The Green Bay Phoenix, formerly known more often as UWGB or Wisconsin–Green Bay, lost last night at home to Northern Kentucky. It was a devastating loss, a one-point defeat after star player Noah Reynolds gutted out 31 minutes of play in his return after missing this weekend’s game due to illness. The loss dropped Green Bay back into a tie for the Horizon League lead with four regular season games to play. Their remaining four games are tough.
This is the kind of loss that, in any justified format of sports, would be a calamity. This is the kind of loss that should put a season on the edge of the cliff. Instead, it’s a small setback for these Phoenix. Because while winning the regular season Horizon League title would be a nice accomplishment, what they’re after is the same thing everybody’s after in college basketball: A trip to the NCAA Tournament. That doesn’t revolve around the Horizon League regular season title in any direct way. The way low-major basketball works, the regular season is just a seeding exercise for the conference tournament, and the conference tournament is a competition to reach the NCAA Tournament, and the NCAA Tournament is the only place to make your national name.
There’s a fairness to this, or something of the sort. Most low-major teams wouldn’t be able to compete with most high-majors in a full season of play. This format gives them the chance to do something special, to do what teams as unlikely as Fairleigh Dickinson have done and put their name on the national map. By tying this dream—this college basketball American Idol moment—to conference tournaments, there then exists a readymade TV opportunity for the conferences, whose revenue from the tournament championship filters back to schools. But in pursuit of those NCAA Tournament jackpots, and in return for that happy stream of conference tournament cash, college basketball is sacrificing a lot in the way of serious competition.
I’m not going to quarrel with the existence or format of the NCAA Tournament. I’m not even really going to quarrel with conference tournaments. But at a time when plenty of college sports fans are comfortable blasting high-major schools and high-major conferences and the high-major-dependent NCAA for chasing the money, conferences like the Horizon League get quite the pass for chasing the money. Because what the Horizon League should have right now, if it was using any justifiable format of competition, is an intense race between Green Bay, Oakland, and Youngstown State for its championship. Instead, those teams are gearing up for the conference tournament, where three single-elimination games will decide their fate. It’s more dramatic. It draws more TV viewership. It’s less competitive. It cheapens the bulk of these players’ work.
Conference tournaments as a drama-filled celebration of the conference or a path for a big league to send its own Cinderella dancing? Those are great. But as a tool for naming a champion? Why use three games on a neutral court when you could do a full season of home-and-home?
The Big 12 Lives on Shaky Ground
The ACC is under fire. Florida State is actively trying to leave, and to make matters worse, the league just proved bad enough to not send its undefeated champion to the College Football Playoff, no questions asked. However.
The Big 12 is in worse shape.
Class of 2024 recruiting is mostly finished, and the ACC has three classes—Miami, Clemson, and Florida State—in the top 12. The Big 12? It has one class in the top 25. Texas Tech. It’s 24th.
The level of recruiting of a conference’s best-recruiting programs is not the ultimate measure of a conference’s strength. The Big 12 is, right now, a better conference than the ACC, measured in any reasonable objective way. But high school talent is to a football program what natural resources are to a country’s economy: It’s what powers the engine, and if you don’t have enough of it, you have to get very creative. Meanwhile, people don’t measure conferences in any reasonable, objective way. They care how many teams you put in the playoff.
For all its flaws, the ACC has two proven competent programs in the form of Florida State and Clemson. It has a high-upside program in the form of Miami. Best yet, those programs get to play the dregs of what was recently Power Five football under a system that, at last check, awards byes to the four top-ranked conference champions. The Big 12 has more dice to roll, and there’s a lot of upside. But the upside can only go so high without talent, and realistically, who would you pick right now: The Big 12’s best (Texas Tech? Kansas State?) or the top of the ACC.
This is why Brett Yormark will so happily talk about basketball.
The Rest
College basketball:
- Auburn pulverized South Carolina in the most notable game of the evening, putting up 101 in a 40-point victory. The Tigers are dominant at home, but their road woes might be overstated: They did win at Mississippi, and against an Arkansas team in Fayetteville who wasn’t in full-on freefall at that point. Their road losses came against Alabama, Florida, Mississippi State, and Appalachian State, three of whom are on track for at-large bids and the fourth of which has strong potential to be a 12-seed. Don’t make too much of Auburn’s home/road splits.
The NBA:
- Not a lot of any note. Isaiah Stewart was arrested for punching Drew Eubanks before the Pistons/Suns game. Besides that: The Clippers scored 44 in the fourth quarter to get past the .500 Warriors, the Kings beat the shorthanded Nuggets in Denver, and the Heat won in Philly to make it four victories in their last five games.
NASCAR:
- Daytona 500 qualifying happened last night and continues tonight with the Duels, a pair of shorter races featuring half the field. Why the double qualifying? Entertainment. And because at the beginning of the season, a drawn out multi-night qualifying format is more possible than in the middle of the grind. In last night’s qualifying, Joey Logano grabbed the pole with Michael McDowell taking the second spot on the front row. Among the six unchartered cars racing for the final four spots (36 of the 40 spots in the field go to the cars with NASCAR charters), Anthony Alfredo and David Ragan locked themselves into the field, leaving Kaz Grala, B.J. McLeod, J.J. Yeley, and…Jimmie Johnson racing tonight for the last two places in the Great American Race.
Chicago, and more Iowa State:
- Coby White went blow-for-blow with Donovan Mitchell, but the Bulls came up short in Cleveland. Quick turnaround now, hosting the Celtics tonight before the All-Star Break.
- The Blackhawks host the Penguins tonight, and it sounds like Connor Bedard will be back for it, returning a few days earlier than anticipated. A jaw is an interesting injury. It’s not like a muscle, or a joint in the arms and legs, where the natural wear and tear of playing before full recovery is a risk unto itself. Which I think keeps this conversation from being about whether the Blackhawks are or aren’t rushing him back. Still a weird situation, though. What changed? Were some press conference words taken the wrong way by the press corps?
- The early theme from Cubs spring training is that Shōta Imanaga is impressive. This isn’t a surprise—Imanaga is a well-trained professional who’s spent years honing his craft in an environment which puts especial emphasis on approach to training. But it does bring up an important point about Jed Hoyer’s deliberate approach to building this team: The Cubs aren’t bringing in the wrong guys. They keep prioritizing players who come expected to improve the overall environment. It’s a development-emphasizing strategy, and while it’s slow going, a failure to keep developing was the thing that cut down what should have been a 2017–19 Cubs dynasty in its prime.
- Iowa State’s women’s team got a big home win over Kansas State, staying right on top of the bubble. Two overtimes. Some big free throws down the stretch.
