Our society is rigidly segmented and specialized, everyone must find their place. From parental career projections to colleg...
S4 March 21, 2008 O Wildcats, dispatchers of Zags, plain-sight stealers of ACC-level recruits! You play a fair game, you play a square game, and you win in everything! Davidson's red and black machine won its 23rd game in a row, but its first at the NCAA tournament since 1969, when ol' Lefty Driesell paced the Wildca...
S4 March 21, 2008 ...
S4 March 17, 2008 Bullet Points In the final final in mid-majordom, Texas-Arlington emerged as surprise Southland champs. All hail! We had 78 entries into our "guess-the-play-in-matchup" contest on Saturday, and not a single correct answer. The correct pairing, as we all know now, is Coppin State (MEAC) against Moun...
S4 March 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 11, 2008 Bullet Points Scissors and ladders were indeed used last night, as four mid-major champions ascended to thrones. Davidson streaked to a third consecutive title in the SoCon, George Mason survived the Colonial tourney, Siena is the double-champ in the MAAC, and San Diego stole the WCC title from Gon...
S4 March 10, 2008 Bullet Points All hail Drake, double-champions of the Missouri Valley Conference. Not only did the Bulldogs capture their first MVC tourney ever, it was the first time in 10 years the regular season champs survived Arch Madness. Four finals tonight: we'll have autobids delivered in the Colonial, Me...
S4 March 9, 2008 Bullet Points Three autobids were given out yesterday. All hail mighty Winthrop of the Big South, Austin Peay of the Ohio Valley Conference, and the Atlantic Sun's Belmont. All are off to the Big Dance! One final today -- the championship of the Missouri Valley Conference. Drake and Illinois State...
S4 March 8, 2008 Bullet Points Today, three autobids to the NCAA Tournament will be awarded! The Big South, Ohio Valley and Atlantic Sun will crown champions. The No. 6 was a lucky number yesterday -- surprising Tennessee State moved to the finals of the OVC, Northern Iowa upset No. 3 Southern Illinois in the MVC, ...
S4 March 7, 2008 Bullet Points There was an upset in the Atlantic Sun quarters, as No. 6 Gardner-Webb routed No. 3 Stetson. The Big South final is set: UNC Asheville and Winthrop, the league's top two seeds. The game will be played Saturday. In the MVC first round, No. 8 Indiana State and No. 7 Missouri State adva...
S4 March 6, 2008 NASHVILLE -- There's a little Fighting Camel in all of us -- that piece of our soul that's tragically misunderstood, a little out of place. It's the part of you that's told you'll never make it, never achieve your dreams. Silly camel, you aren't supposed to fight for or win anything... you're suppos...
S4 March 5, 2008 The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 341 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the F...
S4 March 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 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 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   San Diego at Saint Mary's (West Coast) McKeon Pavilion - Moraga, CA 10:00 PM EST Considering that SMC's disappointing eight-point loss in the late-night BracketBuster battle with Kent State ended at around 11 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday, this is a pretty quick 44-hour turnaround. That's ...
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 19, 2008 The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 341 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the F...
S4 February 18, 2008   Gonzaga at San Diego (West Coast) Jenny Craig Pavilion - San Diego, CA 11:00 PM EST For tonight's G!O!T!N!, we go all the way out west for an ESPN2 matchup between two teams separated by a half-game (and Saint Mary's) in the West Coast Conference. We could have easily chosen URI-Xavier (ho...
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 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 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   Gonzaga at Saint Mary's (West Coast) McKeon Pavilion - Moraga, CA 11:00 PM EST We get a lot of questions as to why we actually mention Gonzaga by its actual school title now, as we got a full two years out of the "Unnamed Major Program From the Northwest" title and its associated UMPFN acr...
S4 January 29, 2008 The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 341 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the F...
S4 January 29, 2008 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 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 22, 2008 The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 341 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the F...
S4 January 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 16, 2008 The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 341 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the F...
S4 January 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 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 3, 2008   Long Beach State at California-Santa Barbara (Big West) The Thunderdome - Santa Barbara, CA 10:00 PM EST More conference action tonight, and not a moment too soon. We'll be closely tracking Georgia Southern at Davidson from our perch at UMKC tonight, since GS (and Chattanooga) look like th...
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 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 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 18, 2007 And now, the last entry concerned with the second non-annual Mid-Majority Finals Week. The 40th and final question was an essay question: What is your favorite mid-major NCAA Tournament memory, and where were you when it happened? We received 84 completed essays, and here are six of the best ones -...
