I was not sure how I came to this place.
Before me stood a Great Hall built to house a great game. Just outside its doors commerce boomed with opportunists seeking riches and preying upon well-meaning souls lost in their own naivete. The pressure of the daily grind sat poorly hidden on its perch, a sly cat batting us dutifully on the back of the head. The din of machinery, impatience and responsibility echoed off of the concrete with each wave of that paw. Yet the noise could not mask the throb from inside. Behind closed doors beckoned the bounce, bounce, bounce of orange rubber on parquet and the clockwork swish of nylon following perfect form.
This second weekend of March had been on my mind for some time. I reached Indianapolis long before I made my investment in two seats for four days, before the evidence of a championship season had been collected by Indiana University. I circled this date on my mental calendar three years ago when the Big Ten Conference announced plans for the fledgling tournament to alternate its home between Indiana and Illinois. Head gears were already whirring around the dream that such an event would exist at all. Further back, a foundation was laid the day I switched allegiance to the Hoosiers after a decade of loyalty to a home-grown team from Champaign-Urbana. Passions simmered in a stew of older memories. Nick Anderson. Lou Henson’s hair(piece). A chair thrown in anger. Ray Meyer leading a band of Demons to a top seed only to lose before the first buzzer. I did not play basketball, but it had been playing me, doggedly.
Finances, parenthood and server bottlenecks were damned for the weekend. I headed out on a solo flight north from Bloomington hoping to seduce friends and family to share the experience, in glory or sorrow. Mostly, I sought escape to a world ruled by sappy sports analogies. A place where time marched in 35-second intervals over a wooden turf and made heroes out of desperation. Basketball was going to set the screen that would drop my guard and grant me a good look, if only for a few days.
Read Kevin’s first-hand account of the 2002 Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament, which was held from March 7-10 at the beautiful facilities of the Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana.
- Introduction: Man To Man
- Session I: A Season On The Stink
- Session II: Hoosier Pride
- Session III: The Other Half
- Session IV: Luck Recker
- Session V: Count The Two