It’s a busy day in college basketball. Below is a rundown of all the action!
NEWS AND NOTES
-We had some close calls yesterday. Iowa State came down to the last second (and some questionable officiating) against Indiana State, Ole Miss had to sweat out a Montana team that only has one win, VCU had more trouble with Saint John’s than we thought they would, and Florida State actually did what Florida State always does, and that’s make us think they’re good and then lose early in the season. They fell to Temple in their NIT game.
-CLICK HERE for Chad Sherwood’s UTR Game of the Day between Middle Tennessee and UNC Wilmington
HIGHLIGHTED GAMES
-IOWA STATE VS MIAMI FL (Advocare Invitational). Both teams enter the game unbeaten, although Iowa State really had to sweat out Indiana State yesterday. Miami looked much better against a pretty good Stanford team. Iowa State really doesn’t have any notable wins yet, so today will be their biggest test of the season so far.
-FLORIDA STATE VS ILLINOIS (NIT). Florida State is doing it again. They’re making us think they’re going to be good, and then losing games to weak teams. Nothing against Temple, but they don’t appear to be all that strong this year, and Florida State couldn’t get it done yesterday. Illinois was absolutely blasted by West Virginia and appears to be in for another long season as well.
-INDIANA STATE VS STANFORD (Advocare Invitational). After nearly pulling an upset against Iowa State yesterday, Indiana State has another chance to pick up a neutral floor win against what looks to be a decent Stanford team today.
-WICHITA STATE AT MICHIGAN STATE (Battle 4 Atlantis). Michigan State has struggled this entire season. Wichita has looked good, but wasn’t able to beat a Louisville team yesterday that had struggled in their first game. Both teams kind of need an early notable neutral floor win. Michigan State needs it to get their season turned around, and Wichita State needs it because their opportunities later in the season are somewhat limited.
-CAL STATE NORTHRIDGE VS NEW MEXICO (Wooden Legacy). New Mexico fell rather convincingly to Virginia Tech yesterday, and they need to get out of this tournament with a couple wins if they want to stay within reach of the ‘relevance map’ (for lack of a better term).
-TEMPLE VS WEST VIRGINIA (NIT). Temple got a surprising win against Florida State yesterday, and would REALLY shock the world if they knocked off West Virginia today.
-LOUISVILLE VS BAYLOR (Battle 4 Atlantis). This is probably the best game of the day. Both teams are in the rankings, both teams have already been tested this season, and both come in undefeated. Both are on a good early pace to end up as a protected seed come March, and wins away from home against other good teams can really help the profile. Both will have numerous chances for the rest of the year, but this is still likely to be one of the more notable wins on either team’s profile come March.
-MERCER VS EAST CAROLINA (Savannah Invitational). Both teams come in with just one loss, and some of us think East Carolina may be a sleeper team this year.
-TEXAS A&M VS VIRGINIA TECH (Wooden Legacy). Both teams appear to be pretty good and are off to decent starts. Like all these tournaments, a neutral floor win against a good team builds both momentum and the profile.
-VIRGINIA VS IOWA (Emerald Coast Classic). Virginia has looked incredibly impressive so far this season, and as good as Iowa’s 3-1 start is, they’re probably overmatched today.
-MARSHALL AT OHIO STATE. This is a buy game, but both teams do come in unbeaten, so we’ll go ahead and highlight it.
-BOSTON COLLEGE VS KANSAS STATE (Barclays Center Classic). I don’t know if it’s really accurate to call this match-up a “Classic,” but K State does come in without a loss, and BC is 3-1.
-SMU AT USC. This is a really good early season game between two teams that have looked a lot better than what we were expecting so far. USC has a big win at Texas A&M, and SMU’s only loss is to a pretty good Michigan team.
-TENNESSEE TECH AT OHIO. A win keeps the Bobcats undefeated.
-BELMONT AT RHODE ISLAND. This is a buy game, but Belmont is typically one of the better teams in the OVC, and we think they’ll be at the top of the standings again this year so we’ll go ahead and highlight it.
-VCU VS LSU (Battle 4 Atlantis). Both teams are trying to get out of this tournament with another neutral floor win on their profile.
