Ledell & Randy & Tony & Tank
I’ve carried on a lifelong love affair with New Orleans, and at least part of it has to do with Ledell Eackles. It’s also been inspired by a love of jazz and an affinity with cocktail culture and proximity to …
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No Place Like Somewhere Close To Home
Wherever you may be, Thanksgiving inspires thoughts of home. For me, that’s also inspired a lot of thinking about the Northern Iowa Panthers in the last week. As I’ve mentioned, my current home is almost as far from a mid-major …
Man on a Mission
“God created man. Zadar created basketball.” — Apocryphal Croatian saying There’s plenty that’s exceptional about Our Game, circa 2013. Advanced stats and sci-fi cameras
Freeman Williams’s Very Good Week
In the entire history of NCAA basketball, only one guy has scored more points than Freeman Williams. That other guy, you know: Pistol Pete Maravich, college ball’s all-time leading scorer, a legend at every level of the game.
The Admiral and the Beaver
The second week of November is a great time to be a basketball fan. As I write this, Bally is perched behind me keeping an eye on LIU-Brooklyn’s effort at an Assembly Hall upset, and this morning I brushed my …
Cornbread, Al and Lee (Part Two)
(See Tuesday’s Part One to learn how we got here.) At the end of the 1969-70 season, Marquette coach Al McGuire turned down the team’s invitation to the NCAA Tournament, protesting the selection committee’s choice to send the Warriors to …
Miracle on Eighth Avenue
On October 4, 1951, the New York Herald Tribune published the greatest lede ever written. It lay at the top of Red Smith’s dispatch from the Polo Grounds, where a one-game playoff for the National League pennant had been decided …
Cornbread, Al and Lee (Part One)
April 2, 2011. Game 7-104. A national semifinal. The unofficial mid-major national championship.
Little Bits of History Repeating
I don’t really know how I got here. Not in the straightforward biological sense. Not really, even, in the more complex what-are-any-of-us-doing-on-this-here-Earth construction. But when it comes to the question of how I wound up writing about the long, weird …
The Dons, the Streak and the Best Ever
Here in the Mid-Majority, our definitions of success are more malleable than the usual. They’re shaped according to the team and the time, and with ten seasons’ understanding of the uphill nature of our battles.