Reminiscing

Charlie Pierce looks at college basketball now and then.  Here he discusses how he ended up at Marquette:

There's little question that the game played no small role in where I went to college. I wanted journalism school and Marquette had one, but I also wanted a piece of what I'd seen on television in 1970, when Al McGuire told the NCAA to go climb a tree because he didn't want to take his team to Texas to play in a regional when he could take it to New York and win the NIT. (Marquette was the last team that had that choice. The NCAA, which never overreacts when actual sweaty panic is an option, closed the loophole after McGuire dove through it.) Once there, Dean (The Dream) Meminger and his colleagues, in their black-and-yellow bumblebee uniforms, which the NCAA later banned, locked up Pete Maravich so tightly that, it is rumored, Meminger's brother stood up behind the LSU bench, pointed at Maravich, and announced to the world, "This honky can't dance."
(The trip was enlivened further by Gary Brell, a forward of staggering eccentricity — even by the standards of Marquette basketball, which were considerable — who, when asked after the game what he thought of LSU coach Press Maravich's contention that Marquette's defense was "like watching grass grow," told the assembled media, "We mowed his bleeping lawn," and then, later, cut down the nets in Madison Square Garden with a switchblade.)
So J-school was fine, and the fact that Marquette was also a Jesuit school made it OK with my parents — my uncle Michael even had some classmates who taught there. The reach of The Society is a long one, which is why, as one of my European history professors once put it, "There are only three things you need to know about European history: The nobility is always corrupt, the middle class is never ready to take control, and the Jesuits are always being expelled" — but it was the basketball program that was the soul of the place. The best nights were the ones where it snowed. Not much, but big, fat flakes, swirling under the streetlights and in front of the bright neon, that seemed to soften the brutal cold and take the edge off the winds that blew up the avenue from the big lake.

I figured I ought to include that final paragraph after talking about the Jesuits getting expelled from Switzerland in a post last week.  The whole article is entertaining, and reminds me that I've been wanting to put up a college basketball post after watching Xavier (another Midwestern Jesuit school) come from 10 behind with about 5 minutes left twice in the last week.  I was trying to come up with some things I liked about the college game.  One is the strength of the mid-majors, like Xavier, Butler and Gonzaga, which can compete in basketball in a way that schools have a harder time doing in football.  Another would be the old traditions like the Big Five (Temple, Penn, LaSalle, St. Joe's and Villanova) playing round robin games in the Palestra (which SI featured here and here).  Finally, there are the IU warmups, which say to me, hey look, a barbershop quartet:

Here is TRSlyder describing the warmups:

Your eyes are drawn to the pants and for good reason. But let us not overlook the shirts- those are button downs, kids. Button downs with the classic IU logo on the front and Indiana written in cursive on the back. When the Hoosiers come out to the sound of tubas playing their fight song it's one of the best moments in American sports. Keep buttoning down while warming up, Hoosiers. You are welcome on my best uniforms list anytime.

Ok, that is all.  I just wanted an excuse to talk up the pants.

Update: Oh, another great thing, watching Big Ten basketball on TV on Sundays in February when it is too crappy to do anything outside.