The ungodly hour of Before Eight arrived too quickly. This four-day disturbance in my routine was preceded by several late nights, including a brush with the wee hours as Wednesday turned to Thursday. I got up only because I had to, unpacked and untidied. Champions are to be named, I told myself in between sloshes of a toothbrush.
Amy helped pack up my kit, and we headed out on the hour drive north to Indianapolis. From his backseat perch, Carter made up new words to kill time in between Big Truck sightings. My boy jabbered away through conversations Amy and I held about family, playgroups and job prospects. Money had been spent and plans rearranged at great inconvenience, but the most painful part of my Big Ten Tourney weekend was watching my wife and child head for the rolling hills after depositing me at the hotel.
The Hyatt room was the last one available in downtown Indy. A three-night stay cost more than a single ticket to all five basketball sessions. The room had a bed, a desk and a nice view of the fountain park in between me and a neighboring Westin. It took about thirty minutes to unpack my computer and log in for a few hours of pre-hoops work. For a time, I replaced visions of open jumpers and hard fouls with SQL commands and complex logic.
Thursday was always the most sparsely attended day, despite the incentive of an extra game. Streetwalking scalpers confirmed this with their offers for my extra ticket. I considered the paltry money on the table. There were early hopes for a permanent fixture to accompany me to all five sessions, but those plans — and all subsequent ones to make proper use of the ticket — fell flat. The first session appealed only to die-hard fans rooting for bad teams. I kept the extra ticket, believing it proved more valuable to me as a bookmark and coat rack, and so the pack of day traders moved on to other passersby.
After clearing the tight security at the lone entrance to the stadium, I found my way to my seats. Section 103 was not my first choice, but the cost to drop down a level into single digits did not justify the improvement in view. Settled into row eight, there was a momentary disappointment that the court was a bit more distant than anticipated, but one look back up at the balcony seats behind him were enough to make me feel regal once more. I draped my coat over the back of seat nine, pulled a book out of my duffle and settled in for an hour of Woodrow Wilson’s life while waiting for shotes to be misfired.
Session One required some manufactured motivation. Seeds six through eleven squared off in games that are sometimes competitive but always mired in mistakes. With each game, I chose one team to root for, but it was a commitment guaranteed for only two hours. I expected more passion than I was willing to invest from the fans making the trip from places like Iowa, Minnesota and Michigan. Their commitment should be eternal.
Indiana played a Thursday game just once, a win in the first year of the tourney. That day, Hoosier fans flooded the United Center in Chicago and were rewarded with a victory over a young Ohio State team. But, in one of many post-season disappointments over the last decade, the Hoosiers dropped the Friday game to Purdue, of all teams, on the brutish play of Brian Cardenal and Brad Miller.
I lacked Indiana this day, but I could always muster up some hatred for Purdue. That, too, was eternal.
Give the Devil His Purdue
My greatest basketball memory was not one of joy. My team did not win. No records were set. It did not make SportsCenter highlights. But through the suffering emerged the gift of purpose.
This moment of clarity was surrounded by fuzzy facts, making the story difficult to recount. With Vaseline on the lens, I could see myself sitting in the corner of Assembly Hall during one of my early trips to Bloomington. Lots of red, of course, including my shirt. Lots of cheering and peppy music. A sense of desperation, of sorrow looming. I assumed Coach Bob Knight to be on the sidelines, as there was no mental record of technicals sufficient to warrant ejection. The scoreboard showed the home team enduring, permanently, some vague deficit they would never overcome. The final buzzer had certainly sounded, but the image of a blonde-haired runt of a basketball player — adorned in black and gold, jumping up and down in triumph — cast aside time. Everything swirled around that one very clear picture of the runt, his feet repeatedly landing on the floorboards of McCracken Court, pounding the map of Indiana in the vicinity of Bloomington. I stacked this memory at the top of the pile of reasons to hate Purdue.
The Boilermakers arrived in Indianapolis as the ninth seed, so bad they were forced to play as visitors even with the top teams absent. Their opponent in home whites was ripe with Hoosier connections and made the Hawkeyes a natural rooting companion for Game One. The Iowa head coach played on an Indiana title team the season after the brink. One of their young guards was an IU recruiting reject and streaky shooter for his chosen club. And then there was Luke Recker, a McDonald’s All-American who committed to Bob Knight and Indiana University with two years left to play in high school. With two years left to play at IU, though, he faxed in his transfer and left me holding his replica Number 4 jersey. While most of Bloomington conspired to boo him into submission for this crime, I could only lament what might have been had Recker been fed by Kirk Haston and Jared Jeffries last year. Yes, Iowa was a team I could get behind. As if I needed a reason to root for an opponent of Purdue.