S4 December 11, 2007 The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 341 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the F...
S4 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 4, 2007 The State of College Basketball is a brand-new ratings system that uses a lot of good basketball sense, per-game team performance ratings and degradation of older results to rank the teams from No. 1 to 341 (here's the long-winded version). In its overall form, it retroactively picked three of the F...
S4 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,...
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 19, 2006 There's a debate raging in Hoops Nation, one that has very little relevance whatsoever to anything relevant. It's supposed to be about respect, honor and parity. It should be about ball control, free throws and the flex offense. And sure, it's about basketball -- a little bit -- but it's also about ...
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 ...
S2 February 6, 2006 It's tough toiling inUMPFN's shadow, but these two squads have done yeoman's work indeed - the Lions and the Toreros will battle for second place in the West Coast Conference tonight at the Slim Gym. LMU has shaken off a rough non-conference start (3-11) to run a 5-2 WCC record; they give up as many...
S2 January 17, 2006 I don't know what it is with diminutive nicknames, but undersized players with names like "Mookie," "Smush" and "Spud" will always find a place in the hearts of casual sports fans. Last night, a 5'11" Portland Pilot senior guard named "Pooh" helped lead his team a WCC overtime victory over Pepperdin...
S2 January 7, 2006 Trap game! On Jan. 7, 2005, St. Mary's blitzed the Unnamed Major Program 89-81, and stole many of the RPI points they needed to sneak in as a tournament at-large. SMC would go on to lose in the WCC title game - their resumé is slightly worse this year, due to a four-game losing...
S2 January 2, 2006 Even with the super-light holiday schedule on Monday, we were able to keep the G!O!T!N! machine running and rang in 2006 at the same time. On New Year's Afternoon in Cheney, Wash., San Diego dropped the ball on Eastern Washington, led by the strong inside play a Torero sophomore forward.A big reason...
S2 January 1, 2006 Happy New (Calendar) Year, Hoops Nation! There's a lot of hot conference action that will spread like wildfire all across the land in the days and weeks to come, but today we have a tepid holiday slate of four games. Only one is a matchup of mid-majors, and it gives us the opportunity to talk about ...
S2 December 13, 2005 Pay no attention to that 1-3 record - St. Mary's has so far had the misfortune of running into three Top 100 power-conference teams at the wrong times. Tonight, the team that defied theUMPFN monopoly in the WCC and made the 2005 Tournament go through heavy security at USAFA, Colorado - you can bet t...
S1 March 16, 2005 Oakland Seed: 16 1st Round Opponent: North Carolina Record: 13-18 (9-9 Mid-Continent) Big Nonconference Wins: December 30 vs. Bowling Green (77-53); it was their only non-league win over a D1 opponent. Key Players: Pierre Dukes (see below) is the folk hero, but senior forwards Rawle Marshall and Co...
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 March 14, 2005 In the heat of the postseason, it's easy for people to quickly sweep their preseason conference picks under the rug. What? Huh? I picked Princeton? Look over there, a birdie! But not this one; I face my failures head-on. For your amusement, here are my picks from late December. Note that I had an e...
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 13, 2005 T1. Southern Illinois, Missouri Valley (23-10, 13-7 MWC, 18 RPI) Chicago 7 T1. Nevada, Western Athletic (24-6, 16-3 WAC, 33) Chicago 9 3. Pacific, Big West (26-3, 19-1 BWC, 22) Albuquerque 8 4. Miami (Oh.), Mid-American (19-10, 13-7 MAC, 43) 5. St. Mary's, Western Athletic (25-8, 12-4 WCC, 30) Chica...
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 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 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 6, 2005 Western Athletic: Nevada 76, Louisiana Tech 58 (story) - In the most decisive result of Really, Really Exciting Saturday, Nick Fazekas scored 27 points and Nevada (15-5, 9-2 WAC) dominated the previously surging LTU Bulldogs, who were led by former MMBOW Paul Millsap with his 20 and 8. Insodoing, th...
S1 January 28, 2005 Big West: Pacific 66, Cal State Northridge 62 (story) - The Tigers (15-2, 10-0 BWC) proved last night that they are not only Mad, but Beyond Matadome as well. They marched into Northridge and held off a late run by the perennial upstart Matadors (9-9, 7-3 BWC), who sunk further into second place. Li...
S1 January 23, 2005 Missouri Valley: Wichita State 58, Southern Illinois 56 (story) - The Shockers had the boards (42-32) and the defense (held SIU to 32% shooting in the second half), but the Salukis had enough streaks and runs to keep it close. WSU's Illinois transfer forward (and possible "evil twin" of your humble ...
