Category: College Basketball

More Than a Bracket or a Bowl: Schoolhouse Rocks Over Pros

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, College Football, Illinois Fighting Illini, Sports1 Comment

When I was growing up as a kid in Chicago’s south suburbs, I didn’t think much about the Illinois Fighting Illini. Sure, I followed college sports as a general fan of football and basketball (and my gambling gene came to fruition by fifth grade, when I first started filling out NCAA Tournament brackets), but the teams I obsessed over when I was young were the Bulls, Bears, and White Sox.

This could have been the product of parents who attended the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois (as opposed to Urbana-Champaign), which has never been exactly a college sports hotbed. Plus, while Chicago has a great college sports presence with its proximity to Illinois, Northwestern, the other Big Ten schools, DePaul, and Notre Dame (that’s a wide and passionate fan base compared to New York or Boston), it’s still a pro sports town first and foremost. Certainly, Chicago isn’t a place like, say, Nebraska or even our neighboring state of Indiana, where the travails of the local colleges are the top sports stories not only during the season but in the offseason, as well.

Against all this, however, my sports priorities changed for the rest of my life ten years ago this fall. That was when I attended my first college football game as a University of Illinois student. Unfortunately, the Illini were pasted that day 550-0 by USC (that’s not a typo – I think they’re still scoring on us right now) in front of an ABC national television audience – an ominous foreshadowing of the performance of the Illinois football program until… well, until now. With nothing left to really be happy about (translation: we ran out of smuggled-in booze), we the members of the student section were at least able to taunt the Trojan bench with an “O.J. Simpson” cheer.

Despite having that damned Trojan fight song pounded into my head so badly that I now lash out everytime I hear it, from that point on I was an Illini forever. No other team – not the White Sox, not the Bears, not the Bulls – can evoke as much joy, frustration, and passion for me as the Fighting Illini, whether it’s basketball or football. The school bond transcends everything else.

That’s why March Madness is my favorite time of year. It’s the period where the most passionate sports bond you could possibly have – the one with your school – is on full display across the nation. Since a good number of my friends are people I went to college with, I sometimes forget that there are a lot of people out there who don’t understand or fully appreciate my outright fanatacism about the Illini. They might have gone to a school where sports weren’t on the radar of students or didn’t go to college at all. To them, the NCAA Tournament is the only time of the year where they pay any attention to college basketball, mostly to fill out brackets in an office pool.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with that – whether a school is in a BCS conference shouldn’t be a factor in determining where the average person ought to go to college – but it’s just that those people will never get to experience the pure exhiliration of dying hard for their schools. Anyone can wake up one day and decide to cheer for the White Sox, Cubs, or any other pro sports team (i.e all of the sudden, decent seats at U.S. Cellular Field are really tough to come by). However, there is only a finite number of people in the world, including the athletes that we cheer for, that attended the University of Illinois and we all spent the most memorable times of our lives in the same place. That’s a powerful connection that transcends cheering for pro players that may or may not have any roots in your hometown.

I’m still as obsessive about the White Sox, Bears, and Bulls as anyone. It’s only that my obsessiveness with the Illini is at an even higher level, if my friends and family believe that’s even possible. Despite Chicago having a reputation of having long-suffering fans, I’ve got to admit that I’ve been pretty fortunate as a sports fan. I witnessed the Bears put together the most dominating team in NFL history in 1985. Michael Jordan and the Bulls provided me with the best sports memories of my childhood with their NBA dynasty. The White Sox ended 88 seasons of futility with their World Series championship last year. Considering that my pro baseball, football, and basketball teams have all won championships in my lifetime, I’m pretty blessed.

However, I’d honestly trade all of those trophies for Illinois to win the national championship in basketball and the Rose Bowl in football. My sports life won’t be complete unless I see both of those things happen. Starting tomorrow, the dream of seeing Illinois cut down the nets during “One Shining Moment” could become a reality with 6 more wins. Even though the odds are against that happening this season, that ultimate sports dream is why March Madness is more than just a bracket to me.

Big East Should Have Gone to Graceland

On By Frank the TankIn Big East, College Basketball, College Football, SportsLeave a comment

Most people following college basketball this season have come to the conclusion that the newly expanded Big East is the strongest and deepest conference in the nation – certainly, a record 8 bids in the NCAA Tournament makes the case for that argument. What hasn’t been talked about, however, is that the Big East could have been even better.

