Northern Iowa players rushed to the center-court logo and jumped for joy. Cheerleaders joined them. Then the students from the McLeod Center stands.
What was this madness?
Wasn’t it supposed to be Loyola’s job to celebrate Missouri Valley Conference championships?
Alas, UNI nipped the Ramblers 102-96 in overtime Saturday to break a tie at the top of the standings in the final game of the regular season. The Ramblers instead finished in a three-way tie for second and are the No. 4 seed in the Valley tournament — “Arch Madness” — with a quarterfinal game against Bradley set for Friday in St. Louis.
“ ‘Disappointed’ would be the word,” said Drew Valentine, in his first season as coach after four as an assistant under Porter Moser. “You want to win a championship, and I thought we put ourselves in position to do so. …
“But we can’t feel sorry for ourselves that we didn’t win the league. OK, we didn’t win the league.”
OK? Win the next three games, and it’ll be OK. Beat Bradley, then maybe UNI in a rematch on Saturday and then whoever the basketball gods throw at the Ramblers on Sunday. Beat ’em all and go back to the NCAA Tournament. Lose at any point this weekend and, well, that’s all she wrote.
Valentine entered the season believing that the Valley had a good chance to be a multi-bid league, but there’s no sense pretending not to know the score now.
“Non-conference-wise,” he said, “the league overall didn’t do what it needed to do to put us in that position.”
Instead, it’s 3-0 or bust. All or nothing. Go big or go home.
“I think we’re a championship-level team,” Valentine said.
But is he a championship-level coach? Because this is the time of the year when coaches take their reputations to the next level. This is the time of year when coaches from outside the biggest of the big-boy leagues can become stars. See: Porter Moser.
We all know what a Moser March looks like. What should we call it if the Ramblers go to St. Louis and — in their final Valley act before jumping to the Atlantic-10 — go from fourth to first?
A Drew Coup?
“I think you’ve got to have self-belief in yourself,” he said, “and mixed in with that, you’ve got to put the work in. I preach to the players all the time: ‘Believe in your hard work and believe in your preparation.’ And so I’m going to do everything I can to have our team ready to play — and I’m going into this thing with confidence that I can be a good postseason coach.”
And we might as well tell it like it is: It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference that UNI, Missouri State and Drake are seeded 1-3. It’s No. 4 that has the biggest target on its back. There’s only one Loyola.
Underdogs? The Ramblers? Please. They’re still the favorites, and everybody knows it.
“We’re going to embrace it,” Valentine said. “It should just give you confidence that people respect you that much.”
JUST SAYIN’
A little over five minutes into his initial comments as general manager of the Blackhawks, Kyle Davidson uttered the r-word.
“Rebuild.”
And a little over five years from now — gee, is that all? — maybe we’ll have some real, live playoff hockey around here.
“We’re a long way from where we want to be and where we need to be as a team, and we need to attempt to rebuild this both on and off the ice,” Davidson said. “No matter if it takes three years, five years, to get to the level of success that we’re looking to achieve, when we get there, it’s our mission to stay there.”
At least Davidson was clear in his language about what — let’s face it — needs to happen. Rebuild, not retool. Predecessor Stan Bowman was inclined to use both conflicting terms.
But five years? For a GM, that’s awfully luxurious. Does it come with a Russian oligarch’s yacht?
OK, then: Three years it is. See how easy that was?
• So about Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews and this rebuild …
“They’re definitely going to be brought into the loop,” Davidson said. “That’s going to be an ongoing discussion between myself and the players, and I’ll tell you for sure that there won’t be any surprises on their end in terms of what we plan on doing.”
Translation: I said “rebuild,” not “resuscitate.”
• My latest college basketball AP Top 25 ballot, submitted Monday morning: 1. Gonzaga, 2. Duke, 3. Arizona, 4. Kentucky, 5. Auburn, 6. Purdue, 7. Texas Tech, 8. Baylor, 9. Kansas, 10. Providence, 11. Wisconsin, 12. Tennessee, 13. Villanova, 14. USC, 15. Illinois, 16. Houston, 17. Arkansas, 18. UCLA, 19. Connecticut, 20. Texas, 21. Iowa, 22. Saint Mary’s, 23. Ohio State, 24. Murray State, 25. Michigan State.
Look, what do you want from me? Everybody who’s anybody in college basketball lost over the weekend. Trying to put these teams in order was about as easy as milking a water buffalo.
