There was a period of time when the “Champions” Classic (scare quotes mine) happened on college basketball’s opening night. This didn’t last. The murder of George Floyd renewed a push to make it easier for college athletes to vote, and then when the NCAA shifted the season’s first games to a Monday, that conflicted with Monday Night Football. For a time, though, Kansas and Michigan State and Kentucky and Duke opened the season themselves, giving the college basketball world a focal point in this first full week in November.
That focal point is back.
And it’s even better.
No, it’s not the first night of the season. No, it’s not four programs regarded as the sport’s greatest powers. But at the Barstool Sports Invitational tonight at Wintrust Arena in Chicago (DePaul’s court, down by McCormick Place), four national championship contenders will show us what they’ve got for the very first time. The difference? This time, they’re after the *real* championship.
Mississippi State, Loyola, and Bobby Hurley’s Arizona State are clear NIT contenders. That goes without saying. If you plucked a man out of the Australian bush and asked him who’s going to win the NIT, he would say Mississippi State, and then add, “Unless Bobby Hurley’s still at ASU.” Were we more consistent with how we refer to the three Loyolas, he’s probably mention the Chicago one next.
The fourth, though, is the one that has people excited. Because while basketball relevance in Starkville and Tempe and Rogers Park is old hat, we’re not used to it in Boca Raton. Florida Atlantic has only made one NIT in their history, and they played Miami, and it didn’t go well. This year? Some (this is me, I’m arguing this) would say they should be the NIT favorite.
What do we know about teams who win the NIT? I’ll start. They’re pretty good, but they’re capable of picking up bad losses. They’re well-coached or extremely talented, but rarely both. They have a good vibe to them, but nobody in power really wants them around.
Do you hear the hooting?
The thing about what the FAU Owls did in last year’s NCAA T*urnament is that they beat Fairleigh Dickinson by eight points. Not a large eight, either. FAU trailed FDU by five with twelve minutes to play. FAU almost lost to FDU. It almost lost to Memphis. It almost lost to Tennessee and Kansas State. FAU was a fun story in a cute little upstart tournament, but it’s not like it went into Stillwater in March and came away with a win, or held Wisconsin to thirteen points in the second half of a national semifinal, or shot 55% from deep against one of the most physically aggressive defenses in the country. FAU did well, but there are steps forward it can take. The first step? Make the NIT. The sixth step? Win it.
We aren’t saying FAU’s a bad basketball team. Quite the contrary. We think the world of FAU. That’s why we’re naming them an NIT favorite. They’re narrowly favored tonight against Loyola. They have to play Butler and Liberty and St. Bonaventure in nonconference play. Maybe even Penn State! They’re facing a gutted AAC this season that isn’t going to offer a lot of good wins. If they get to seven losses, some of those losses will be bad. They will, likelier than not, get to seven losses.
As for the second tenet—needing a good coach or talent but not both. Dusty May is probably a good coach. But maybe his players are exteremely talented? Thankfully, it probably isn’t both. If it was both, you’d think they’d have been able to hold that lead against San Diego State. More likely, one of those things is true, and you need exactly one. And if you think the NCAA T*urnament wants FAU this season, after painful ratings for last year’s “Final Four” (scare quotes mine), you clearly haven’t seen what happened to Saint Mary’s in 2009 and 2011 and 2016 and 2018.
The best part of this, in my opinion:
In what state did Dusty May go to high school? Under what legendary coach did Dusty May learn the ropes as a student manager? Where is this year’s NIT Final Four being held? Who just died?
If God loves the NIT as much as I do, we’re going to see FAU vs. Indiana in the championship this April at Hinkle.
If God loves the NIT as much as I do, a meteor will obliterate the other Final Four and it will have writing on it that says “Stop doing this shit and go back to when the NIT was the bigger deal.”
The Banner Is So Green
North Texas raised the banner last night, and it is really green and really mean. Mostly green, really. It is so green. I didn’t think about how green that banner would be.
UNT looked good in the win over UNI. I have them second on the NIT Championship Potential Rankings (teams I’ve watched closely) note in my phone, behind James Madison but ahead of Oregon. Aaron Scott was electric in his new larger role, Rubin Jones is still that guy, the crowd mics on ESPN+ were turned all the way up and yet we didn’t hear anyone say anything unforgivable. A great performance by the Super Pit in all facets of the game.
The Other Connor Stalions Scandal Sucks
Moving to something adjacent to football, Connor Stalions might have put Blake Corum’s name on an LLC he incorporated in Wyoming? From ESPN:
Michigan star running back Blake Corum says he has no business relationship with former football staff member Connor Stalions, after records of an LLC in Wyoming listing both men as co-owners surfaced Tuesday on social media.
…
“I don’t have any businesses with Connor or anything like that,” Corum told reporters. “But I’m glad whoever found it, whoever searched the web, was able to find that, I appreciate you. My attorneys are on it. Definitely get that figured out right away, get my name taken off of whatever it is.”
Stalions’ signature is the only one that appears on the initial filing for the LLC in March 2022. The LLC is listed online as active and current and in good tax standing. In a recent profile of Stalions, The Wall Street Journal reported that he was sued by his homeowners association for violating its bylaws by allegedly running a vacuum-cleaner refurbishing business out of his home.
