It’s late September and baseball is transitioning into the post season, football season is building up some steam, and I want to talk college basketball. What? Yeah. I know, it’s a bit early, but I took a look at whats up on the hardwood today.
First thing I noticed is a familiar face (to me) in a new place. I once traveled with the Tennessee State men’s basketball team as their media relations point of contact. That was the 2014-2015 season, the first for head coach Dana Ford. He was the youngest coach in the country, that season, having just turned 30 that year.
In his first season, the Tigers won just five games. He was able to transform that team into a 20-11 team the very next year, earning conference coach of the year. Fast forward to March of this year. Ford accepts the offer to become the head coach of Missouri State. I’d kept tabs on him at TSU and now look forward to watching him move through the Missouri Valley Conference.
Ford takes over a team who finished in the bottom half of the conference where Sister Mary, aka Loyola-Chicago, hails from. He’s got just two returning players who saw playing time for the Bears last year. He’s also got a former Xavier player in redshirt-freshman Jarred Ridder. I’ll keep my eye on Missouri State and Coach Ford, this year, and may even tell you a little bit about em, on this space.
The other thing I noticed was the ticket prices for Cincinnati’s home opener, the re-opening of Fifth-Third Arena, against Ohio State. My go-to app for tickets, Gametime, has the cheapest ticket for that game currently going for $94. UC is advertising this coming basketball season, heavily, at football games. People are excited to see the new arena, and excited to see how the Bearcats follow up last year.
I’ll write more about this in the days to come, but I’m looking forward to Kyle Washington, Jaron Cumberland, and the rest of the team picking up where they left off.
As someone who constantly has sports on the television, I am enjoying my football and baseball, but am looking forward to some hoops. Without having looked at it, I’d say the top five for the preseason rankings are Duke, Kentucky, Kansas, Villanova, and Michigan State, in some kind of order.
Sportsinnati 