To my dismay, coach Gene Keady’s troops came out strong. Even after Iowa fought back to take the lead, Purdue trailed by only a basket late into the first half. But Keady then received a technical foul from referee Ed Hightower and fumed on the sidelines as Recker calmly sank the two freebies. By halftime, Iowa led 46-34. The crowd around me — a mixture of Purdue support and Recker detration — was restless. They relaxed only long enough to grin at dogs catching frisbees during the intermission.
The best threat of a Purdue comeback came in the form of William Deane, a junior transfer from Boston College who had managed, somehow, to lead the conference in scoring with 17.3 ppg. His team had already added two more points to the deficit when, plagued with fouls, he took his 11 points and 3 assists to the bench. In Deane’s absence, Iowa held firm at the 14-point lead. The guard returned to add another five points to his game totals but fouled out with two minutes to spare and the Hawkeyes up 15.
The 87-62 victory was Iowa’s fifth straight tourney win. They had emerged from Thursday last year to defeat Indiana in the 2001 title game but would likely have to defeat three of four Big Ten co-champions to do it again. Luke Recker finished with a game-high 25 points and a rebound total that rivaled big power forward Reggie Evans’ 18. Recker hugged teammates Evans and Glen Worley at the final seconds ticked away. He lingered on the court enduring a rumble of boos from Hoosier fans, looking around for a camera and a reporter with a microphone. A glance by Quinn Bucker, doing ESPN’s color commentary, was the most attention he got before finally heading back to the tunnel.
The Purdue section was close enough to hear grumbles from their fans, but it paled by comparison to the post-game venom coming from the few Indiana supporters sitting in on the early action. If the greater of two evils had triumphed, at least evil had lost. Purdue had been vanquished, and I couldn’t have felt happier had it been current Hoosiers laying claim to the victory.
Final Score: Iowa Hawkeyes 87 – Purdue Boilermakers 72
Player of the Game: G Luke Recker, Iowa
(Honorable mention to Reggie Evans and William Deane)
Just Like Taking Candy, Baby!
There was bound to be a decline in my interest after that. No more Recker for another day. No more Purdue, period. I dreaded the obligatory twenty-minute wait in between games for fear my fatigue would catch up with me. Woodrow Wilson was no cure for that.
My rooting interests were weakly thrown to the side of Northwestern at tip-off, a combination of who they were and who they played. For no reason more potent than their Final Four victory over Illinois in 1989, the Wolverines survived only Purdue on the conference food chain. That gave the Wildcats a nod, but natural selection also played a hand in liking Northwestern. Historically a doormat incapable of playing in the Big Ten, the Wildcats entered the game with the feel of an underdog despite being three seeds higher than their opponent. A scrappy team in 2002, NU had managed to play competitively — and defeat — a number of teams they shouldn’t have. They beat Michigan State and Wisconsin and narrowly lost to Ohio State on the road in an impressive three-game spurt.
The closest I had ever come to despising Northwestern was when their band serenaded the Indiana bench with chants of “Hoosier Daddy.” Coach Knight took offense on behalf of senior center William Gladness, an out-of-wedlock father, believing it was an insulting reference to his player’s personal life. Wildcats coach Kevin O’Neill, too, was chastised by Knight for failing to control his own crowd, and the entire incident blew up quickly into a season of fodder for ESPN’s SportCenter. Upon his next — and, as it turned out, final — visit to Welsh-Ryan Arena, Bob Knight made piece with the locals by handing out candy to the band. The natives were soothed, and so was I. Such was the power of Bob Knight to dictate the response of others.
Northwestern often received my support on their annual Thursday game. Other than in 1999, however — when as an eight seed the Wildcats nearly upset eventual champ Michigan State in the quarterfinals — my support proved fruitless. Game Two at Conseco was no exception. The Cats took a full five minutes before getting their first field goal and trailed 27-14 with 8:34 left in the first half.
The gap was closed to eight by halftime, due more to a cold streak by the Michigan than anything Northwestern did. LaVell Blanchard got 11 points and rebound in the initial Wolverine spurt but didn’t find the net again until 2:45 remained. Blanchard then scored the last six points for Michigan to take a 36-28 lead to the locker room.
The intermission forced the players to give way to large inflatable creatures called Zooperstars. They mostly milled around the court and moved as awkwardly as one might expect of a human trapped in a balloon. Outside of a dance-off with a small boy (who wound up getting “eaten” by the big fish balloon man), the Zooperstars didn’t have much of an act. Instead, they rode the crest of creative names like Dick Flytale, Stallion Iverson, Mackeral Jordan and Dennis Frogman. The halftime act also hit a snag when Shaquille O’Seal sprang a leak and went from 12-foot-two to 5-foot-seven in the matter of a few strides. As fans quickly came to realize, time not spent watching basketball was best spent waiting in long lines for food.