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 21, 2005 West Coast: San Francisco 73, UMPFN 70 (story) - The proud Don tradition lies buried under decades of moldy mediocrity - behind Bill Russell, they rattled off 60 straight wins back in the Fifties. With a new imported coach (Jessie Evans, formerly of Louisiana-Lafayette), they're hoping to get dynast...
S1 January 16, 2005 Metro Atlantic: Marist 88, Niagara 87 (story) - The half-asleep Purple Eagles (9-6, 4-3 MAAC) were spent emotionally and physically after their tough loss at Manhattan the other night, and almost had enough to sleepwalk through this one. But the upstart Red Foxes (who are now a surprising 5-1 in con...
S1 January 13, 2005 Western Athletic: Texas-El Paso 83, Nevada 80 (OT) (story) - UTEP (11-2, 4-0 WAC) has passed its early tests against Rice and Nevada, and have established themselves as the true team to beat in the conference. But it wasn't easy on this night, against the team with whom they shared last year's regul...
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...
S1 January 8, 2005 West Coast: Loyola Marymount 68, San Francisco 65 (story) - It does indeed rain in Southern California - man, it pours. While the water came down outside Hank's House, two up-and-coming WCC teams played soggy ball in the first conference tilt for both. Both teams traded baskets and shot poorly, and ...
S1 January 2, 2005 WAC: Nevada 58, Hawaii 55 (story) - Anyone in the East who stayed up until 2 in the morning (or owns a TiVo) got to see a thriller from America's favorite high elevated upper mid-major conference, full of 8-0 runs and a back-and-forth finish. Heavily-inked Rainbow Warrior pointman Matt Gibson scored...
S1 December 31, 2004 Missouri Valley: IIlinois State 62, Southwest Missouri State 61 (story) - I apologize in advance if this site goes through January and February stretches where it seems like the All-Valley Blog, but this league is going to be red-hot. Illinois State (8-3, 1-1 MVC) is rising Phoenix-like from a disas...
S1 December 29, 2004 Bucknell 69, St. Joseph's 62 (story) - This was the second straight win over the top half of the RPI for Bucknell (Niagara last Wednesday), so I'm as ready as anyone to join the chorus of those who would give them the Patriot League crown before it's actually awarded. Most importantly, this will lik...
S1 December 20, 2004 Boston College 82, Yale 80 (2OT) (story) - When Holy Cross pushed Boston College to overtime in a 63-60 thriller back on December 9, Chris over at Hoop Time suggested that maybe, just maybe, friendly officials had too much of a hand in the outcome. After all, HC outrebounded BC 41-39 and 34 of their...
S1 December 19, 2004 The West Coast Conference and Missouri Valley have a lot in common these days: both are inspiring mid-major geeks almost to the point of bad poetry, both have decent records against power leagues (MVC: 3-7, WCC: 8-10), and both can say that every team but one has a winning non-conference record so f...
S1 December 18, 2004 Winthrop 70, East Carolina 55 (story) - With embarrassing losses to D2 teams and potential school-poaching by the Atlantic Sun, it hasn't been the Big South's day, their week, their month, or even their year. But Winthrop has been a big bright spot, running out to a 7-2 record that includes two wins...
S1 December 14, 2004 San Diego 75, Eastern Washington 56 (story) - San Diego was the 298th-best team in the nation last year in terms of RPI, and now here they are beating the stuffing out of the defending Big Sky champions. EWU is now 2-5, mostly against lower-tier WCC and Big West competition. Is the door open for Web...
S1 December 13, 2004 Florida International 65, Florida State 60 (story) - This is not the site you go to if you want thoughtful analysis of the ACC, but people who run those sites are saying that the conference might get seven Tournament bids this season. Team number eight is FSU, whose only convincing win so far is ove...
S1 December 10, 2004 Massachusetts 61, Connecticut 59 (story) - There were "Fire Lappas" T-shirts here in Philly too, back when Steve coached Villanova... but the folks in Amherst can put theirs in the closet for a while. Last night saw the best thing to happen to UMass since the Pixies reunion - a squeak win over the d...
S1 November 18, 2004 When your humble proprietor was a wee lad, he played him some base ball. Although official statistics were not recorded in the Keene-Peterborough (N.H.) Pee Wee League, I'm sure that my .560 season batting average (achieved primarily with slap singles) would have been near the top of the league lead...
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