By Jon Jaques
New York Times
March 7, 2009
Cornell’s Jon Jaques is back on The Quad. Jon, as many of you know, gave us a behind-the-scenes look at Cornell’s N.C.A.A. tournament experience last season. Then, during the summer, he showed us what the California leagues are like when the best college players come home to play. He has blogged for The Quad regularly this season.
I can’t believe I’m actually writing this, since it seems like just yesterday that fall practices started, but the college basketball regular season is winding down. For the teams assured of N.C.A.A. tournament bids, it’s time to bolster that seeding with some quality wins. Teams on the proverbial bubble are treating every game as a must win, as well as a chance to show off for Joe Lunardi, and mid-majors on the outside of the bubble looking in better start preparing to win their conference tournaments unless they want to sweat out Selection Sunday.
The crazy week before Selection Sunday (that is nearly as exciting as March Madness but doesn’t get as much publicity) is conference tournament time for every league … except one.
In the quirky Ivy League, for the past two months, every game has been a must win of sorts. With games on back-to-back nights and no conference tournament to fall back on, the importance of every game makes the Ivy League the B.C.S. of college basketball (without as much controversy).
Conference tournament action usually generates dazzling atmospheres and inspires some of most creative and passionate fans out there. There’s no denying that some of the best student sections and gyms in the country hail from the power conferences, like the Cameron Crazies at Duke, or the students at Kansas’s Allen Fieldhouse and their famous “Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk” mantra. Or they are home to well-known college teams, like Gonzaga, which plays in the deafening Kennel. College basketball fans know these arenas and student sections well, mainly because they are glorified on ESPN on what seems like a daily basis. For many, Dick Vitale’s crazy shenanigans are synonymous with college student sections (take your pick between Elvis and a sombrero-rocking mariachi singer).
In my three years of playing and experiencing college basketball, I have been lucky to play in some of the hardest places in the country. Places like Duke, Syracuse, Minnesota and Indiana, all schools we have played at Cornell, would surely be in the conversation of toughest road environments. But this list is different.
Let me start by saying that “hardest” doesn’t necessarily mean “most hostile” (it could just be really hard to play well there, for whatever reason). Out of the venues I have played at since I’ve been at Cornell, I’ve made a list of the three most difficult places to win a basketball game. These choices are intended to make you scratch your head, but you’ve come to the Quad to get the side of college basketball that not many people know about, right?
So here it is: the three most difficult places to win a basketball game that YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT.
1. Yale
As far as the Ivy League goes, the hardest place to play besides Newman Arena at Cornell is Yale’s John J. Lee Amphitheatre. The gym is small … like 2,500 seats small, but that diminutive size makes the game, and the crowd, seem twice as loud. Even an hour before tip-off this year during pregame warm-ups, when fans were not yet allowed in the gym, the sound-system’s blaring of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” had the empty gymnasium rocking.
And what’s a challenging road environment without a loyal/crazy student section? The Bulldogs fans, known as the “Dog Pound”, are always good for a few laughs. Though they don’t have the most creative name (Dog Pound? That’s been done.), they are easily one of the more innovative student groups in the league. What separates them from your typical college student section is they don’t seem to discriminate against the end of the bench when it comes to dishing out the trash talk. They have been known to wait in the cold for the opposing team’s reserves to get to the bus, and then, while the players are making postgame phone calls, mock them with jeers like, “No, Mom, I didn’t play tonight.” Ouch!
2. Ohio
I know what you’re thinking. Ohio? You mean Ohio State? I’m talking Bobcats, not Buckeyes. We made the venture west to Athens, Ohio (still not sure where exactly in Ohio that is) early in my sophomore year, and from what I saw of Athens, Ohio basketball might be the only thing going in that sleepy town. But that makes for a crazy college basketball atmosphere in the Convocation Center.
A really solid mid-major program over the last decade, the Ohio Bobcats have a loyal, loud, and extremely observant student fan base. During warm-ups, one member of our team had a noticeable mark on the side of his neck which may or may not have been a hickey. The students were all over it and proceeded to taunt him throughout the contest. Toward the end of the game, when we were down about 10 points with a minute left and were probably going to lose, the students began a chant that involved pointing at us and hollering, “Losing team!” and then switching their fingers over to their Bobcats and screaming, ”Winning team!” This back-and-forth chant went on for a couple of minutes, and even though we ended up losing the game, on the team bus afterward we all agreed we wished our student section did something like that (hint, hint).
3. Boston College
Chances are you’ve heard of Boston College. There’s a twist. Conte Forum could be a roof-top blasting college basketball environment, for all I know. But when we played there earlier this year for the Pre-Season N.I.T. against St John’s and Loyola, Md., there were no students there. Forget students, there were barely any people there. I mentioned in one of my early-season posts that there were more security guards in the stands than fans, and while that might be a little bit of stretch, it was close. The point I’m trying to get across here is that my third-hardest arena to play in that you don’t know about is not a rocking Boston College, but a completely empty, cavernous Boston College.
As a final note, enjoy the conference tournament action over the next 10 days!
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