I am The Hoops Junkie
Basketball probably shouldn’t be my favorite sport nor should watching college hoops be one of the few things I like more than looking at chicks. See basketball just wasn’t something that my family really cared for all that much. Being that I’m from Buffalo that kind of makes sense the Braves bolted for better climes in 1978 and Western New York’s four mid-major college hoops sides — Canisius, Niagara, St. Bonaventure, and the University of Buffalo — had their glory days before that.
In fact, Buffalo is probably a football town with a hockey problem or a hockey town with a football addiction. Either way, basketball really doesn’t matter all that much to most folks in Western New York. And it certainly didn’t matter to my family, where the Bills and Sabres were loves #1 and 1-a.
I was different. My favorite sport as a kid was soccer. Came across the old PBS program “Soccer Made in Germany” after watching Dr. Who one morning and was hooked thanks to the names of the teams — what kid wouldn’t think rooting for Nottingham Forest or Tottenham Hotspur was a blast! — and the eloquent, well-spoken, very English announcers. Basketball came a bit later, but the crush on hoops was even more intense.
Whether shoveling off the court to shoot some hoops in the dead of the Buffalo winter or spending a Saturday watching every game I could, basketball became an obsession. Especially college ball. And especially the mid-majors since those were the games I could go and watch. Saw many a “Little Three” doubleheader at Buffalo’s War Memorial Auditorium. (For those not in the know, the “Little Three” are Canisius, Niagara, and St. Bonaventure. The move to DI hoops by my beloved Buffalo Bulls has made it the “Big Four” but since St. Bona doesn’t play any of the other three sides anymore, I don’t know what to call it.) I dragged friends there all the time. I even dragged them to Alumni Arena at the University of Buffalo to watch the then-Division II UB Bulls play.
Like every college hoops fan, I lived and died for March Madness. However, and this makes me a little bit different, the thing that interested me most about the Big Dance was the potential for upsets. I didn’t really care to much about the Final Four or the title game since the teams playing in those games were almost always the same squads from the same overexposed, over-hyped, power conferences. To me the Big Dance was about finally having a chance to see teams from the Big South, MAC, and Big Sky that I had read about in the preseason mags play. It was also a chance for those teams to beat the pants off of some school whose team was on TV all the time.
The first upset I ever picked was South Alabama’s defeat of Alabama in the 1988-89 Dance. The shocker that wasn’t to be that I rooted most for was Coastal Carolina’s 79-69 loss to Indiana and that bellicose prick Bobby Knight a couple tourneys later.
As much fun as I had picking games in the Tourney, fact was there just weren’t that many people who wanted to hang out at a bar talking MAC hoops with me. In fact, I think the number was pretty close to zero. With few people to impress by talking MAC point guards, I decided to start a basketball blog. This was in August 2002. And I’m proud to say that I’ve been at it ever since.
A few things have changed. The first is that I don’t do a lot of posts on general hoops news anymore or the NBA that much. The reason for that is there are much better and more-informed bloggers out there who are doing that kind of stuff and doing it very well. The second is that we’re going to be headed in kind of a different direction in this, our 7th year of basketblogging.
The focus of Notes From A Basketball Junkie will be the Mid-American Conference, with an emphasis on the UB Bulls; as well as the Northeast Conference, my adopted league. Of course, we’ll post about other stuff when it interests us, but blogging the MAC and NEC is what gets us fired up.
And the final change will be more posts on playing the hoops odds because I like rolling the bones myself. At some point during the first week of the hoops season, we will be posting the first edition of my tips for betting on mid-major hoops. Throughout that season we will be using those tips to play the odds in every game involving teams from the MAC or NEC, as well as using them to make one mid-major pick of the day.
I am the Hoops Junkie, a proud basketball blogger, and the dude mostly responsible for the past six years of posts here. I don’t know that I’ve got six more years in me, but I’ve definitely got the 2008-09 season.
We’re fired up and ready to go over here. Hope you’ll subscribe or stop by often to see what’s popping.
