Articles

Morris Almond - Rice

Bryant Dunston - Fordham

Nick Fazekas - Nevada

Nate Funk - Creighton

Brandon Heath - San Diego St

Courtney Lee - WKU

Blake Schilb - Loyola Chi

Jason Smith - Colorado St

Loren Stokes - Hofstra

Rodney Stuckey - EWU

As a mid-major the next few months are almost as important as the conference schedule. Many coaches believe that you can not win a game in the first half, but you can most certainly be very out of it by then. The same is true in the given course of a season. As a mid-major you are looking to make a strong case for your team before conference play even begins. However, even if you go undefeated going into conference play, if you don’t win a single conference game than it won’t matter. What many schools try to do is to have a schedule which has about five big time teams and the rest of the schedule not too soft. This way they can work their way up with the wins, while hopefully knocking off those five teams. This would seem easy but it’s a lot harder than it seems especially for some of the better mid-majors.

Creighton

Gonzaga

Hofstra

Memphis

Nevada

Southern Illinois

Wichita State

Winthrop

Xavier

The Ohio Bobcats are looking to bounce back after a tough, underachieving year last year. A lot of the team’s problems from last year, however, seemed to be answered as they started practice on Saturday. Last year the biggest problem was chemistry. A key figure to the chemistry imbalance was point guard Jeremy Fears. Fortunately for the Bobcats, Fears is gone and not too many people are worried he left the program. This year’s Bobcat team probably won’t make any “It” teams but make no mistake, they have what it takes to make the Big Dance. With six seniors and a preseason All-MAC junior, this team has the experience and talent to go a long way.

Sure the 2006-2007 college basketball season has yet to begin. But, some things are already a given for when it ends come March, or if your lucky even April. And one of those things is that the Mid-Continent Conference is about to look a whole lot different.

And no, it is not just because IPFW, North Dakota State and South Dakota State have already packed their bags in anticipation of moving in on July 1st of next year. It is instead because one of the long time tenants of the Mid-Con hotel is saying bye bye.

So the Valparaiso Crusaders prepare to ride off into the sunset, away from the Mid-Continent Conference and into the open hands of their Midwestern rivals of the Horizon League. Let us take this time to pause and look back at the five biggest moments for Valpo since they became a founding member of the Mid-Con in 1982.

Well, the month of September means two things: the start of football season, and the influx of college basketball preview magazines. These magazines, like the major networks during the season, tend to focus on the players and teams in “BCS” leagues. This means that many players excel outside of the limelight throughout the year, and fans hear little of them until they lead their team to a first-round upset in the NCAA Tournament. Also, you have your players in the BCS

The fifth annual BracketBusters event, a two-day men’s college basketball extravaganza pitting potential NCAA Tournament hopefuls against each other on February 16-17, will feature 13 nationally televised games selected from an expanded pool of 102 teams.  The field is highlighted by the return of last year’s BracketBusters participants George Mason and Wichita State, a Final Four and Sweet Sixteen team, respectively, who met in last year’s event and the NCAA Tournament.  Last year’s field included a potential 100 teams (vying for 13 BracketBusters games), while the 2005 event featured 64 teams (vying for 11 BracketBusters games).  

ESPN announces the schedule, format, and particpants in the 2007 BracketBuster weekend.

There has been a lot of talk recently of doing away with the title of “mid-major.” These comments are spawning from the recent success of mid-major programs across America. It is becoming more apparent that the level of separation between big time programs and mid-majors is becoming much smaller while the amount of mid-major success on the national level is on the rise. To calm the uproar of some college basketball enthusiasts who frightfully see big time programs falling back down to earth, the idea to do away with the title “mid-major” seems like an appropriate measure. In reality, all this would achieve would be to put an asterisk aside the success of several players in America and to punish college basketball programs that have been doing things the right way.