We got into Hinkle Fieldhouse yesterday, for NIT Media Day and the WBIT semifinals, and I need to say: I didn’t realize how special Hinkle Fieldhouse is. I knew it was special. I was really excited! But I did not expect to be so moved. What I didn’t understand:
1. The degree of how beautiful and historic and naturally lit the building is. Maybe it was because we were there in the afternoon. Maybe it was because of the joy emanating from every single Butler employee.* Maybe I’m a little emotional, with the year’s NIT finale approaching. Maybe I’m just right. “Sacred” was the word that kept coming to mind. Hinkle Fieldhouse is sacred.
2. How unfathomably loud that place gets. The listed attendance for Illinois vs. Washington State was 1,748, and given the WBIT semifinals were a single-session ticket, I think that’s the total attendance number for the day. At its peak, the building was maybe twenty percent full. Still, you had to raise your voice to be heard by the person next to you. One of Butler’s Associate AD’s told me to expect this. It did not make it less striking. I can’t wait to hear the sold-out crowd tonight.
*Why is that school so happy? This is beyond normal Indiana happiness, which is already a high degree of happy.
The games…
Indiana State vs. Utah – 7:00 PM EDT, ESPN
Josh Schertz called Robbie Avila “the most mature person in the program” yesterday, making sure to clarify that “the program” included himself. Avila is only a sophomore, 6’10” with a deadeye shot and a knack for threading needles. The court vision piece of this implies a calm to him, a calm perhaps drawn from that maturity his coach spoke about. Robbie Avila is an offensive wizard, a basketball Mahomes, except if Mahomes was armed with a loaded cast at the skill positions. Jayson Kent is a physical specimen with elite scoring touch. Julian Larry and Ryan Conwell—the latter a product of Pike High School here in Indianapolis—are among the nation’s best shooters, more accurate than Avila and, in Conwell’s case, more accurate in the context of a much higher three-point volume. Isaiah Swope is an exceptional safety valve when possessions break down. Xavier Bledson (who’s playing his sixth year under Schertz, having joined him as a freshman at Lincoln Memorial) would be an obviously tremendous offensive player on most teams. If the tournament continues to go the way it’s gone, Indiana State will score 90 tonight and Kent, who has dazzled, will solidify his MVP case.
But Utah might have something to say about that.
I’m going to relay something Craig Smith pointed out, and I don’t want to give the impression that this was delivered with any of the tone of a complaint. Having spent only 25 minutes in the same room as Smith, I’m not sure the man is capable of complaining. A beaming father of four originally from Stephen, Minnesota (population 592, latitude 48.5º), Smith was even happier than the happiest Butler employee in the building. Maybe it’s because he was celebrating his son, Carson, committing yesterday morning to North Dakota State (latitude 46.9º). I don’t think that was it, though. Some people ooze joy. Craig Smith shoots it out of his skin, like his pores are fire hydrants.
So, when Smith pointed out that Utah was practicing at 6:00 AM Mountain Time, joking (?) that he had just learned the phrase “Circadian Rhythm,” it didn’t come across as a complaint, and having just watched another Minnesotan, Gabe Madsen, graciously and jollily record Utah’s starting lineup introduction for Butler’s video board, the press conference gave the impression that Smith has maybe recruited to Utah similar personalities to his own. Still, it’s late in Utah’s season, and considering all the factors that impact what we call home-court advantage, it’s fair to say that crowd and travel distance and sleep schedule all aren’t working in Utah’s favor here. The question is how much that all means.
Whichever team wins this is a really good team. Whichever team loses is also good, but the winner will find themselves in a spot tomorrow morning where they’d be favored on a hypothetical neutral court against NC State, a Final Four-ist in our rival tournament. Indiana State’s already there, leading the Wolfpack by fractions of a point on kenpom even after NC State’s recent run. Utah could get there with a win.
The risk for Indiana State is Utah’s size and Deivon Smith’s speed. Avila is not a short man, but 6’10” might be a stretch. Utah has multiple seven-footers, and one of them—Branden Carlson—can step out and shoot the three. Indiana State had no problem slowing down Dawson Garcia, himself tall and offensively gifted, but Garcia wasn’t a shooter like Carlson is, and Minnesota didn’t have a point guard like Smith. I don’t think Indiana State’s seen a point guard like Deivon Smith.
We mentioned Kent as an early MVP candidate, looking back at the tournament’s first three rounds. Smith is another. A two-time transfer, Smith only became eligible with the West Virginia lawsuit in December and only took over a starting role in mid-January. Still, he’s up to five triple-doubles on the season, breaking Jason Kidd’s Pac-12 record at the Pac-12’s potential eternal buzzer and pulling within one of the NCAA record (triple-doubles haven’t been a stat for that long, but still). Smith notched a triple-double each in Utah’s wins over Iowa and VCU. He had a double-double against UC Irvine. Utah’s offense runs through Smith, and Utah has a good offense. It doesn’t hurt that Smith is a dog on the defensive glass.
Indiana State is the favorite, the people’s champion and a box of fire on the offensive end of the floor. But Utah is a tough, tough draw. And if Indiana State does go down, for as special as this run has been, the Sycamore faithful will come into direct confrontation with Kierkegaardian angst. The roster has plenty of eligibility. Schertz could run it back and enter November with a deservedly ranked team. But Schertz has been heavily linked to the Saint Louis job, and those rumors haven’t been countered, and with transferring so easy and the basketball value of these players so high (Avila’s marketing ability adds an even bigger element), plenty of boosters around the country will spend the days after Indiana State’s season ends honing in on Avila, Conwell, Swope, Larry, and Kent. Is Saint Louis a job worthy of Schertz? Not for a second, and with Indiana set to open up soon unless three ghosts visit Mike Woodson this offseason, it’s easy to make a case for Schertz being best-served by staying in Terre Haute for another season. But money talks, and it won’t only come calling for Schertz. All six of these people could make more next year by going elsewhere unless Indiana State rapidly assembles a war chest. Even if Schertz stays, it’s possible he’ll have to rebuild. If it’s a rebuild either way, you’d rather rebuild while making a higher salary and playing in a conference that’s that little bit better than the MVC.
