College football is great, but when does basketball start?
I crave college basketball like a stoner craves Taco Bell or White Castle. Like a group of freshman roommates frantically calling friends on a Friday night to find admittance to a party. I miss it like a person on a diet misses cake.
Do not get me wrong, I love investing six hours every Saturday watching the majesty that is college football and bowl season in late December. However, there is nothing like March Madness.
With Kent State coming to Athens this past weekend, I started to think about the upcoming Mid-American Conference basketball season.
Why would a Kent State football game spark thoughts of basketball?
The Kent State men's basketball team was the team of my youth. I attended the annual basketball summer camps throughout my elementary school days. I have been to every MAC tournament since 2000 when it moved to Gund Arena, now Quick and Loan Arena, in Cleveland.
In 2002, I stood in the rain for three hours in Pittsburgh trying to purchase scalped tickets for the NCAA tournament second round game against Alabama.
I was once in a game of knockout with then Kent State forward, now San Diego Charger tight-end, Antonio Gates.
What can I say? I love MAC basketball.
To understand my obsession, you would have had to be there with me during the 2002 tournament. My friends and I would go to Buffalo Wild Wings, Damons', or to some random house to watch each game. While my friends would be fully equipped in their Duke, North Carolina or Cincinnati t-shirts, I sat there with my gold and blue Kent State shirt. My Flashes made it farther then Duke and Cincinnati that year and North Carolina did not even make the tournament.
All I can do is laugh as I recall this amazing fact.
Last March, as I was sitting next to my Dad - a Kent State alum - watching the Flashes get knocked out of the MAC tournament by the Bobcats, I started to think about the 2001 Kent State team that made it to the NCAA tournament and was knocked out in the first round.
Last year's Ohio team reminded me of them. Kent State had the same three core players - Trevor Huffman, Demetric Shaw, and Andrew Mitchell - who led the team to three NCAA tournament bids. Ohio has the same type of three-some in Mychal Green, Jeremy Fears and Leon Williams to lead the Bobcats not only to the NCAA tournament, but to the Sweet Sixteen.
However, there is one major difference between the 2004-05 Bobcat team and the 2001-02 Flashes team. The Kent State team had Gates.
This is an especially exciting year for MAC basketball because there has been a swing of conference power. Conference USA has lost tournament regular basketball teams in Cincinnati, Marquette, Louisville and DePaul. Some conference is going to have to step up and fill the role of semi-major that C-USA once held. The MAC can be that conference by earning multiple bids this upcoming year.
Sports did play a role in my college decision. If it were not for a dramatic, final second tip-in for Ohio to win the MAC tournament resulting in a NCAA tournament bid, then I may be a Flash right now.
Okay, so maybe that is a little exaggeration, other aspects of Ohio did influence my decision, but an up-and-coming basketball team was icing on the cake.
Nov. 26 is the opener for the Bobcats, and I do not know if I will be able to make it without college basketball until then. Do they have a patch or a pill of some sort to soothe my craving? I may have to take up smoking to get through.
- Ryan is a freshman journalism major and stringer for The Post who watched Hoop Dreams one too many times as a toddler. Send him an e-mail at cr976205@ohiou.edu.
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