College Basketball Has a New King, and His Name Is Joey Gallo

Some important context:

• Merrimack University is in its first year of Division I athletics. As such, it’s ineligible for the NIT and a certain other tournament we don’t name around here. Evidently the NCAA wants you to take five years to steel yourself for the NIT once you enter D-I, like waiting thirty minutes to swim after eating. I’ll leave the evaluation of that decision’s wisdom to doctors.
• Merrimack University is not coached by the Joey Gallo who plays outfield for the Rangers and hits bombs.
• Merrimack University is coached by this guy, who is also named Joey Gallo:

Now, there are three things I love about Coach Gallo:

1. His Twitter handle is rad. Joey Gall0. Get the hell out, haters.
2. At some point around when the Merrimack move to D-I hoops was announced, he followed me on Twitter, which is exciting because very few people follow me on Twitter and also because it showed he was serious about Merrimack’s NIT future (already courting the fans—this guy gets it).
3. This morning, after winning the Northeast Conference Regular Season Championship last night, he tweeted the following:

Must have been some kind of party.

Now, I don’t know how I feel about Merrimack not being allowed to play in the NIT this year (just kidding, I do know—getting to that). They’d have an automatic bid if they weren’t in this transition period (provided they could figure out how to lose in the NEC Tournament, and no, I don’t know if Coach Gallo is capable of losing anymore, so good point on that one), but…they’re in this transition period. No NIT for them. No Merrimack for us. Of course, if I were in charge, Merrimack would be playing in this year’s NIT, but not because I’d universally waive the eligibility-during-the-transition rule. No, Merrimack would be playing in this year’s NIT because I’d institute a challenge in which we’d invite certain NIT-hopeful coaches to eat 20 McNuggets while crowd-surfing (if we couldn’t get McDonald’s as a sponsor, we’d pivot to still doing it with McNuggets but not making that as much of a focal point) and then punch a punching bag that looks suspiciously like Andy Enfield. Instant hype. Instant love for the NIT. And by the looks of it, Coach Gallo would dominate the event, while Tom Crean would lose because he’d be too busy smiling gleefully at the fact people were carrying him above their heads to eat the nuggets.

But alas. I am not in charge.

Yet.

In the meantime, it’s wait-and-see time. Is Merrimack going to the CBI? Is Merrimack going to the CIT? Is Joey Gall0 going to eat 40 McNuggets after Merrimack beats the shit out of Princeton in the first round??

The haters thought they had a point. They thought college basketball was boring this year. They thought there weren’t any good teams.

They didn’t think about this: