Wow. All of a sudden, basketball is a big deal.
OK, it’s one of the world’s most popular sports, but this area has not necessarily been a college basketball nexus. Until now.
An upset of top-ranked Kansas in the Big 12 tournament,
which Texas Christian pulled off Thursday should make one sit up and
take notice. Have you checked out Texas-Arlington? How about Southern
Methodist? There have been a lot of balls ripping nets this year. If you
haven’t been paying attention, the local men’s college basketball teams
have been making some noise all season. Historically so, in fact.
TCU
lost to eventual champion Iowa State in the Big 12 semis. UTA won the
Sun Belt regular season before falling in the tournament semi-finals.
SMU won the American Athletic Conference regular season and tournament.
Among the area’s Division I teams, only Denton’s University of North
Texas had a subpar year, finishing 8-22.
The Frogs, Mustangs, and Mavericks will all take part in the postseason. SMU earned a number six seed in the NCAA Tournament, playing Providence or the University of Southern California on Friday afternoon in Tulsa on truTV. TCU will host Fresno State in the National Invitation Tournament at 8pm Central Wednesday. At that same time, the UTA Mavs have an NIT first-round matchup against Brigham Young in Provo, with the game televised on ESPN2.
Each team has had good seasons in the past, but one can
make the case that the area has never before had so much success in the
sport all at once. The NCAA and the NIT are the top two postseason
tournaments in men’s college basketball, and the North Texas region has
participated sporadically. In the 1950s, when UTA was still a two-year
institution called Arlington State College, SMU and TCU both had some
good teams, but never made it into the postseason at the same time
(though there were fewer berths available in those days). The two
Southwest Conference schools again posted some winning records in the
1980s, Texas Christian under coach Jim Killingsworth and Southern
Methodist under the since-disgraced Dave Bliss. UTA played a game in the
1981 NIT under Bob “Snake” LeGrand. However, 1986 and 1988 were the
only previous years in which as many as two local teams made the two big
tourneys. In 1986, TCU was defeated by Florida in the second round of
the NIT while SMU lost to BYU in the first round of the same
competition. In 1988, SMU made the second round of the NCAAs before
falling to Duke and UNT also lost to an ACC team, North Carolina, in the
first round of the big tournament.
In 2012, UTA dropped a first-round game to Washington in
the NIT while TCU made it to the second round of the third-tier College
Basketball Invitational (a tournament won, incidentally, by current TCU
head coach Jamie Dixon’s University of Pittsburgh team).
Never before, though, have we had three teams qualifying for end-of-season tournaments at once.
In addition to their postseason berths, all three teams
have recorded wins over big-time opponents. TCU and UTA went a combined
3-0 against the University of Texas, though admittedly in a down year
for the Longhorns. TCU beat Iowa State during the regular season. UTA
defeated four NCAA tournament teams. SMU won 30 games, with no losses to
teams not in the NCAA or NIT draws. Add to that the fact that Texas
Wesleyan made
the 32-team NAIA field (they play Cumberland Thursday) and it’s not
hard to make the case that there has never been a better men’s college
basketball season in North Texas.
So pay attention this week, and hopefully beyond, to the
glut of area teams playing in the postseason tournaments. It doesn’t
happen very often. Or ever.
On the other hand, the four NCAA teams expect to lose a
total of only sixteen players off these rosters. And none of their
leading scorers are seniors. So maybe we can expect the same next year.
For basketball fans, that probably sounds like a pretty good deal.
RushOlson.com
Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports
Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports
No comments:
Post a Comment