-AKRON VS AIR FORCE (Savannah Invitational). This doesn’t qualify as an Under the Radar game because Air Force is in the Mountain West, but it is definitely an underexposed game. Akron looks to be one of the better teams in the MAC, and some of us feel they could end up with an at-large bid. Air Force comes into this game 5-0, so it is a good early season test for both teams.
-QUINNIPIAC VS SETON HALL (Advocare Invitational). This looks like a buy game, but it’s actually part of a tournament. Both teams are coming in with a loss.
-WASHINGTON VS WESTERN KENTUCKY (Global Sports Classic). We were ready to write off Washington after they dropped the opener and struggled in some of their games since then, but they do come into this game 3-1 and are facing a pretty good WKU team, so there is still plenty of time to right that ship. As for WKU, they’ve got a chance to add a notable win to their profile.
-MIDDLE TENNESSEE VS UNC WILMINGTON (Challenge in Music City). See Chad’s UTR Game of the Day HERE. It’s a shame that this really is one of the more interesting games of the day, and there is no TV or video for it.
-RICHMOND VS MARYLAND (Barclays Center Classic). We aren’t expecting much out of Richmond this year, but they do come into this game with just one loss and will really grab the attention of ourselves and everyone else if they can pull off a win in this one.
-PROVIDENCE VS MEMPHIS (Emerald Coast Classic). We weren’t all that excited about either team coming into this season, but Providence just has one loss and Memphis is unbeaten, so it’s possible that one or both are better than we thought. We should learn something after seeing what they do against each other.
-GONZAGA VS FLORIDA (Advocare Invitational). This is a somewhat important game for Gonzaga because it’s their first real test of the season. It’s a big game for Florida too who is unbeaten, but who is still looking for a statement win.
-DAYTON VS PORTLAND (Wooden Legacy). After falling to Nebraska yesterday, Dayton now needs to avoid bad losses on the loser’s side of the bracket.
-NEVADA VS BUFFALO (Great Alaska Shootout). Both teams appear to be solid and come into this one with just one loss. We think Buffalo is one of the better teams in the MAC, and feel that Nevada may be a fringe bubble team.
-TCU VS UNLV (Global Sports Classic, Las Vegas NV). TCU comes in unbeaten and UNLV comes in with just one loss, which was their opener. We weren’t expecting much out of either team, but both have been pretty good out of the gate.
-ARIZONA VS BUTLER (Continental Tire). Both teams come in 5-0, and although Arizona has a win over Michigan State, this may prove to be an even bigger challenge. Butler has had some close calls, but they’re still unbeaten and if they pull off a win today they’ll catapult themselves back into the national spotlight. That is becoming a November tradition for the Bulldogs. We never think they’re going to be good, and they always are.
-WYOMING AT CALIFORNIA. Both teams come into this game with one loss. Cal has had some close calls and doesn’t want to overlook a Wyoming team that is looking for a statement win.
-NEBRASKA VS UCLA (Wooden Legacy). It’s the last big game of the day, and it’s a good one. Nebraska is coming off a big win against Dayton, which many weren’t expecting them to get. Not many people thought Nebraska had much this year, but if they’re somehow able to pick up this win they’ll be solidly on the college basketball radar.
BUY GAMES
-Bryant @ Northwestern
-Idaho State @ Texas Tech
-Abilene Christian @ Oklahoma
-SELA @ Colorado State
-UT Martin @ Kentucky
-High Point @ Clemson
-Morehead State @ Pittsburgh
-Lehigh @ Mississippi State
-Southern Illinois @ Minnesota
-UNC Asheville @ Kansas
-UC Riverside @ Utah
Throwback Thursday: Farewell to the Cincinnati Gardens
For Chad Sherwood’s Under-The-Radar Game of the Day between UC-Davis and Weber State – CLICK HERE
For the latest Under-The-Radar Weekly Podcast – CLICK HERE
When it opened up in 1949, the Cincinnati Gardens was modeled after Toronto’s fabled Maple Leaf Gardens. The first major tenant was a minor league hockey team, namely the Cincinnati Mohawks of the American Hockey League and later the International Hockey League. They would win multiple Turner Cups as champs of the IHL, and another future team (the Cincinnati Swords) would also win a Calder Cup as part of the American Hockey League.
