Are you guys ready for the NIT quarterfinals? No? Well, good thing you’re reading these notes!
ToNITe
One great atmosphere, one I’m unsure about. Let’s get into it.
St. Bonaventure @ Virginia, 7:00 PM EDT, ESPN
John Paul Jones Arena might get loud tonight, and it might not only be when UVA forces their third shot clock violation. St. Bonaventure fans are coming down, and they’re coming in force.
If you’re curious about this, you might want to know the backstory on the Bonnies. Basically, at least by my impression, St. Bonaventure is a school that decided it was going to absolutely love its men’s basketball team. I don’t know what caused this, but there does not appear to be any school at which the entire focus is on men’s basketball to the degree it’s on men’s basketball up there in or around Olean. Kentucky has a football team. Duke has cocaine. St. Bonaventure has the Bonnies, and no distractions are allowed. These guys show up anywhere within reason, which to a person in Upstate New York is anywhere east of the Great Plains and I would assume not in Arkansas or Mississippi or Louisiana. That is my estimated Bonnie Line.
One of many great things about this is that St. Bonaventure does not at all consider itself to be too good for the NIT. They’re fired up. So fired up, in fact, that a subset of their fans are furious with the NCAA right now. They think they got screwed by having to play this game on the road, and with the NCAA not releasing the NIT’s full seed list (which caused the confusion in the first place), there are cries to release the documents. St. Bonaventure has brought a lit torch to a PTA meeting, and dammit, it’s about time.
I don’t know exactly how many Bonnies fans are making the trip. According to Captain Beer, a student (I assume) who wears a beer hat on his head at games and organized a Bonnie convoy to Charlottesville, at least forty students are on their way, financed by alumni of the school. Is forty people enough to be a presence at JPJ? First off, I’m guessing it’s more, since that’s just the convoy, but secondly, yes. It’s an NIT game.
So, the pressure’s on Virginia fans to show up, and if they don’t, that trip to James Madison might be more useful for the Cavaliers than even Tony Bennett thought at the time. Not only did it help this team make the NIT. It prepared them for a rabid crowd, out for flesh and blood.
In the end, I don’t think JPJ sells out, but I do think there’s a good hometown crowd, and my best guess is that they get louder and louder as the game goes on, more consciously because they’re feeling competitive with Bonnies fans but more subconsciously because this is postseason home-court basketball, and try as you might, you can’t deny it’s a hell of a time.
Vanderbilt @ Xavier, 9:00 PM EDT, ESPN
In the second game of the evening, Vanderbilt drives to Cincinnati to play the Musketeers, and I say drive because it appears the mileage between these two schools, by the NCAA’s count, is just 281, and 350’s the basketball threshold for flying vs. driving if the NCAA’s paying for it (and maybe if the NCAA isn’t paying for it as well, but I do think the NCAA’s paying for this).
It’s a big day for Vanderbilt. Earlier today, they released a two-minute video that started with a lot of awkward post-Civil War north and south distinctions (this guy’s from the north, this guy’s from the south, this guy married someone from the south, we’re in the south but we were about unity post-Civil War, we swear we were about unity post-Civil War, if we keep saying that can we still get donations from our alums in both New York and Georgia?) and ended with them revealing their new branding, which is…pretty darn boring. Take a look here, but basically, it’s a boring gold ‘V,’ and it replaces a not-boring black star with a ‘V’ inside it.
The spin zone here for Vanderbilt is that they now have very cool throwback options. The other spin zone is that they could take the court tonight surprisingly wearing the new logo and make it clear they did this just for the NIT quarterfinals, past which they haven’t advanced since 1994. Ultimately, though, just a boring move. Thankfully, you can always move on from these things after a few years. Little is permanent, guys. Little is permanent.
On the Xavier side, there’s no new branding to be had, but we’re still on Sean Miller watch. Hoping for a halftime appearance, or a seat up in a luxury box (if they have those) furiously taking notes. Ideally, he is very sweaty. Very, very sweaty. If he isn’t, we’re going to call it early and say he’s lost his love for the game. The future of each program is at stake tonight in Cincinnati. What more could you want?
Tomorrow NITe
We’ll preview these tomorrow. Want to give them their due.
That SMU/North Texas Trade
In other NIT news, Tim Jankovich is out at SMU. It’s unclear how much this was his decision and how much it was SMU’s, but he says he’s retiring. Rather than that, though, I have an idea:
Grant McCasland, the North Texas coach, is assumed to be the guy SMU wants to replace Jankovich. The people with power at SMU watched the Game of the NITe of the Year. They want that for themselves. Since McCasland is in Denton, so close to Highland Park (geographically, I mean—apologies to any Highland Parkers I’ve just besmirched), he theoretically doesn’t need to move houses. Neither does Jankovich. If…and this is the idea…the schools agree to a trade. SMU gets McCasland. North Texas gets Jankovich. Maybe a steakhouse is thrown in, heading North Texas’s way. One with the white tablecloths. Feel like there’s a segment of Denton that would eat that up.
The Ottawa Senators
Our only other thing today is the Sens. Early indications are that Mathieu Joseph, the guy Dorion brought back in the Nick Paul trade, is cool. Said he likes the vibes in Ottawa, wooed the media with his piano playing, evidently spent his day with the Stanley Cup eating poutine out of it, just a dude. Love it. Great trade. Liked Nick Paul but sorry, man, we’re all about the vibes.
Is it enough to cancel out the bizarreness of the Hamonic deal? No. Not yet. But in the long run it seems like it will.
The Sens take those vibes to New York tonight, where they’ll play the Islanders at 7:30 PM EDT on ESPN+. Might try that out as the test on the new laptop on mute while the basketball happens.
Oh, also, still no word on what exactly happened with the Dadonov incident. Reactions seem to range from, “the Senators did nothing wrong,” to, “the Senators messed up but the NHL is also dumb for not keeping its own no-trade clause list,” to, “Pierre Dorion will never work in this town again.” Great range of possibilities, and I hope we get something dramatic in the end, like Dadonov ending up as the Senators’ GM and Dorion having to play for the Ducks for a couple weeks.
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Viewing schedule tonight is the NIT. May you and your household enjoy it as much as me and mine.
