CigarBoy’s Bracket Buster Extravaganza
by Bill Kintner
DAYTON – It is Bracket Buster (BB) Saturday – you know, that ESPN-created mid-major college basketball match up. There are a ton of games featuring all the teams from the Horizon League, MVC and MAC. Then other teams are mixed in from the CAA, OVC, Mid-Continent, WAC, Metro Atlantic, Southern, Big Sky and America East.
The teams are matched with teams of similar records and RPI ratings a few weeks before the game date. I think a lot of the fans of BCS schools pay no attention to it and that is too bad because it is an exciting day for fans of good basketball.
Since ESPN puts some of the key match ups on TV it is a great opportunity for fans to see some schools besides Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina and the familiar schools and faces that are regularly seen or maybe even clutter sports programming.
Some of these so-called mid-major teams have some great basketball heritage. Take Miami (Ohio), for example. It is a crime that this is only the third time that Miami has had a home game on ESPN. This is a program that is in the top 20 in all-time wins, has won the MAC 20 times and was named one of the top 50 programs of all-time by Street and Smiths. They are also celebrating their 100th basketball season.
On the other end of the spectrum is University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The Panthers, who are much newer to the national scene, are 21-5 and are currently rolling through the Horizon League. They went all the way out to Hawaii to administer an 87-80 spanking of the Rainbows in Bracket Buster action. They had a much bigger lead and held off a furious charge by Hawaii. They have no fear in scheduling going on the road to play Valpo, Wisconsin, Kansas and Manhattan.
There are also good match ups involving Southern Illinois, Murray State, Southwest Missouri State, Kent State, Akron, Buffalo, UWGB, Northern Illinois and many, many more.
Since I live in Cincinnati I had a lot of BB games to choose from. So it came down to choosing from the following games: Miami hosting Wichita State, Butler hosting Valpo, Ball State hosting Drexel and Wright State hosting Northern Illinois. All of these games looked like fun to me. It came down to a timing issue. So I chose the Miami game at noon which was a national TV game and the Wright State game at 7 PM.
Miami is located in Oxford, Ohio, which is just north of Cincinnati. It is a sometimes-painful drive up the two-lane State Route 27. One slow driver, just one old geezer, just one nervous mother in a mini van, and traffic can be backed up for miles on the way into Oxford. On this day the traffic was not too bad.
When I got inside the arena, known as Millett Hall, I could tell this was not a normal game. There were TV cameras set up in various locations throughout the arena and the courtside media area was unusually large. It turns out that in addition to the usual beat writers, the New York Times, Gannett News Service, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and every small paper within 50 miles were seated courtside.
As game time rolled around, the student sections on both ends were packed with kids and many of them dressed the part of student fanatics. The crowd of 5,220 enthusiastic fans was the second-largest of the year.
It turned out to be the Danny Horace show as he led Miami to a 65-58 victory over the Wichita State Shockers. Horace scored 24 points and grabbed nine rebounds to lead all scorers.
As is often the case, the RedHawks jumped all over Wichita State early and then held on as the Shockers came charging back in the second half. In the three games I attended at Miami this year they jumped out to big leads only to have to fight off a late charge to hold on for the win.
Chet Mason added 13 points and William Hatcher had 11 points for the RedHawks, who blew passed Wichita State on a 9-3 run over the final 1:30 after the Shockers got within one point.
The Shockers’ Kyle Wilson missed a three that would have tied the game with 2:01 left in the second half. Nate VanderSluis then hit two free throws to put the RedHawks up 58-55 and Miami never looked back.
Wichita State managed to tie the score only once very early in the game at 2-2. With the score 54-44 they went on a 9-0 run to get the score to 54-53 with just less than five minutes remaining. That is as close as they got.
Wichita State got 15 points from Wilson and 6’10” Paul Miller chipped in 12 points and five rebounds. The Shockers shot 40.8 percent from the field compared to 51.1 percent for Miami.
Miami coach Charlie Coles was grateful for the exposure on national TV and thought it added to the excitement of the game.
“It helps when you’re on TV, don’t it? We’re all motivated by attention,” Coles said. “The attention we got really helped us. They talked about it a lot on television the last two weeks.”