As for basketball, the first major tenant for the Gardens would be the Cincinnati Royals of the NBA. They played in the Gardens for 15 years after relocating from Rochester in 1957. Although they never won any NBA titles, they were a frequent contender in the Eastern Conference thanks to players like Jack Twyman, Oscar Robertson and Jerry Lucas. One sign that the NBA was not yet a mainstream pro league was that they had to move a playoff series against the Boston Celtics out of the Gardens in favor of a circus one year; the games were subsequently moved to Xavier’s ancient Schmidt Fieldhouse. After the 1971-72 season, dwindling attendance helped spur another relocation as the Cincinnati Royals would become the Kansas City Kings (now the Sacramento Kings).
When it comes to college basketball, the Cincinnati Bearcats would occasionally play games in the Cincinnati Gardens, although the Armory Fieldhouse (built in 1954) was their primary home during this time. Once Riverfront Coliseum was built in the mid-1970s, it offered a new home for the Bearcats along with the World Hockey League’s Cincinnati Stingers. This in turn would eventually provide a permanent home in the Gardens for the Xavier Musketeers. Xavier was a program that had an NIT title in 1958 to their credit (along with a single NCAA appearance in 1961), but they had a program that was abysmally bad in the 1960s and 1970s on a level that would have merited occasional Centenary consideration had HoopsHD existed at this time. Even that may not have been fair to Centenary at that time – their program was actually respectable at this time thanks to a star player named Robert Parish!
But Bob Staak was slowly building a solid program at Xavier that finally found a home in the newly formed Midwestern City Conference in the early 1980s. As attendance began to rise, Schmidt Fieldhouse became inadequate for a growing Xavier fanbase and they would move to the Cincinnati Gardens beginning with the 1983-84 season. And they were rewarded – the 1984 season featured a trip to the NIT that included wins at home against Nebraska and Ohio State. Following a season in which Staak would move on from Xavier to Wake Forest, Pete Gillen took over in 1985-86 and continued to lay a foundation where Xavier would make the NCAA Tournament 7 times in his 9 seasons. Skip Prosser would also follow in his footsteps beginning with the 1994-95 season. They would go undefeated in the MCC (now the Horizon League) regular season in 1994-95 and would get an at-large NCAA Tournament bid despite an upset loss to Wright State in the MCC conference tournament that year.
Another step forward was taken for Xavier’s program in the 1995-96 season. This was their first season in the Atlantic 10, and also meant that instead of hosting programs like Evansville, Detroit and Loyola-Chicago on an annual basis, they would now be playing host to Massachusetts (a national power under John Calipari), Temple, and another emerging program in George Washington annually. It was an overtime loss to UMass on national TV that served notice that Xavier had a team of future stars on their roster. By the end of Xavier’s tenure at the Gardens following the 1999-2000 season, they had accumulated a very impressive 215-25 record at home (.896 winning percentage).
As electric as the UMass game was, few games could ever compare to the Crosstown Shootout. It was at its peak in the early 1990s when Gillen was in his prime at Xavier and Bob Huggins had just taken over a program at Cincinnati that went through its own down cycle in the 1980s. The teams would exchange Shootout victories from 1990 through 1998 – this included a very contentious game in 1994 where Brian Grant would hit a game-tying shot in regulation to force overtime. After Xavier won in overtime, Gillen and Huggins had a shouting match after the game as opposed to the usual handshake line. Things simmered down a bit after Gillen moved on to Providence, but it was hardly the last great moment in the Gardens. That was reserved for the 1999-2000 season – it was the second time in 4 seasons where Xavier would defeat a Cincinnati team ranked #1 at the time.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. After Xavier moved to the Cintas Center on campus for the 2000-01 season, the AHL’s Cincinnati Mighty Ducks remained as a tenant until the 2004-05 season. Once they left town, the Gardens would play host to fringe pro hockey, high school hockey, occasional pro wrestling events and roller derby. As of July 21, 2016, the Gardens was sold to the Greater Cincinnati Development Authority. Memorabilia from the Gardens has already been sold through local estate sales and there are now plans in the works to sell the seats as well through similar channels.
As for the end of the 1999 Crosstown Shootout, click here to see the ending in all its glory.