Write On Sports LLC - "What's Not to Love about the Mid-Majors?" by Troy Somero

What's Not to Love about the Mid-Majors?

2007-03-06 01:13:36 | By: Troy Somero

For basketball fans who live and die by brackets and elimination games, the start of ESPN's Championship Week this past weekend has provided an NCAA Tournament atmosphere two weeks ahead of time. A full weekend of mid-major college basketball action definitely warms the heart of any basketball fan enamored with March Madness. Just about every team, coach, player and program participating in Division-I basketball this past weekend was facing a win-or-go-home environment. One's heart swells with pride for the winners and beaks for the tears of the losers. The participants that advanced drew some much-deserve attention to themselves, and to highlight the efforts of these people and programs is to point out just how easy it is to fall in love with a mid-major Cinderella hopeful when the Tournament starts in the middle of March.

The Team to Fall in Love with This Week: Winthrop

Sports fans love a fallen hero, a team that has suffered in the past but has picked itself up and come back stronger than ever the next time around. No team embodied that spirit more this past weekend, and this season for that matter, than Winthrop. Twelve months ago, fifteenth-seeded Winthrop was one second away from joining the likes of Richmond, Santa Clara, Coppin Stateand Hampton in NCAA Tournament lure until Tennessee gunner Chris Lofton made a three-pointer from the corner to knock the Eagles out of the tournament.

How did Winthrop respond this season? The Eagles began the year with baptism-by-fire, playing at North Carolina, at Mississippi State, and at Maryland in their third, fourth, and fifth games, respectively (winning at Mississippi State). Then the Eagles traveled to Wisconsin and to Texas A&M before their conference schedule started. Then, the Eagles swept their entire conference schedule, going 17-0 (including the conference tournament) and beating three teams in their conference three times each during this winning streak. The other fabled fifteen seeds from past NCAA Tournaments slowly faded away during the following season; Winthrop, on the other hand, finished their regular season 28-4 with an RPI of 69 and is currently listed as an eleven seed in ESPN.com's Bracketology.

Winthrop is not just dancing for the sake of dancing this March – this team wants redemption after last year's heartbreak, and with the effort the Eagles bring to the court every game they are an easy team to fall in love with this March.

The Coach to Fall in Love with This Week: Bob McKillop, Davidson

"(McKillop's) coaching career at Davidson has been scintillating by any barometer. His Davidson record is 282-213. He's coached Davidson longer than any basketball coach, won more games there than any coach, and his 154 Southern Conference wins are more than any coach in league history. He's been conference Coach of the Year five times, has won seven Southern Conference division titles, three tournament championships, and taken his team to three NCAA tournaments and three postseason NITs. All this winning hasn't come at any academic sacrifice, as 95 percent of his Davidson lettermen have graduated."

This excerpt from Coach McKillop's profile on the Davidson website summarizes the many reasons to love McKillop as a coach. First, McKillop is dedicated to the Davidson program. His team's many postseason has drawn the attention of major college basketball programs desiring to hire him as a coach. However, McKillop has eschewed larger programs because of his dedication to the student-athletes he coaches and the mission of the school at large. Second, McKillop is successful and accomplishes great things without the same recruiting and monetary flexibilities that most other coaches have. He is the winningest coach at a school that has a coaching legacy which includes Larry Brown, Lefty Driesell, Matt Doherty, Rick Barnes and Jim Larranaga in a time period where there is immense pressure for coaches to be successful year-in and year-out. Third, and by far most-importantly, McKillop has maintained this steadfast success while Davidson has maintained its status as both the strongest school academically in the Southern Conference and one of the premier academic institutions in America.

McKillop is not a flashy, attention-grabbing coach. His mild-mannered, patient approach enables him to get the very best out of his players as both students and athletes. One needs to look no further than at McKillop's highly-acclaimed freshman guard Stephen Curry to see the immediate impact Coach McKillop has on his players. It is fun to cheer for the little guys in the NCAAs, but it is easy to cheer for a man as endearing as Bob McKillop.

The Player to Fall in Love with This Week: Eric Maynor, VCU

The team that every basketball fan had a love affair with last March, George Mason, was minutes away from trying on the Cinderella slippers for the second time in as many years on Monday night in the Colonel Athletic Association Championship Game. However, midnight struck a little sooner this year for the Patriots thanks to VCU Point Guard Eric Maynor. It was not the statistics that Maynor collected in the CAA Championship that make him stand out in the basketball crowd (20 points, 7 rebounds, 7 assists, and 3 steals), but it was instead how he accumulated these statistics. With 2:11 left in the game VCU was trailing 57-52. Over the last two minutes Maynor garnered the following stat line: 9 points, 3 rebounds and 2 steals, with each steal resulting in a field goal by Maynor himself. Two minutes and eleven seconds later VCU ended the game with a 65-59 victory. Maynor outscored the entire George Mason *team* by a 9-7 margin in the last 2:11. While VCU trailed for most of the game, shot a putrid 1-12 from three-point range, and lost control over the tempo of the game from the tip-off, Maynor willed his team to win. Individual efforts lift entire teams in March, and no player showed more heart in crunch time then Maynor did Monday night.

The Program to Fall in Love with This Week: Creighton

It is very difficult to be a college basketball fan and not love what Creighton has accomplished in the last decade. In his thirteenth year at Creighton, Coach Dana Altman has a 253-140 record with the Blue Jays. In a conference that is celebrating its 100th anniversary this season, Altman ranks third all-time in wins in the Missouri Valley Conference, trailing only Hall of Famers Henry Iba and Eddie Hickey. Creighton has eight straight twenty-win seasons and has won the Missouri Valley Tournament seven out of the last nine wins, an admirable statistic considering the strength of the conference in the last decade. In addition, Creighton is a mid-major program that has churned out major-league talent. The Blue Jays have had three All-Americans and three Academic All-Americans during Altman's tenure, including current NBA player Kyle Korver. The school recently moved its home basketball games to the Qwest Center, an off-campus area in downtown Omaha, where it achieves attendance numbers upwards of 17,000 game after game during the regular season.

At the same time, Creighton has taken all of this basketball success in stride. The theme of the school is overwhelmingly academic and religious. A visit to the school's homepage indicates this, as there is not link to Creighton athletics anywhere on the page. However, with all of this said, Creighton has not been a true darling in any of its recent NCAA Tournament appearances, never advancing further than the second round in the tournament in their last seven appearances. Here's to hoping that a program that approaches college athletics in a loveable way finally gets what it deserves in the tournament starting next week.

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