As I left the arena, the sun was out and it was 50 degrees. I decided to just take a walk around Oxford. Oxford is everything a small college town should be. It seemed that the whole town was fired up by Miami’s BB win. There were students, alums and townies walking around laughing and enjoying the warm winter Ohio day.
After about 30 minutes of hiking around Oxford and just enjoying the day I figured it was time for the 75 minute drive up Highway 127 toward Dayton, where Wright State University is located.
I got there with a little time to spare. It was an hour before game time and there still were not many cars in the parking lot. I went in and just sat around in the media room with a few of the writers, game staff, and Gordy Wise – the Wright State public address announcer.
He has been the announcer for over 20 years. He is also a marketing professor emeritus at Wright State, which I think means he has been doing it for a long, long time. We chatted about the great atmosphere at Miami that I had seen earlier in the day. He graduated from Miami many years ago and still has some interest in the school and the basketball program. I wish I had more time to talk to him because he’s full of forty years’ worth of stories about Miami, Wright State, and basketball games he has witnessed from his court side seat.
As I strolled out to the court the crowd was finally beginning to arrive. I took my seat between the WWSU radio announcers and the Horizon League officials’ observer. Next to him was Marc Katz the beat writer for the Dayton Daily News. He has been a sports writer for over 35 years and to be honest he doesn’t look all that old. But he always wears a sports jacket and tie just like in the old days. I like to call him “Old School.”
It is finally tip off time and there are 6,117 people to witness today’s colossal struggle between two teams from neighboring conferences.
From the tip off this game seesawed back and forth between Wright State and Northern Illinois. It took Wright State’s Drew Burleson coming out in overtime to score four straight points to finally allow the Raiders to wrestle control of the game from the Huskies in an exciting 72-66 win for Wright State.
It was a game of runs. Wright State went up by 12 in the first half with 5:42 minutes until half-time on a jumper by Burleson, Then the Huskies came roaring back to take a two-point lead with 46 seconds left on a short jumper by Cory Sims. But then with 19 seconds left, Wood dished it off to Burleson, who drained a long distance three to put the Raiders up by one at the half, 34-33.
Burleson had a game-high 19 points, which gave him 40 points in the last two games.
In the second half it was more seesaw for the Raiders, who went up by six points on a jumper by Zakee Boyd and a three by Wood. Then Northern Illinois came back to cut it to a point on a three by Mike McKinney. Then the seesaw went back toward the Raiders, as they got the lead back up to eight points with 7:12 left in the second half.
At that point it was time for the seesaw to go back the other way. The Huskies got a dunk by Jonathon Byrd, a jumper by Byrd and a three by Todd Peterson to cut it to one point with 4:35 to go. A jumper by Wood put the Raiders up by three points. Three foul shots including two from Cory Sims and one from James Hughes ties the game to send it to overtime.
In overtime, the Raiders took the lead on those two baskets by Burleson and never looked back. Aside from scoring a ton of points Burleson played some lock-down defense.
“Drew Burleson had a quiet 19 points. But I will tell you I am more impressed with Drew’s defense. His defensive assignment was on Peterson, who is one of the best three-point shooters in the country,” said Wright State coach Paul Biancardi. “But it is not just one guy. I love it when we have four guys in double figures because each guy can attack from a different area. So I am very happy with the way we shared the ball today.”
In addition to Burleson, Boyd had 17 points, Wood had 12 points and five assists, Jaron Taylor had 13 points. Zach Williams was an animal on the boards, hauling down 15 rebounds. Wright State shot 50 percent for the game compared to just 42.9 percent for the Huskies. The Raiders continued their dominance on the boards, outrebounding the much taller Northern Illinois 38-30. From three-point land, the Raiders shot 45.5 compared to 28.6 for Northern Illinois.
James Hughes score 18 points for the Huskies, while Sims added 16 points and Mike McKinney scored 11 points.
After Bracket Buster Saturday was over, there were two very happy coaches in southwest Ohio who on a beautiful Saturday were able to step out of conference play and pick up a win.
I can’t think of a better way to spend a Saturday.
