My Madness

For the first time I can remember and maybe for the first time in my life, I watched two men’s college basketball games over a weekend. On Saturday, Loyola of Chicago beat Northern Iowa to advance to the finals in the Missouri Valley tournament. Sunday, the Ramblers beat Drake to secure a bid to the NCAA tournament. College sports make me admittedly prickly. I insist on drawing a distinction between student athletes and athletes participating in minor-league programs run by colleges and universities for the benefit of pro sports. Loyola rates in the first category. Yesterday, first-year Ramblers’ coach Drew Valentine used nine players, not one of them an undergraduate; but three of his starters were fifth-year/COVID graduate students, along with one junior and a senior. When was the last time Duke went with an all upperclassmen starting five? Last year, under Porter Moser, critics would have been tempted to say the Ramblers played a suburban, or “white” game, with a lot of passing and assists to go with take-a-charge and floor-burn defense. Coach Valentine isn’t white, though he is employing that same team-first approach. It works for me. I have three college degrees and have some idea what it takes to graduate; my daughter was a college athlete who, so far, has earned two degrees. She was a true student athlete who balanced time in the weight room with time in the library. Members of the men’s Loyola basketball team look to be doing the same. Go, Ramblers.