NEWS AND NOTES:
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-Kind of a crazy day in the Big Ten. Multiple teams that were hovering around the bubble and needed notable wins on their resumes ended up getting them. Northwestern picked up a huge road win at Indiana, which was the first home loss of the season for the Hoosiers. Northwestern is now 12-3 and is looking more and more like they will make the field. Maryland got a nice win at home against Ohio State which helps them out. Iowa, who had been in a funk, got a road win at Rutgers, who had been red hot, and that really helps them out. So, it was a good day to be a bubble team in the Big Ten!
HIGHLIGHTED GAMES:
-EAST WEST UNIVERSITY AT CHICAGO STATE (***Spotlight Game***). There are very few games being played at all today, which is completely understandable given that no one wants to schedule a game on the same day that these two teams are playing!! Tonight, ESPN is showing the same thing on all of its networks! It’s some sort of football game or something. They don’t even want to bother putting on a bunch of different shows on a bunch of different networks when they know no one is going to be watching anyway!! East West University is located in Chicago, and if for whatever reason you’ve been living under a rock and don’t know about it, you need to check out the Wikipedia Page. There is an East Building and a West Building, and in 2014 a third building was added!!
On the East West Actual Athletics page, which you can view here, the most recent schedule we can find is a PDF document from the 2019-2020 season, and the last update of any kind appears to be from August 2022 announcing that anyone interested in trying out can go to the 2nd floor of the East Building…(that’s the EAST Building!! Not the West Building!!!) and report for an open tryout. Their school mascot is the Phantoms. That seems appropriate since apparently whoever works in media relations is also a phantom.
Chicago State is seeking their fourth win of the year. It’s been a rough season for them being an independent. Hopefully they can find conference membership soon. All kidding aside, their effort deserves to be applauded. Nearly all their games have been road games, and they were actually competitive in a lot of them, and nearly beat both Minnesota and Murray State, and actually gave a really good showing against Marquette as well.
-ORAL ROBERTS AT NEW MEXICO. It’s a bit of a strange timing for an OOC game, but it’s a good one. Oral Roberts is looking like the early favorites out of the Summit League, and it’s not a team that New Mexico wants to overlook. They’ve lost two straight games and need to bounce back, but will likely be challenged today.