Four Nights at Madison Square Garden

This week was the first of back to back weeks where having a job is problematic.  Championship Week in college basketball.  I love the conference tournaments.  If I could stay up late every night and watch games, I would.  If I could go to the entire Big East Tournament, I would.  I almost did.

You have two different types of conference tournaments.  There are the tournaments that really mean nothing.  Does it really matter who wins the ACC Tournament?  Sure, if Notre Dame had won, that would have mattered (not just to Notre Dame fans, it would have kicked somebody else out of the NCAA tournament).  But Duke-Virginia in the ACC Championship Game?  It means nothing.  Both teams were in before the ACC Tournament started and both were going to get a good seed.  On the other hand, you have tournaments that make the regular season totally meaningless.  I did a running diary of the Ohio Valley Conference Championship Game because that game was for all the marbles.  One team was going to be in and the other was going to be out.  It's pretty silly that the regular season is totally meaningless, but it makes games between two teams that I've never seen before totally watchable.  I watched a good amount of the MAAC Championship Game (Manhattan became the first Catholic school to qualify for the NCAA tournament this year).  Yesterday, I wanted to go to the America East Championship Game at Stony Brook, but there were no tickets available to the general public because they were playing in their old gym that holds 1,700 (their newer basketball arena is being renovated).  Stony Brook has been pretty good in the America East for the last four years or so, but they can't get over the hump and win the conference tournament.  It was a back and forth, but Albany pulled away in the last two minutes.

So I really enjoy those tournaments that mean everything.  I also enjoy the tradition of the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden.  Usually the Big East Tournament is one that doesn't mean much.  Sadly for me, Notre Dame never won the Big East Tournament, but we had still been in the NCAA tournament six out of the last seven years.  This year was a little bit different.  We had two teams that we knew were in, Villanova and Creighton.  Seton Hall, Butler, and DePaul were definitely out unless they won the tournament.  And Xavier, Providence, St. John's, Marquette, and Georgetown were bubble teams.  It seemed like one or two of those teams would make it, but there was no way to know which ones until the tournament happened.

I bought tickets the day they came out.  Obviously, my seats were high up, but I was pretty happy with them.  I was section 224, row 18.  That's right in the middle of the court.  I purposely picked seats 11 and 12 because there were 22 seats in the row, which makes 11 and 12 the two in the middle.  There was only one afternoon session this year.  I considered taking the day off and going to all four games that day, but my class had a field trip (not my doing, there were several classes involved).  It turns out that session had the best game of the tournament (Seton Hall beating Villanova at the buzzer), but I can't control that.  I sold those tickets and made a profit of $14 on the face value.  So that worked out.

Anyway, it all got started on Wednesday night.  I went with my dad.  I was rooting for a quick game in the first game (Seton Hall-Butler) and a Georgetown blowout over DePaul.  The first game got off to a fast start.  They got to halftime around 7:45.  It slowed down in the second half and ended right around 9:00.  Seton Hall led by one at halftime.  They controlled most of the second half, but then tried to give it away late.  They held on for a 51-50 win when Alex Barlow missed a last second shot.  In the second game, I was rooting for Georgetown for two reasons.  First, my brother is an alum.  Second, I thought they had a chance of giving Creighton a game, but DePaul would get blown out.  Georgetown got off to a good start.  They were up 17-9 less than 10 minutes into the game.  Then they had a lot of trouble scoring for the rest of the first half.  They were up 25-23 at halftime.  Georgetown was playing so poorly that I really didn't care about staying.  We left at halftime and found out that DePaul won.  I wasn't that surprised.  I ended up getting home around midnight.

The beginning of the first game on Wednesday night.  Lots of empty seats, but it filled up a bit.

Thursday was a fun day at the tournament.  Seton Hall pulled off the biggest upset of the tournament after almost finding a way to lose against Butler.  But I missed that and Providence beating St. John's.  After missing the afternoon session, I headed into the city to meet up with Vin for the night games.  He was still at work when I got into the city around 6:10, so I waited for him at Penn Station.  We got in a little bit late for the Creighton-DePaul game.  I expected Creighton to win easily and that's what happened.  But it was worth watching Doug McDermott.  He scored 27 points in the first half, a Big East Tournament record.  He ended up with 35 for the game on 14-22 shooting.  What annoyed me was that a woman in the row in front of us asked us not to talk with about five minutes left in the game.  Maybe were a little loud, but it's a basketball game.  We weren't being profane or obnoxious or anything, we were just having a conversation.  At a basketball game.  This wasn't golf or tennis.  It was a basketball game.  She asked Vin so I didn't hear her, but he said she was British.  We really could have been like, no, we're at a basketball game (that isn't even close, Creighton ended up winning by 22), we're going to have a conversation.  But we were fairly quiet for the rest of the game and then we moved for the second game.  The second game was Xavier-Marquette.  Whatever happened in that game was going to have a hard time topping McDermott's performance.  Vin left at halftime.  I stayed for a little bit of the second half and moved down to the lower level.  It was a competitive game and I would have loved to stay until the end, but I was tired and I had work and Friday night at the tournament to think about so I left at the under 12:00 timeout in the second half.  Xavier ended up winning 68-65 and I got home around 12:30.

Friday night was the last doubleheader of the tournament.  Despite drinking a little bit the night before and getting somewhere between nine and eleven hours of sleep over the previous two nights, I felt pretty good.  I met Tom at Penn Station for the games.  Last year, he came on Thursday night.  Friday night was definitely better for him with the trip he had to make.  Tom pointed out the lack of diversity in the colors of Big East teams.  Every team except for Providence and St. John's has a shade of blue as one of its main colors (and St. John's had blue uniforms this year).  No teams have green as one of their colors.  I hate Syracuse and Louisville, but orange and another red team would be good.  Anyway, it would have been awesome to see Villanova-St. John's, but that was not to be.  Instead, we got Providence-Seton Hall.  That was still interesting as Seton Hall needed to win the tournament and Providence was still not assured a spot in the tournament.  LaDontae Henton had himself a game for Providence with 26 points and 14 rebounds.  Providence was in control for most of the game, but only ended up winning by six.  The second game was the main event.  I figured that a lot of people would leave because the two more local teams played in the first game, but Creighton clearly had the best support out of any of the four teams.  I think it was a combination of Creighton fans being excited to play in the Big East Tournament for the first time and any neutral fans jumping on the Doug McDermott bandwagon.  I was one of those people.  McDermott was 12 points away from sixth place in all time Division I scoring and 20 points away from fifth place.  He had 19 in the first half.  Creighton seemed in control, so Tom left at halftime.  I wanted to see him get to fifth place, so I stayed.  I moved down to the lower level, 11 rows up from the court along the sideline, but closer to the basket where Creighton was shooting.  McDermott got to fifth place in the second half.  At one point, I was about to leave, but then Xavier went on a little run.  At that point, I figured I might as well stay until the end.  It never looked like Xavier was going to win, but they hung around until the end.  Creighton won 86-78 and McDermott ended up with 32 points.  Ethan Wragge had 17 on 5-9 shooting (all threes).  I ran to make a train so that I wouldn't have to change at Jamaica on the next train and got home around 1:30, which was just a little bit after Tom got home.  It was nice to not have work the next day.

Pope Francis at the game for a match up of two Jesuit schools.

Doug McDermott with the ball on the left wing.

He ended up with 94 points in three tournament games.  I'm a fan.  I'll be rooting for Creighton in the big tournament.

