While many of the college basketball world were watching the game considered the greatest rivalry in the sport between Duke and North Carolina, a potentially more critical game was being played in Evansville, Indiana.

That’s because the game in Evansville was between the top two teams in the Ohio Valley Conference.   In this game that was going unnoticed by many, regular season champion Murray State beat runner-up Belmont 68-51 to finish the season 26-5 and claim the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament.

Both Duke and UNC will be high seeds on Selection Sunday, but today belongs to the Racers.  Because with Murray State’s victory, they become the first team to get their invitation to the 2018 NCAA Tournament.  And while there is always a lot made out of rivalry games, Murray State faced the harsher reality of many small conference teams.  Despite only losing 5 games the entire season and being the best team in your conference, your tournament hopes become a one game season – win and you are in, lose and it is all taken away.  To make matters harder for Murray State, that one game was against one of the two teams from the conference that beat them in the regular season.

The Racers were up to the challenge – and ran away in the second half to claim the title.   Congratulations to the Racers for claiming the first spot in the Big Dance!!!!!

With Tom Izzo getting me all riled up, I needed to find something good about college basketball.

Enter Iowa’s point guard Jordan Bohannon.  Jordan had been on a pretty impressive streak, hitting 34 straight free throws, making him tied for the school record with Chris Street.

Some of you might not know Chris Street, but he played basketball when I went to college at Purdue.  Street was a star player for the Iowa Hawkeyes in 1993.  During that season, he had also set the record with 34 straight free throws.  Tragically, he never got the chance to extend that record streak – his life was cut short when he was involved in a car accident.

On Sunday, Bohannon found himself on the line against Northwestern with the chance to hit that 35th free throw and extend the Hawkeyes 8 point lead with just 2 minutes to play.  Jordan stepped up to the line, and missed the FT badly short.  Then, a minute later, Bohannon made it back to the line, and before he shot the next free throw, he touched his heart and pointed to the sky.  While he was making the next two free throws to secure Iowa’s lead, it became very clear that he intentionally missed the last free throw to preserve Street’s record.

With everything that is going on in college basketball, it is clear what lengths people will go to win.  Which is why you have to love the fact that on Sunday in Iowa, a young man decided that it was more important to preserve the legacy of a player who died tragically.  For that, Jordan Bohannon deserves so much more than a school record.

So, I have lots of thoughts around the horrible things going on in my favorite sport.  I need a night when I can gather my thoughts ranging from all the players who are taking money from agents, to LeBron James criticizing the NCAA for being corrupt, to a wiretap saying that Sean Miller talking about paying $100K to get a player to come to Arizona.

But I have to give a quick comment about the recent news conference where Tom Izzo said that he and his team will only be answering basketball questions from here on in.  He doesn’t like while his #2 Spartans have just won the Big 10 and have a legitimate chance at winning the National Championship, he is getting questioned about the multiple sexual assault allegations that have happened to players in his program and why his star player from this year was one of the 7 active players getting improper benefits according to the report by Yahoo.

I can understand he doesn’t like it.  But Tom Izzo is paid $3.65 million a year to be the face of the Michigan State basketball program.  And that means going to press conferences and answering questions from the media.  It is not hard to guess what questions the media are going to ask – he has obviously anticipated them if he says he is not going to answer anything other than basketball.  He might not like it – but his job doesn’t end when the clock hits zero on the court.  With that kind of money, he can prep a little bit and have a planned answer for all the questions he doesn’t want to answer.

Or how about this.  He says he owes it to his team to get the focus back on basketball.   But lets say his star Miles Bridges gets to the NBA.  Then, he is going to have to answer the media’s questions all the time, whether they are about things on or off the court.  How about instead of hiding his star player from the press, why not earn a little bit of his outrageous salary and coach that player on how to prepare for a press conference when they are going to ask tough questions.

I don’t think Miles Bridges is a bad person for having lunch with an agent – he is likely going to need an agent when he goes pro.  But what I do have a problem with is that Tom Izzo feels that he should be allowed to simply run practices, win basketball games and then answer questions about how proud he is of his team when they win.  He is paid a lot of money to represent Michigan State as the leader of that program.  And when there are lots of questions about what is happening outside the court, as much as he might not like it, it is his job to answer them.  He can answer them with a very lawyer like answer of – I can’t answer that because of student privacy laws, or I wasn’t there – I can’t watch my players and their parents 24/7.  But for $3.65 million, he should at least spend some time and prepare a canned response instead of getting angry that he is getting asked questions he doesn’t want to answer.

Some of the games tonight should be really good – Virginia Tech is at home trying to upset Duke, Texas has a huge bubble game at Kansas, and what should be a fantastic game between #12 Texas Tech and #20 West Virginia.

But quietly without much fanfare, in the arenas of four small colleges, the Atlantic Sun’s Conference Tournament has begun tonight.  It even has begun with some of the normal chaos – as #1 seed Florida Gulf Coast found themselves only up 3 at halftime against last place USC Upstate before running away in the second half, and #2 seed Lipscomb is currently only up 1 at halftime against 7 seed Stetson.

It is only two weeks away – the Madness is coming.   Bubble teams try to get one more win so that they don’t need to depend on winning a couple games in their conference tourney (as I am typing this, the Hokies just got a tip-in with 4 seconds to pull off a 64-63 upset over Duke).  Small conference regular season champions try to figure out how to win three more games so they get their deserved invitation to the Big Dance.

Two weeks of huge drama will be happening on the court.  Buzzer beaters and Cinderella runs all leading up to Selection Sunday.  It is almost March!!!!!

It is only February – but College Basketball is in full swing!!!!!  And that means that it is time for the Lunatic to get ready for his favorite time of year!!!!   MARCH MADNESS!!!!

The site has been updated to get us ready for the 2018 Stomp the Lunatic tournament!   That means that the standings pages don’t really lead to anything at the moment – since the games haven’t started.   You can register for this year’s tournament (just please remember the name and email that you use – since you won’t be able to enter your picks, you will have to eventually log back in later).  Also, just remember that you always have to register for the new year’s tournament – the database does not remember you from last year….

In the meantime, you are welcome to look at previous year’s standings and blogs.   I will probably start posting my basketball comments here instead of Facebook, so you can enjoy those as well.

Do you want to tell us your thoughts – the 2018 User Blog is already setup for you to tell us what you want – just please keep it clean (since we do have children who participate).

Good luck to everyone in stomping the Lunatic!!!!