When the Big East decided to expand a couple of years ago in the wake of Miami, Virginia Tech, and Boston College moving to the ACC, the East Coast conference for the most part found schools from Conference USA that were logical fits. DePaul and Marquette are large city Catholic basketball schools to go along with the likes of Georgetown, Villanova, and St. John’s. Meanwhile, Louisville and Cincinnati are basketball-focused schools that have decent football programs, similar to UConn and Syracuse. Those 4 additions have made a lot of sense even though the geographic reach of the conference is stretched farther west than the original Big East members could have ever imagined.

The 5th addition, however, was stunning: the University of South Florida.  The Conference USA school that was left holding the bag was Memphis, who desperately wanted a Big East invite. Needless to say, the Memphis Tigers grabbed a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament while USF failed to win a single Big East conference game. As ridiculously stacked as the Big East has been this season, the league could have taken it to a pantheon level if it had Memphis, as well, since UConn and Villanova also grabbed #1 seeds. A single conference with three out of the four #1 seeds would have been the greatest season any league anywhere would have ever had in history.

Of course, adding a conference member needs to be a decision taking into account the long term viability and benefits of a school as opposed to the performance of a team in a single season. But even on that front, USF never made sense. The rationale that the Big East commissioner gave for inviting USF was that the conference needed to have a place in the Florida market. I’m a corporate attorney by day, so I perfectly understand the importance of strong media markets. As I stated before, I believe that the Big Ten ought to invite Syracuse as a 12th team over Pitt, West Virginia, or Missouri (assuming that Notre Dame wouldn’t join) precisely because of the New York and East Coast presence that the Orange would bring. At the same time, I am one of the minority that believes that Boston College makes perfect sense for the ACC. It’s in the best interest of every conference to get the largest and highest quality geographic footprint possible.

The catch, however, is that a school needs to be more than just located in a desirable market; it must be able to deliver that market, as well. This is where USF fails. In a market that boasts Florida, Florida State, and Miami, the Sunshine State doesn’t have much room to pay attention to a fourth college sports team. Plus, USF is at best a mediocre football program while having a simply awful basketball team. The Big East is deluding itself if USF has much of a chance to make any dent on the Florida sports scene.

Instead, the Big East could have grabbed an elite basketball school with a solid football program in the Memphis Tigers. Not only that, Memphis is able to deliver its home market, which is large enough to be an NBA city.

Let’s hope that the Big East corrects its mistake soon. As nice as it is for the other conference schools to get a trip to Tampa during the winter every season, it’s a lot better to add a school that (1) actually has a true fan base in a major league market and (2) can cement the Big East’s status as the top basketball conference in the country.

Frequent Flyer Miles Instead of a Bus Trip for the Illini This Year and Other NCAA Tournament Bracket Tidbits

On By Frank the TankIn Big East, Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

After receiving a bus trip for the ages last year with a Road to the Final Four that ran through Indianapolis, Chicago, and St. Louis, Illinois faces the prospect of going from coast-to-coast in this season’s NCAA Tournament. The Illini loss to Michigan State on Friday night surely dropped us from a potential #2 seed all the way to a #4 seed by Selection Sunday. I would have preferred a #3 seed, but we can’t really argue against many of the teams that were put ahead of us.

The biggest problem with the drop to a #4 seed is that we get sent out to San Diego, which would be a great trip for spring breakers from Champaign, yet won’t give us the home-court feel that we would have received in Auburn Hills or Dayton. Greg Couch of the Chicago Sun-Times argues that this might actually be a good thing to get away from the Midwest. If we survive the first weekend (Air Force shouldn’t be a problem, but the Sweet Sixteen is not a given with a possible matchup with Washington in the second round), we get shipped across the country to Washington, DC, where the UConn Huskies likely await. Pretty much every expert across the country has Connecticut locked into the Final Four spot out of the Washington Regional, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. UConn is the most talented team in the country and will win the National Championship if they play up to par.

