2023-2024 B1G Basketball Thread

[medinabuckeye1]

Ohio State in a battle in Columbus in their NOT opener, up 1 but without the ball at the U4.

[medinabuckeye1]

Ohio State in a battle in Columbus in their NOT opener, up 1 but without the ball at the U4.

Buckeyes survive 88-83 and will face the Richmond/VaTech winner.

[MaximumSam]

Not the most beautiful win but we will take it

[ELA]

Virginia not doing the committee any favors

[MarqHusker]

The only ncaa game that this reminds me of was coincidentally coached by Bennett's old man.  Some 30 pt effort against some directional Missouri team.

[ELA]

The only ncaa game that this reminds me of was coincidentally coached by Bennett's old man.  Some 30 pt effort against some directional Missouri team.

I remember having SW Missouri in that game, rushing home from school, and waiting for CBS to switch to it.  Its actually kind of funny how long we were tied. to whatever your local CBS was showing.

I got lucky in my first couple years in Pittsburgh that MSU had early games against Robert Morris, Temple and Pitt.  I think the only game that just wasnt on was a 2-7 2nd round game against USC.

But also funny that they figured people wanted to watch a small local school (Robert Morris), whose alums probably were fans of other schools, get blasted in a 2-15 game

[MarqHusker]

I was at the Bradley Center that day.  Michigan St was the 1 seed pounding some tomato can, and the. Ole miss beat Nova in an 8/9 nail biter.  OU upset AZ in a 4/13 game.  I thjnk it was Charlotte v R Island in the other game.  Just remember the hacked off badgers fans in the concourse watching that puke fest.

[Hawkinole]

I watched most of the Iowa WBB Summer 2023 European trip video on BTN tonight. 
I was taken by the Coaches' repeated refrains in the huddle at games concerning going to the Big Ten Tournament, cutting down the nets, and returning to Cleveland. It was a repeated refrain. So, the 1st half of that refrain proved true. We will see if the second part is becomes reality. 

[847badgerfan]

The only ncaa game that this reminds me of was coincidentally coached by Bennett's old man.  Some 30 pt effort against some directional Missouri team.

1999.

32-43.

[medinabuckeye1]

Someone has to be the late game on Thursday and Friday, and it's a lot more palatable to start the late game at 8PM local than 10 PM local.

Some of this is because the number of willing host sites in the Mountain and Pacific time zones is grossly out of proportion with the number of schools in Division 1 in those time zones. When was the last time anyone went to Spokane, Boise, or Albuquerque on their own impetus?

And if you think this was bad, recall that prior to the pod system, A) 1st/2nd round locations were fixed by region, and B) the eighth of the bracket that are attached to each 1 and 2 seed went with them no matter who the 3 and 4 seeds were.  This year, the sites would have looked like this:

East: Brooklyn (UConn) and Pittsburgh (Iowa State)
South: Memphis (Houston) and Charlotte (Marquette)
Midwest: Indy (Purdue) and Omaha (Tennessee)
West: Salt Lake (North Carolina) and Spokane (Arizona)

The top two seeds look okay save UNC, but after that it gets really messy really fast. Recall that the last year pre-pod, Georgetown, George Mason, and Maryland were all shipped to Boise for first-round action.

Thank you for the response.

I definitely agree on the pods, that was a humongous improvement!

I'm sure that having some Western sites helps for TV schedules but the latest game on Thursday is in Omaha and the second latest game on Friday starts at 9:55 in Indianapolis. A fair site mix based on history would have enough sites West of thr Eastern Time Zone to accommodate the latest games.

[medinabuckeye1]

FWIW:
All three of the B1G's NIT teams won their openers. Ohio State and Iowa won as favorites at home over Cornell and KSU respectively. Minnesota pulled out a road upset at Butler. Minnesota's win came in Hinkle Fieldhouse which will also host the NIT Quarter-finals, Semi-finals, and Championship. 

The B1G last won the NIT in 2018 (PSU) while current year participants Minnesota (2014) and Ohio State (2008) have won NIT Championships within recent years. 

[FearlessF]

The Huskers have reached the semifinals of the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) on three occasions, including defeating St. Joseph's in the title game for the 1996 NIT.

[CatsbyAZ]

As a side-semi-off-topic....

I live in the Columbus area.  97.1 The Fan is the Columbus area sports radio station.  They are obviously, very OSU centric.  I accept that......but...

Here we are, the week of March Madness, what many consider to be the biggest American sporting event of the year (or at worst, #2 behind the Super Bowl).

And when I turn on the radio every morning and every evening for my commute to / from work, what is the station covering this week?

OSU spring practice.  NFL draft.  NFL trades.  OSU women's basketball.  Spring Break stories.

As someone who's listened to years of Sports Radio, almost every weekday, the industry is vastly more NFL centric than it was 20 years ago. NFL is a year round topic buoyed in the offseason by a carefully calculated pacing of events - Mar: Free Agency, Apr: Draft, May: schedule release, June: mini-camps, July: Hall of Fame induction, and Aug: pre-season.

I don't watch much NFL, but I sure know what's going on because of its chatter permeating across sports talk. Fortunately for us all the NFL talk opens a lot of college football discussion, especially with college football's own nearly irresistible, ongoing developments - playoff expansion, Harbaugh, NIL, Transfer Portal, and conference realignments. One of the morning shows I listen to (Fox Sports' Brady Quinn, Lavar Arrington & Jonas Knox) talk a lot of NFL but are bigger college fans and host plenty of college football editorialists. Same goes for Fox Sports' biggest show The Herd, who regularly brings on the booth talent.

The NBA still gets a lot of radio/editorial talk through its May/June playoffs but its mostly Lakers or drama driven. Gone are the days (20 years ago) when the MLB (especially Barry Bonds), PGA (especially Tiger Woods), and even the Olympics could drive sports radio depending on the time of year. Good news for the baseball (and hockey) die-hards is that there is a very devoted and robust sphere of blogs and podcasts dedicated to the daily minutiae. And MLB Network coverage is excellent.

[847badgerfan]

I'm thinking Tony might hang 'em up. He's old school.