For Utah, this week is a celebration of this team and a celebration of this program’s future. For Indiana State, this week might be the second peak in the program’s storied but wilderness-strewn history.
Seton Hall vs. Georgia – 9:30 PM EDT, ESPN2
It’s the undercard, and we can call it that, but it stinks for both these programs that that’s the case, because they’re each a great story in their own right. Seton Hall is especially overlooked, with the five senior starters and the Indianapolis native in Dre Davis and the fierce run at Walsh Gymnasium that seemed to invigorate the Pirates while their Big East counterparts struggled. Were the NIT Final Four still at Madison Square Garden, Seton Hall would be the epicenter. This team came along a few years too late. They should take it up with James Dolan. (I haven’t heard complaints from anyone in Seton Hall’s program. Class and toughness all the way. Also, I don’t know that we should actually blame James Dolan for the NIT exiting MSG. I don’t know the full story, so I prefer to say that the NIT simply grew too big for that arena.)
The deal with Seton Hall is that they can beat you in a few ways. Against Saint Joe’s, it was Al-Amir Dawes. Against North Texas and UNLV, it was Kadary Richmond. Richmond is a force, six-foot-six and a physical presence despite playing point guard. Stronger defensively than they are offensively, Seton Hall presents a big problem for Georgia in that they’ve played a lot of teams not dissimilar to the Bulldogs, and that they know how to shut them down. United under the prodigiously wise Shaheen Holloway, the experience and grit Seton Hall embodies is exactly why they were able to win while Villanova was not, and why they were looking to play basketball while St. John’s preferred to get the offseason underway.
Georgia likely wouldn’t have been in this NIT without the opt-outs. They wouldn’t have played their first game at home without the format change. There are a lot of opinions on the wisdom of the format change, and there’s a lot of emotion around the opt-outs, but the consequence of them happening in conjunction is that this NIT got a lot of good teams who wanted to play basketball, and Georgia is the prime example of that. Mike White, only 47 years old despite feeling like he’s been coaching at a high level forever, has a tenacity about him that feels more archetypical of a modern-day defensive backs coach than a monied basketball program’s CEO. I think Mike White appreciates the history of the NIT and the history of Hinkle Fieldhouse and the significance of these games to his program. I also think Mike White just wants to coach basketball games and win them. He doesn’t seem too caught up in who’s what or what’s where. Of course his team played when Chris Beard’s Ole Miss program didn’t. Of course his team is playing hard.
Georgia isn’t exactly young—they play a few players listed as seniors, and their leaders, Noah Thomasson and Russel Tchewa, are each ending their college basketball careers this week. (I think that’s true of Tchewa, but I’m not positive about Covid eligibility. It’s true of Thomasson.) But the broader story of Georgia is what things look like going forward. Silas Demary Jr. and Blue Cain are building blocks, and it doesn’t seem anyone’s making any bones about it. If Georgia can grab the title this week, it’ll surprise a lot of Georgia fans and a lot of the Georgia athletic ecosystem. At the same time, though…they’re here! This has been the line at every step of the journey for Georgia: “They might lose to Xavier, but good for these guys for getting an NIT berth.” “They’ll probably lose in Winston-Salem, but good for these guys for extending their season by a week.” “They’ll probably lose in Columbus, but good for these guys for making this little run. Bright things ahead.” At some point, the bright things are here. This seemed to be White’s focus in comments yesterday. The NIT is only indirectly an exercise in development. First and foremost, it’s a basketball tournament.
**
Questions for the evening:
- Will the stars be out? Pat McAfee has shown a lot of interest in this Indiana State team. Josh Schertz was very respectful of Larry Bird’s privacy, but made it sound like he’d be surprised to see Bird there.
- How big is the party if Indiana State wins against Utah? Is Indianapolis still standing on Friday if Indiana State wins it all?
- Can Utah slide into the role of the villain? It isn’t really who they are, but they have the script. I still feel like Branden Carlson maybe said at least a little something to Sebastian Mack before Mack gave him the forearm shiver that ended the UCLA’s comeback era. Maybe Mack’s just a nut, though. Carlson seemed very nice yesterday. I liked him. (I do like everyone in the NIT.)
- Will John Wooden’s ghost make an appearance and hit the Griddy on the Hinkle Fieldhouse baseline?
- How will Seton Hall and Georgia travel? We saw Utah fans make a decent showing in New York when they made the championship in 2018. We know Indiana State is bringing the entire city of Terre Haute. Seton Hall is such a basketball school. Georgia is such a big brand with such a potent fanbase. We would be really excited about both were they not being juxtaposed with Indiana State.
NIT Bracket Challenge update:
- We’ll share the final scenarios in tomorrow morning’s update. There is always a chance I experience Nirvana on Thursday night and am taken up by chariots of fire emojis, so we want to be sure everyone knows where they stand going in.
- That said, one scenario: If Indiana State beats Utah tonight, Fargo clinches the celebrity title. She’s at the boarder while I’m out of town, but we’ll call them and ask them to put on the game. (Fargo’s other person works nights. Not out of town. Don’t break into our house! It’s guarded!! Just not by me or Fargo!!!)
Bona NIT, friends.
Bona NIT.