Really, the best hope for the Illini to make the Final Four is that Dee Brown finds his shot again and UConn comes out as sluggish as they did against Syracuse in the Big East Tournament last week. At the beginning of this year, I said that the Sweet Sixteen is a reasonable goal for this Illini team. Considering that we drew UConn in our bracket, that’s still a very reasonable goal. I’d be ecstatic if we get farther than that.

Other NCAA Tournament Bracket Tidbits:

1) Balk at All Chalk – You’ll probably see the majority of brackets filled out across the country have a Duke – UConn matchup penciled in for the final. Notwithstanding last season’s Illinois – North Carolina tilt, however, the two best teams in the tournament pretty much never both make it to the championship game. Chances are that either Duke or UConn is going to stumble somewhere along the line. Duke’s bracket in the Atlanta Regional looks a lot tougher with an extremely talented Texas team looming as a #2 seed along with the Big Ten tourney champ Iowa, the Big East tourney champ Syracuse, and last but not least, potential second round opponent George Washington, who was ranked #6 in the country in the final AP poll yet dropped to a #8 seed because of the health of junior star Pops Mensah-Bonsu. UConn’s road isn’t exactly as easy as a lot of experts seem to believe, but the potholes Duke is going to encounter make the Blue Devils more susceptible to an earlier than expected exit.

2) Teams to Watch – My Big Ten bias is coming through here: look out for Michigan State and Indiana. Plenty of people are aware that the Spartans are extremely dangerous as a #6 seed based on Tom Izzo’s previous successes in the postseason (with the added bonus of getting virtual home games in Dayton for the first two rounds). However, a lot of others also believe that Indiana is primed for a first round upset against San Diego State. I personally can’t stand the Hoosiers, but the national media has forgotten that this is a pretty good team when all of their cylinders are running. I wouldn’t call Indiana a Final Four team, but I firmly believe that potential second round opponent Gonzaga is overrated by the media and the Oakland bracket is the most wide-open of the regions. That spells a possible deep tourney run by Indiana for Mike Davis’ last stand.

Speaking of Gonzaga, the Bulldogs can’t afford to look past their first round opponent in Xavier. I watched Xavier take Illinois down to the wire in front of a hostile United Center crowd back in December and they beat a pretty good Cincinnati team, so the Muskateers are certainly capable of an upset. Also, out in the Atlanta region, be careful of getting too caught up in #5 seed Syracuse’s performance last week in the Big East Tournament – Texas A&M is the best #12 seed out there (the Aggies beat Texas at the end of the regular season), and we all know that a #12 upsets a #5 every year. Georgetown is a scary #7 seed (previous wins against Duke, Pittsburgh, and Syracuse) lurking in the Minneapolis region for top 4 seeds Villanova, Ohio State, Florida, and Boston College.

3) Grouchy Nantz and Packer – My wife and I weren’t the only ones that noticed the pounding Jim Nantz and Billy Packer laid on NCAA Tournament Selection Committee Chairman Craig Littlepage during the Selection Show yesterday. Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune reported that the duo continued their rant during a subsequent conference call on how the smaller conferences grabbed more than their rightful share of bids from the BCS power conferences. Look, I’ve got as much of a bias toward the major conferences as anyone. However, the Selection Committee is supposed to examine and pick the best at-large teams without respect to conference affiliation. While we know that they can’t operate fully in this vaccum and are surely cognizant of how many bids are allocated to each conference, it’s not fair for individual teams with strong profiles from, say, the Missouri Valley Conference to lose out just because there’s a virtual quota of bids that needs to be met for the power conferences.

I’ll have much, much more on the NCAA Tournament all this week. Thursday can’t get here fast enough!

Illini – Spartan Clash III and More Big Ten Tournament Thoughts

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

Well, 1 out of 3 on my predictions from yesterday would be a good baseball batting average.  Anyway, Illinois is playing Michigan State for the third time this season.  I don’t like the prospect of playing the Spartans again.  Regardless of what we’ve seen from Michigan State so far this season, I’ve always felt that Tom Izzo is able to flip a switch on his teams in the postseason better than anyone else in college basketball today.  Plenty of people penciled in the Spartans as a victim of the 12-seed over 5-seed upset last year, yet they ended up going to Izzo’s fourth Final Four.  This team still has a plethora of talent with the skills to make a deep tourney run.