Watching hoops wasn’t always a worthwhile endeavor, either. Northwestern’s second half started much like the first. Freshman Dommanic Ingerson ignited the Wolverines to build to a 47-30 advantage with just over 5 minutes gone. The Cats fought back to get as close as a five as Blanchard picked up his second and third fouls. But Ingerson again broke the drought with a bucket and launched Michigan on a 12-2 run to put the game away. A Chris Young dunk at 1:52 brought his team to their feet and a smattering of approval from Michigan fans.
The 72-51 loss ended the career of Tavaras Hardy, a cocky but pesky forward for Northwestern. He had impressed Hoosier fans just days earlier in IU’s Senior Day blowout of the Wildcats. He also wore a distinctive white headband, an old-school style shared by three of his teammates. Hardy finished his final game with 17 points and four rebounds, clearly the best Northwestern could offer on Thursday. The day belonged to Blanchard, however, and his 26-point effort that allowed his team to advance.
Final Score: Michigan Wolverines 72 – Northwestern Wildcats 51
Player of the Game: F LaVell Blanchard, Michigan
(Honorable mention to Tavaras Hardy and Chris Young)
Six More Weeks of Free Throws
Having blown half of my per-session allowance on the souvenir program, I was prepared to avoid the temptation of a between games meal. Woodrow Wilson made my eyelids droopy, though, and I realized that caffeine was going to be a prerequisite to get through the final contest of the evening. Minnesota was a quality club with post-season aspirations but as the sixth seed they were slated to play a God-awful Penn State club hurting from recent departures. Woodrow Wilson’s early life was action-packed by comparison. Lines were long throughout the concourse, but the food looked good. After snagging some garlic fries and a Mountain Dew (only Pepsi products seem to be served at sporting events), I settled into my seat in time to see senior Dusty Rychart introduced as a starter.
Dusty Rychart was one of those thorn-in-your-side opponents. This was especially true for the Hoosiers during annual trips north to Minnesota’s Williams Arena, where the Gophers twice stole a victory with a furious rally to close the game. This far from the IU side of the championship bracket, Rychart was powerless to hurt my team again and thus rooting for him was greatly simplified.
One section to my right sat another for reason to cheer on the Golden Gophers. Despite the long distances and varied success of the club each year, the Gopher fans always seemed well-represented at the annual tournament. They were notable for their solidarity and sportsmanship but best identified by a rousing cheer, complete with accent. M-I-N-N-E-S-O-T-A. Minnesohda. Minnesohda. Goooooo, Minnesohda. Unless Minnesota was playing one’s team of choice, it was difficult to resist rooting with them, eh?
By the time the game clock ticked down to under 12 minutes, I was done with my fries and Minnesota had sluggishly built a 13-7 lead. Freshmen sensation and future Big Ten Player of the Year Rick Rickert looked impressive, but he was the only standout from either side. After flop-haired sophomore reserve Steve Esselink was inserted into the game, the Gophers pulled away, 26-14. Esselink had seven points and four rebounds in limited play to key the charge, which ended with a 38-23 halftime lead for Minnesota.
The players went to the locker rooms, and a teenage jump-roping team headed out for an intermission demonstration of their hopping skills. Fans headed up the aisles to restock provisions.
Their slow-footed start aside, the Gophers were clearly the class act of the day. Rickert in particular had been all over the floor contributing with baskets, boards and dishes. He seemed to stretch his 6-10 frame to 7-6, moving like a guard instead of a future NBA center. As a team, Minnesota was charged and disciplined. They were able to capitalize on Nittany Lion mistakes — which were plentiful — to lift the team to a 19-point lead just a couple minutes into the second half. The score was 63-47 with eight minutes remaining.
Perhaps it was the large lead. Perhaps it was the late hour. Perhaps it was the distraction of a Minnesota cheerleader whose teeth, recently whitened, illuminated the darkest corners of the upper deck. At eight minutes to play, the game stopped being a clinic. It stopped being good. It stopped being fun. Rychart managed to pick up his play, ironically, just as his teammates wound down. With Rickert sitting out a chunk of the second half, Rychart passed the young phenom for the team scoring lead with 23 points. All the while, the final buzzer of the 85-60 Gopher win was kept painfully at bay.
The PA announcer claimed 18,418 fans were in attendance, but clearly that figured was not discovered through a head count. The first-day totals were probably on the order of 10,000 max, and the vast majority of those headed out into the night life of Indianapolis long before Minnesota reached sixty. One final Minnesohda cheer preceded the remainder of the crowd out of Conseco Fieldhouse, and Session One came to an end.
Final Score: Minnesota Golden Gophers 85 – Penn State Nittany Lions 60
Player of the Game: F Rick Rickert, Minnesota
(Honorable mention to Dusty Rychart and Sharif Chambliss)