College Basketball Returns

A wonderful essay from my friend, Kyle Whelliston of ESPN fame. Kyle once stayed at my house during a trip to cover the Hilltoppers. I've known him since his days as "that 100 games guy."

Anyway, this is a great essay, even if you do not like basketball--and I expect you might like college basketball a bit more if you read it.

Conferences in basketball make things special. They give teams from counties and regions home-and-home shots at each other each winter: Kent and Akron in the MAC, the Metro Atlantic's Manhattan-Iona and Canisius-Niagara pairings, Lafayette and Lehigh in the Patriot, the Big West's Irvine and Long Beach. There are state skirmishes too: Montana-Montana State in the Big Sky, Arkansas and Arkansas-Little Rock. Sometimes they clash over the rights to a name: Saint Francis must be somewhere up there, checking in twice a year to see which NEC team (PA or NY) is wearing his name more proudly.

I will be writing more on my hoops blog from now on. I'll link here whenever I write something that crosses hoops into this space. Of course, I'd argue that hoops ALWAYS does that...