Hoopraker

With pristine textbooks and tidy off-campus apartments replete with clean laundry, the college basketball season commenced last Autumn amidst optimism for three recent bottom dwellers of the Big Ten.  Unfortunately, as we enter the final week of the Big Ten season, much has changed for Northwestern, Minnesota and Penn State, teams with a collective  6 wins and 37 losses in Conference. With little to play for other than pride for their respective programs, these teams can pour cold water on three of their bretheren that cannot afford one more loss: Iowa, Purdue and Indiana. (more…)

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A lesser coach may have begun feverishly scanning his contract for a sabbatical option. A less stand up coach might have pulled the Coach K bad back ruse and put his assistant coach in the doomed Pete Gaudet spot. A less durable, less talented coach would certainly not have his team at 21-9, in sole possession of third place in the Big Ten, and pointed toward another NCAA tournament. Even prior to last week’s developments, this has been a season, indeed a calendar year in Champaign-Urbana of stern and unrelenting challenges that would defeat the best of men. (more…)

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Ohio State is Number 1 in both the AP and Coaches’ Polls but it doesn’t matter. Having the highest ranking bestows an inference of greatness and in this respect Ohio State is good, but certainly not great. The Buckeyes are not without the company of other elite teams possessing significant weakness: Kansas, Florida, UCLA, North Carolina and Memphis are talented but fragile, each suffering from either a lack of focus and discipline to inexperience and dubious coaching.  Where no team is dominant, such parity accentuates the beauty of this season’s tournament endgame where anything is possible by any team. (more…)

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If ever there was a moment for Michigan to steal a critical game on the road, it was last night in Champaign’s Assembly Hall. Amid the distractions of Jamar Smith’s DUI, Chief Illiniwek’s last dance, inferences of Bruce Weber’s control of his players, injuries to every inch of Brian Randle’s body and Rich McBride’s numerous bad shots, Michigan failed. (more…)

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February is not for the meek. It is for the bold, the peaking, the mentally tough, the hungry, the gamers, the coaches. February is moving month. Some surging, some sliding, some just hanging on. (more…)

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It’s late February in the Big Ten, a time of short days and long nights, frozen nasal secretions, fires in the Rathskeller, standing room in the Breslin Center and high aptitude, competitive basketball. On Tuesday night in East Lansing, after Drew Neitzel leads the Spartans out of the locker room, 14,759 Spartan fans will bestow their greetings upon the new Number 1 team in the nation, the Wisconsin Badgers. This is the allure of Big Ten Basketball. (more…)

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The Illinois mascot Chief Illiniwek, a symbol of hypocrisy, insensitivity, and institutional cowardice and heel dragging is, at last, after eighty-one years of overstaying his welcome, a dead man dancing. (more…)

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2007 NCAA bracket czar Gary Walters (Princeton ‘67) says he’s been watching a lot of basketball games lately. For the preservation of his professional reputation, I hope he’s taken in some Purdue basketball in the past eight days. With tonight’s win over Indiana, last week’s blowout of Michigan State, and a valiant near miss in Columbus, Matt Painter’s Boilermakers are quickly making themselves conspicuous for Walters and his wizards at the Westin. (more…)

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