My dad came back for the championship game the next day.  There was a great atmosphere for the game.  At the beginning of the game, it seemed like Creighton had a slight edge in fans, but the Providence fans were more boisterous during the game.  Of course, they had more reason to cheer.  Creighton had a terrible first half.  After scoring 49 and 45 in the first half the previous two nights, they had only 17 at halftime.  McDermott had nine and the rest of the team had eight.  Providence led by nine.  Creighton played a much better second half and the crowd really came to life.  McDermott made a three to get Creighton as close as 58-56.  Providence scored to make it 60-56 and then McDermott missed a long three.  Providence hung on for the 65-58 win.  Bryce Cotton led the way with 23 points and five assists.  He was named tournament MVP.  I think it should have been McDermott even though Creighton lost.  He finished with 27 (giving him 121 in four games that I've seen him play in person going back to last year's NCAA tournament in Philadelphia).  The next leading scorer for Creighton in the game was Avery Dingman, with 10 off the bench.  Nobody else had more than five.  As I was leaving, a Providence fan assumed I was a Creighton fan because of my Dodgers sweatshirt that was partially covered by my jacket.  They are the same colors and I did that purposely.  He said something to me like, "Good game, you guys are going to be really tough to beat in the tournament."  My reaction from the Big East Tournament is that Creighton could get to the Final Four if they shoot the ball the way they did against Xavier (I like Xavier because they gave Creighton a game despite Creighton's great shooting) or they could lose if they shoot the way they did against Providence.  Actually after a terrible first half, they ended up shooting better than Providence for the game.  My dad noted that the Madison Square Garden scoreboard listed two different shooting percentages for the teams on threes even though Creighton was 8-30 and Providence was 4-15, but overall Creighton shot 42.9% and Providence shot 38.8%.  The difference was Providence was 23-26 at the line and Creighton was 8-10.

Providence won their first Big East Tournament since 1994.

Just a little more on McDermott.  He's 60 points away from fourth place in all time scoring (he should get there if he plays three tournament games, maybe two).  He's 112 away from third place (he'd probably need at least four games for that).  He's 144 away from second place.  To get to second, he'd probably have to at least get to the Final Four.  He'd have to average 28.8 points over five games or 24 points over six games.  He's 562 points away from Pete Maravich for first.  That's not happening.

Attendance by session:
Wednesday night- 13,177
Thursday afternoon- 14,925
Thursday night- 13,807
Friday night- 15,580
Saturday night- 15,290

I really enjoyed the tournament.  A little over a year ago, I worried that 2013 was going to be the last Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden.  The Big East survived and it showed that it's alive and well.  The Big East isn't the same, but it's in much better shape than it was when it looked like it was going to die.  The crowds were a little small, but they were great crowds every night except for Wednesday.  It didn't help that St. John's, Villanova, and Georgetown all lost their first game.  I would like to see the Big East go to 12 teams.  There was talk about that, but I haven't heard anything lately.  That would make Wednesday a full day and it would make the Wednesday night session better.  Instead of having the four worst teams in the conference play that night, you'd get a 7-10 game and 6-11 game.  The 10th and 11th place teams would probably be bad, but the 6th and 7th place teams could be decent.  More than anything else, what the Big East really needs is for Georgetown and St. John's to be powers.  This was a down year for Georgetown.  Despite my brother Sean's frustration with their lack of tournament success, Georgetown has been a pretty good regular season team over the last nine years (seven tournament appearances in the eight years before this season).  St. John's needs to get it together.  DePaul being good would help too.  Why are they terrible?  They were once good.  They made the tournament 14 times from 1976-1992.

I would do things a little differently next year.  I will definitely buy tickets for the entire tournament again, but I would probably only go three nights and sell the other one (probably Wednesday even though I wouldn't get much for those tickets).  If the schedules remain the same, I would make Saturday a big day.  The Atlantic 10 had their semifinals at the Barclays Center on Saturday afternoon.  There would have been enough time to go to those two games and then take the subway to Madison Square Garden for the Big East Championship Game at 8:30.  That would be a fun day.

I love Big East basketball.  I wish Notre Dame had never left.  I have in mind how that could have happened, but this has gone on long enough.  I'll see you next year, Big East Tournament.