That said, Bruce Weber has shown that he can get the most of his team, as well.  He mentioned yesterday that if anyone had told him at the beginning of the year that Illinois would be 25-5 at this point, he would have taken that in a heartbeat.  I think most rational Illini fans would have been pretty ecstatic with that, too.  The bottom line for us is that we’re going to go as far as our perimeter shooters are going to take us.  James Augustine and Shaun Pruitt have been doing a great job inside over the second half of the Big Ten season to give us a great base of points.  The difference between the Illini making deep runs or early exits in the Big Ten and NCAA Tourneys, however, will be whether Dee Brown, Rich McBride, and Jamar Smith are able to drain shots from the outside.  If they continue to shoot they way they have been over the last 3 games, we are as good as any team in the country.  Having all three of those guys going cold, though, would be cause for an early-round exit.

My belief is that not winning the Big Ten regular season title has left a bad taste in the mouths of the Illini and will be motivated to prove that they’re truly the best team in the conference.  This parallels the feeling in 2003 where Illinois ran the table in the Big Ten Tournament after losing out on the regular season championship to Wisconsin.  I truly believe we’re going to end up winning the necessary 3 games in a row this weekend.

The team to watch out for on the other side of the bracket is Indiana.  The Hoosiers have a virtual home court advantage in Indianapolis and are on a 4-game winning streak.  Look for them to beat Wisconsin tonight, upset Ohio State tomorrow, and roll into a final with Illinois on Sunday.  The Hoosier magic is going to end there against the Illini, though.  Illinois ultimately has the firepower and momentum to win its third Big Ten Tournament title.

Have a great weekend and GO ILLINI!

2006 Big Ten Tournament First Round Predictions

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, Sports1 Comment

The 2006 Big Ten Tournament tips off today at the Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.  Even though I wish the event was back in Chicago for the weekend, the depth of the conference this season means it’s going to be unpredictable and exciting starting from the first game.  There’s no locks anywhere this year.  Here are my predictions for the first round:

Game 1: #8 Penn State vs. #9 Northwestern – The Wildcats, who lost to the Nittany Lions in their 2 previous meetings this year, are going to get over the hump this time around.  Vedran Vukusic is going to lead Northwestern’s Princeton-style offense to victory and slow down Penn State’s outside shooting.  Predicted Winner: Northwestern

Game 2: #7 Michigan vs. #10 Minnesota – Two of the most inconsistent teams in the conference.  Michigan had a great first half of the Big Ten season, while Minnesota had a great second half.  Daniel Horton and Wolverines, however, are going to be hungrier since they need notch the win so that they can rest easy on Selection Sunday.  Michigan ought to be in the NCAA Tournament at this point, but they can’t afford a first round loss here.  My guess is that they’ll be fired up just as they were in their game against the Illini a couple of weeks ago and roll over the Gophers.  Predicted Winner: Michigan

Game 3: #6 Michigan State vs. #11 Purdue – The consensus around the Big Ten is that the Spartans were a disappointment this year.  Certainly, with the nucleus of last year’s Final Four team back this season, Michigan State was predicted to be one of the top 5 teams in the nation.  Instead, they didn’t even crack the top 5 of the Big Ten.  However, Illini Wonk pointed out how the unbalanced schedule of the Big Ten stacked the deck against the Spartans this season.  He noted that Michigan State had to play all of the top 5 teams in the conference twice for a total of 10 games.  In contrast, Big Ten champion Ohio State only had to play 5 games against the top 5 (the only team of that group they played twice was Wisconsin).  What does this mean?  While the Spartans underachieved on a number of fronts this year, they’re still a whole lot better team than their record indicates.  Remember this when you’re filling out your NCAA Tournament bracket next week.  Anyway, Michigan State is going to kill Purdue in this game to set up a Friday nightcap with Illinois.  Trying to win a third game against the Spartans in the same season scares me a little bit, but I’ll approach that subject tomorrow if my prediction for today turns out to be correct.  Predicted Winner: Michigan State

Enjoy the games today!

