Nothing But Iron: Orange Advisory March 17, 2008 by Steven R. Lagman, M.D., C.A.S.W. The airport public address announcer advised that the current threat advisory level is orange. I knew what she meant, but who would have guessed orange? I would not have, had I not been at Conseco Field House yesterday to witness Illinois’s overtime win against Purdue. Even better was Friday’s night cap–the ante-climatic, craziest, are-you-stealing-my-identity?, mascot-spin-your-head-around, sota-sota Minnesota Golden Cubby Gophers win over the home-town Hoosiers. I must have predicted Minnesota’s fall from the slippery slope at least a dozen times; each time the Gophers responded, until finally Indiana seemed to have lucked out at the end. It was like an otherwise fabulous movie with a two-thumbs-down ending. But wait! That wasn’t really the ending. That, meaning DJ White’s 1- for- 4 free-throw clinic to take an ill-deserved lead with only enough time left for inevitability of predictable. But the pre-ending ending was just dramatic enhancement for the real ending. A prayer? Hail no. More like a whole Rosary, or, in the slam poetry words, Blake Hoffarber's turn-around Hoosier beater was Magic! Magic. I saw my own astounded expression reflected back in the faces of everyone around me, at least everyone not wearing IU red. I could possibly duplicate that look of dumbfounded delight if I suddenly realized I could dunk. So now we await the tourney match up between regular season champion Badgers and 10 seed, Illinois. I write that knowing the sequestration of airline travel precludes me from knowing the game’s outcome in realtime, and that the possibility of NBI publication before the implication of the match-up becomes stale news eludes me in the 700 miles of driving and 1300 miles of flying that took me to Chicago, Indy, Ft Wayne, back to Chicago and to Palm Springs. I have no choice but to accept the fact that I cannot do everything. I am plenty fortunate to have watched good basketball with good friends, played in a USTA tennis tournament with good teammates and to be traveling to a place where days are measure in SPF not wind chill factor. By the way, when I say we await the Big Ten Tourney championship, I refer to a bunch of people from Wisconsin and a bunch of people from Illinois, and at least two from Iowa, who have head-lice-caliber affection for Illinois, and will watch on the chance the Illini will lose badly. Apparently nobody else gives a damn. This morning ESPN’s John Kincaid said he would choose to watch paint dry before he would watch the Badgers and Illini play in the Big Ten title game. Paint dry. Good one, John. You might expect a professional sportscaster to come up with an original insult, but the message was clear: 18-loss Illinois is no more deserving of an NCAA tournament bid than 20-loss auto-bid recipient Coppin (A Feel) State, and the 28-win Badgers, like the rest of the afterthought Big Ten conference, were not too far behind. Nothing like a healthy dose of disrespect to inspire. Remind me to thank Kincaid if one of our Big Ten black horses should somehow sneak through to the second round. I repeat: The Badgers might not always look like a good team, but I would not want to play them in the tournament. I saw it firsthand, but I don’t know how Wisconsin beat Michigan State. I do know I liked it, especially because I was an uncharted island of red in a sea of green. Conventional wisdom suggests that MSU does not lose when Drew Neitzel is unstoppable, and he was. At least until the final shot of the game, which bounced hard off the back iron. The key was the way in which the Badgers worked the foul count to win a game of attrition–MSU ran out of bigs and the Badgers began to hit their free throws just soon enough for the strategy to make a difference. The Spartans would not surprise me if they won a couple games in the NCAA’s. What about Purdue and Indiana? At one time I thought Purdue was the best team in the conference, but I am now suspicious of this youthful collection of talent as the stakes get higher. Plenty of skill to run deep into the tourney, but will the Boilers be able to focus well enough to use it? Indiana’s inability to beat the Gophs in Hoosier country was disappointing. I was particularly unimpressed with DJ White. White had 20 points, but with Minnesota’s best big player sidelined, he should have had 35. I was also disappointed in his rebounding down the stretch. Whether White’s inability to dominate was the fault of player, coach or teammates, I cannot say. Not even Kincaid would deny Wisconsin its place in the NCAA tourney, but do teams with losing records deserve the same consideration just because they win a few games in a conference tournament? Sure they do. That is the rule. Should Coppin AF State or Illinois be included at the expense of a bubble team? Sure they should. That is the rule. Do I agree with the rule? Not necessarily, but the rule is no more the fault of the fortunate team than a good record in the context of a weak schedule (e.g., Memphis, according to Kincaid) is the fault of a point guard or manager or mascot. Regardless, the validity of the tournament is preserved even with the exclusion of teams like OSU or Illinois State or Virginia Tech. I assure you that one of the 65 teams chosen is actually best in the land, or at least I can assure you that I am comfortable calling any team that beats six straight opponents from any origin in the bracket as the national champion. Some of us argue that the winner is by definition the champion, in which case you might counter with, "How do we know a bubble team would not have won the tournament?" to which I offer this rebuttal-defying reply: I don’t know. My hope is that of all Big Ten fans: that we will somehow get the last laugh. It has happened before. And you can bet, if our conference representatives do find their way to legitimacy, that Kincaid and others like him whose lives of chronic under achievement make them well suited to their roles as critics of people guilty only of significant accomplishment, have their list of excuses–dumb luck, poor officiating, misalignment of celestial bodies–ready for the airwaves. Reminder: Enter your picks for the Pride Pool. E-mail me if you can’t figure out how, or if someone you know needs an electronic invitation. ______________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports column. This issue dedicated to the Big Ten champion Badgers, the author’s Iowa friends who made him laugh about every 30 seconds at the B10T, to the author’s tennis teammates, who played admirably in the USTA regional tournament.  ©2008 DrTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.