“I’m a clean person, but I’m not a cleaner,” Corum told reporters. “Vacuums aren’t my thing. I don’t know anything about that.”
This is a lot weirder than the sign-stealing. The sign-stealing, I understood. This? Weird. Who refurbishes vacuums? Who (possibly) puts a star running back’s name on his business? Can you just do that? Could I make Ollie Gordon a co-owner of The Barking Crow? I’m starting to think Connor Stalions’s brain works a little differently from yours and mine. This is the Tuxedo Fart Moment for me.
The Friend of My Enemy
We have to address it. Craig Counsell is the Cubs’ new manager, and I am on the record as saying a lot of angry things about Craig Counsell, most of them stemming from when he made a fuss and said, in his own words, that his pitchers should be allowed to throw at heads but other teams’ pitchers shouldn’t be allowed to throw at feet. It was a double standard, and it was made worse by the fact that the head-throwing happened first, so Counsell went from saying “Why are you mad?” to being mad himself even as all objective measures indicated there was more reason for the other guy to be mad.
The downside here is that I fucking hate that weasel Craig Counsell, I’m going to watch or listen to upwards of 100 Cubs games this season, and if the Cubs are good (as they hopefully will be) Craig Counsell will get way too much credit for things like Juan Soto or Shohei Ohtani hitting 50 home runs.
The upside is that I’ll finally learn what it’s like to be one of those dumbasses on Twitter who acts like every loss is the fault of a managerial lineup or bullpen decision.
Bring it on, Craig.
Fuck you, though.
(Thank goodness the Cubs never signed Correa. Although I did soften on Correa when he turned into the wily old man at the gym this October. Maybe there’s hope for me and Counsell to make amends in this feud where one of us loathes the other and the other loathes everything good and joyful in human existence.)
Oh!
I will say: One of the worst parts of the last six years (regarding the Cubs—not globally or anything) was watching the Cubs fail to big–brother the Brewers out of division contention. The Cardinals winning the Central? Whatever. The Brewers winning the Central? Can’t happen. So it was nice to go in and remind them that if we want anything of theirs, it’s ours.
Are the Dodgers Going Bankrupt?
We’re getting into “since we last noted” territory, where I am sad to report that the Dodgers declined Joe Kelly’s option this weekend. They paid him a cool million to do it (buyout, not donation), which is pretty sweet, and they might still try to re-sign him (he said very publicly on a recent episode of Baseball Isn’t Boring that he only wants to play for teams close to home, and the Dodgers are close to home), but the Dodgers are clearly cash-strapped if they didn’t blindly extend Joe Kelly. I need to know where the money went. Did Connor Stalions take it? Did Connor Stalions launder it through his vacuum cleaner cleaning business?
NASCAR Ended
NASCAR ended over the weekend, and Ryan Blaney won a championship, which was cool. Partly because I’m not sure I remember the last time a driver was as emotional about winning the championship as Blaney. The problem with NASCAR is that its marquee event is so awesome that it overshadows the rest of the year, and that its marquee event happens in February, and that the rest of the year lasts until November. Maybe Blaney also cares more about the Daytona 500 than the season championship, but he clearly cares about the championship a lot. The guy was emotional, and not just after he won. The guy was emotional when Ross Chastain was blocking him early in the race. He was on tilt, early. Good for Blaney.
Speaking of emotions: Is Corey Heim the worst person in NASCAR? It’s a high bar to clear, but that young man somehow turned an incident in which he got wrecked out of championship contention in the Truck Series into one where he looked like the bad guy. In a sport full of brats, especially at the youngest level, Corey Heim looked the brattiest.
To recap, for those who weren’t watching the truck equivalent of stock cars race each other at 12:30 AM Eastern on Saturday morning:
- Carson Hocevar, reputed idiot, wrecked Heim out of championship contention.
- Hocevar felt so bad about this that he melted down and more or less took himself out of the race.
- In the aftermath, Grant Enfinger, veteran driver and reputed good guy, was set to win the title. Then, Meltdown Hocevar fell all the way back to where Heim caught him.
- Heim put Hocevar in the wall.
- After the caution, Enfinger did not win the title.
- After the race, Heim didn’t say anything—despite being offered the opportunity multiple times—to acknowledge that his need for immediate payback in a cowardly way (just fight him, bro) led to Enfinger not winning a championship.
Oh Yeah the Sens Are a Disaster Now
The Senators play the Leafs tonight for the first time this season, and, uh…
Things are out of hand.
The season started ok. The Sens opened 3–1, plenty of uncertain players were playing well, and by the time the Shane Pinto gambling suspension broke we were at least in a position where we could be relieved about there being a good reason the front office didn’t get his contract finalized. Then, the NHL came down with a hammer and a half for the Dadonov No-Trade Malfunction (took away a first round pick), general manager Pierre Dorion was accordingly fired, the team started losing, the fans started chanting “Fire D.J.” (referring to head coach D.J. Smith), and beloved captain Brady Tkachuk called that and corresponding booing “bullshit.” The Sens, as is their custom, are an out and out disaster.
Thankfully, this sets us up for a great Sens-ing this evening in Toronto.
It is always when they least expect it.