A Modest Proposal for the Big East Tournament

On By Frank the TankIn Big East, College Basketball, DePaul Blue Demons, SportsLeave a comment

When the Big East Conference announced that it was adding DePaul to its roster of schools, two primary thoughts came to my mind. First, I was excited to see DePaul reaffirm its long-standing Catholic university rivalries with Notre Dame and Marquette while adding on top notch eastern opponents such as UConn, Syracuse, and Georgetown. My next immediate thought was how great it would be to watch DePaul play in the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden in March every year no matter how the team’s season went.

Well, the second thought is going to be held off until at least next year. The Big East decided to have only the top 12 teams out of the 16-team conference make it to New York for the tournament, which began yesterday. DePaul fell on the short-end this season.

A number of Big East coaches (and not just the ones who aren’t in New York this week) have complained that this format is going to put immense pressure on the coaches that don’t make it to the conference tourney. Plus, every school wants the opportunity to wine and dine its alums and supporters in Manhattan once a year. Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese, however, didn’t want to have a 16-team tourney because he wanted to avoid forcing the top seeds to play 4 games to win the championship.

Tranghese is correct in his concern. The top seeds in the tournaments for the five other BCS conferences only need to play 3 games to win their respective championships. The last thing the Big East wants is for its top teams (who are usually Final Four contenders) to be exhausted heading into the NCAA Tournament.  Yet, there’s a way for the Big East to preserve an advantage for its top seeds and still invite all 16 teams to the Mecca of Basketball: make the conference tournament into a 5-round extravaganza.

Here’s how it would work. The bottom 8 seeds would play in the first round. The 5th through 8th seeds would receive a first round-bye and play the winners from the first round in the second round. The top 4 seeds would get byes for the first 2 rounds and meet the second round victors in the quarterfinals.

This format allows the top seeds to only have to play 3 games to win the championship. At the same time, it gives the bottom teams a chance to participate but they need to run the gauntlet of 5 games to win the tournament. That means that the chances of a fluke team getting the Big East automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament are slim, which is how it should be. Finally, as a fan, think of what the first 3 rounds would be like – 3 straight days of quadruple-headers of college basketball at the highest level!

Under this proposal, the fans get more meaningful games, the bottom-feeders get the opportunity to go to the Garden, the top teams still have the same advantage in terms of the number of games they need to play as they do in the present structure, and the Big East and its members get one more day of television and ticket revenue. What’s not to love?

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

Although Ohio State took care of its business yesterday against Purdue to win the Big Ten championship outright, I’m pretty happy with how the Illini have been playing.  Dee Brown looked great against Michigan State on Saturday and we look like we’re peaking heading into the Big Ten and NCAA Tournaments.  Heck, even Frank the Tank nemesis Dick Vitale took some time during ESPN’s fifty-network coverage of the Duke-UNC game (I completely understand the need to televise this game, but was it really necessary to show it on every single ESPN outlet using different camera angles?) to say that Illinois was the team to watch out for in the NCAA Tournament.  Plus, the Illini represented at the Academy Awards last night: University of Illinois graduate Ang Lee won the Oscar for Best Director for “Brokeback Mountain.”  That’s got to be a good sign.

Anyway, my favorite stretch of the sports year starts this week.  The Big Ten Tournament, the NCAA Tournament, Opening Day for baseball, and the Masters all come right after the other in rapid succession.  Some Illini success on top of all of that would make it even sweeter.

Big Ten from Eleven to Twelve? If There’s No Luck of the Irish, Bring in More Orange

On By Frank the TankIn Big East, Big Ten, College Basketball, College Football, Sports17 Comments

A Big Ten Wonk post from a couple of weeks ago explored some views from conference fans about adding a 12th team to the Big Ten. The primary advantage to this is that a conference with 12 teams can split into two divisions and hold a football championship game at the end of the season. That was the main impetus of the ACC grabbing Miami, Boston College, and Virginia Tech from the Big East a couple of years ago.

The obvious twelfth team for the Big Ten would of course be Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish have the one football program that consistently draws national attention every year regardless of whether they are good or bad and have long-standing rivalries with a number of Big Ten teams, including Michigan, Michigan State, Purdue, and Penn State. The problem is that there's no program in the nation that has less of an incentive to join a conference than Notre Dame. The Irish recently renewed their TV contract with NBC and the new BCS rules essentially guarantee that the team will receive a major bowl berth if they can get through the regular season with only two losses.

I do believe that Notre Dame will eventually want to join a conference for football and when that time comes, there's no question that they would choose the Big Ten over the Big East. Paraphrasing Groucho Marx, Notre Dame doesn't want to be a member of any club that would have it as a member. That is, the Big Ten is already arguably the most powerful conference in the nation – it would be great if the Irish joined, but the conference is more than strong enough to stand on its own and doesn't need Notre Dame. The Big East, while having a monster basketball conference, is simply awful in football and is desperate to add any decent football program out there. Is Notre Dame, a school that is obsessed with its national profile, going to choose a conference where the best opposing programs are Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State or one with Pittsburgh and West Virginia as the dominant teams? When thinking along these lines, there's no way that Notre Dame is ever going to join the Big East for football. I wouldn't say the same for the Big Ten.

Still, if there was a 110% guarantee that Notre Dame will never, ever join any conference for football (the Irish rejected a formal invitation from the Big Ten in 1999), the Big Ten ought to move on and add a different 12th team. There's been banter about taking Missouri from the Big 12 or adding Pittsburgh or West Virginia. However, one of the emails printed in the aforementioned Big Ten Wonk post nailed exactly who I believe ought to be that 12th team if there's no shot at Notre Dame: the Syracuse Orange.

To me, Syracuse is the only school other than Notre Dame that would make sense for the Big Ten. The most predominant reason is that the ACC/Big East shakeup has essentially made the Northeastern portion of the United States up for grabs in college football. If the Big Ten has Syracuse paired with Penn State, the conference will have the two schools with the largest fan bases on the East Coast to go along with its dominance in the Midwest.

There are some Big Ten fans that have bemoaned the lack of geographic purity of the conference since we added Penn State. To put it nicely, I think those fans are inward looking people who have no concept whatsoever of the big picture. In this ESPN World where it's critical for college sports leagues to present matchups that have implications at a national level rather than a regional level, it's incredulous to me that we would want to limit the reach of the greatest conference in the country to the Midwestern states.

Let's look at the other candidates mentioned most often. Pittsburgh would be a natural rival for Penn State, but the problem with Pitt is that Penn State already covers the Pittsburgh media market itself better than the Panthers. West Virginia is an even worse choice: the Mountaineer fan base doesn't extend very far past Morgantown – and Morgantown or even the entire state of West Virginia is certainly not big enough in terms of population that the powers that be in the Big Ten would care to grab that market. Missouri is one of the biggest rivals for Illinois, but the Illini also already provide coverage for the Big Ten in St. Louis. The Tigers do open up Kansas City for the Big Ten, but even then, Mizzou has little reason to move when it's already in the financially and competitively strong Big 12 conference. Moving to the Big Ten would be a step up in academic prestige for them, yet that wouldn't be enough to pay for a messy and expensive divorce with the Big 12.

That leaves Syracuse. It's the team that the ACC originally wanted instead of Virginia Tech and for good reason. Syracuse, while down last year, has traditionally had a strong football program. At the same time, the Orange basketball program is consistently one of the best in the country. With Penn State already a member of the Big Ten, Syracuse would have a natural East Coast traveling partner and would not be physically isolated the way Boston College is with the other ACC teams. Since the Big East has been emaciated in football, Syracuse has a strong incentive to switch conferences. Last, and certainly not least, Syracuse has one of the biggest college fan bases in New York City and is considered one of the "home teams" there.

If the Big Ten is going to expand, it should expand its geographic footprint instead of looking within its present boundaries. It's pretty simple to me – New York City and the rest of New York State becoming Big Ten country is a whole lot more valuable than duplicating coverage in Pittsburgh and St. Louis or adding Morgantown. As I said before, Syracuse would make the Big Ten the top football conference on the East Coast as well as keeping its title as the predominant place for college sports in the Midwest. Other than the obvious choice of Notre Dame, I can't think of another school other than Syracuse that could add as much value to the Big Ten.

Chicago vs. Indy for the Home of the Big Ten Tournament

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, SportsLeave a comment

The Big Ten is looking for a permanent home for the conference’s men’s basketball tournament after having alternated between Chicago and Indianapolis since 2001.  From my biased perspective, I’d like to see the United Center in Chicago become the home of the Big Ten Tournament since: (1) I’m a Chicagoan and (2) the Illini are the beneficiaries of a huge home court advantage here.

John Brumbaugh of of Illini Board wrote a more balanced point-by-point comparison of Chicago versus Indianapolis being the permanent home of the tournament a few months ago.  In the end, he believes Chicago will be chosen because of its financial advantages (United Center has over 3,000 more seats than Conseco Fieldhouse and the Windy City has access to substantially more corporate sponsorships) and logistics (while most people I spoken with that have gone to the tourney in both cities believe Indy is more convenient as a fan once you get there since the venue, hotels, and bars are all in a centralized location, Chicago is still the transportation capital of the nation and has more than enough hotel space).

An interesting and, I believe, extremely important point that Brumbaugh notes is that the Big Ten could be looking at securing Chicago as “their city.”  Particularly with both DePaul and Notre Dame in the Big East at this time, the Big Ten wants to make sure that it stays as the predominant conference in the nation’s third largest media market.

The Big East is firmly associated with Madison Square Garden in New York while the Pac-10 has made the Staples Center in Los Angeles its home.  Chicago is certainly a better college sports town than New York (St. John’s? Rugters???) and arguably better than L.A. (even with the presence of USC and UCLA, people on the West Coast just don’t have the same passion about sports as those in other parts of the country).  There’s a lot more value in terms of national perception if the Big Ten is automatically associated with the major market of Chicago as opposed to being the sterotyped product of small Midwestern towns.  The Big Ten can either continue to complain about being the victim of major media market bias or it can become the beneficiary of major media market bias.  I’d rather have the latter, which means choosing Chicago as the permanent home for the Big Ten Tournament is a good place to start.

The Madness Has Started Early

On By Frank the TankIn Big Ten, College Basketball, Illinois Fighting Illini, SportsLeave a comment

Great sports and TV day yesterday – spring training baseball games began, new episodes of American Idol and Lost were on, and most importantly, there were three great college basketball games with important implications that all came down to the final seconds with wacky and bizarre endings.  A quick recap of the early start of March Madness:

1) Ohio State 56, Northwestern 53 – This was the game that all of Illini Nation was watching last night.  The Wildcats blew the game in the last minute, which in turn eradicated their chances for an NIT bid along with all but shutting the door on Illinois grabbing its third straight Big Ten title.  That last sequence by Northwestern at the conclusion where they took about ten minutes worth of timeouts to set up a play with 1.3 seconds left, only to throw the ball out of bounds on the inbounding pass, was maddening.  Illinois can just forget about the Big Ten regular season championship and set its sights on the Big Ten Tournament and the NCAA Tournament since there’s no way that Ohio State is going to lose to Purdue on Sunday.  Lesson learned: never trust your rival to ever help you in any shape or form.

2) Florida State 79, Duke 74 – There’s no team I hate in all of sports more than Duke.  I absolutely love seeing them lose.  However, last night’s game in Tallahassee was one of the most bizarre endings to a game I’ve seen in a while.  The “Free Shoe U” students rushed the floor prematurely with 1.7 seconds left in the game.  The officials had to clear all of the people off the floor and awarded two technical foul shots to Duke.  Luckily for the Seminoles, those technical foul shots didn’t change the outcome of the game.  After the game officially ended, the FSU students of course rushed the floor again.  This wasn’t just a game against the #1 team in America for FSU; the Seminoles were also playing for their NCAA Tournament lives.  They were fortunate that they weren’t screwed because of their idiot fans. 

3) Texas A&M 46, Texas 43 – P.J. Tucker of Texas dribbled around at the end of regulation intending to allow the tied game to go into overtime.  The problem was that there was a 5.9 second difference between the game clock and the shot clock and he didn’t realize it for some reason.  As a result of the Longhorns’ shot-clock violation, the Aggies got the ball and subsequently nailed a three-pointer at the buzzer to win a game over its arch-rivals and possibly clinch an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament.  Acie Law, the A&M player that hit the game-winner, is going to remember that shot for the rest of his life.

What’s even better is that this was just an appetizer for college hoops fans.  I seriously cannot wait for Selection Sunday to get here.