Wasn't true when I played. Manchester, Defiance, etc... were every bit as good as teams like Huntington and Bethel and Marian.
And I've seen Trine play, Hope College...watched some of the higher level national programs like Randolph Macon play...they'd all be very competitive with the good NAIA schools in our area. And Grace, Wesleyan, Marian, Bethel, Huntington, etc... still likely have the best NAIA conference in the country.
ALL of those teams are much higher level than when I played, for what its worth. MUCH more size and athleticism these days.
Regarding your last paragraph, all teams, now a daze..uh, nowadays regardless of conference, have better players in size and athleticism than days spent playing much younger. Evolution might work at a faster pace than first thought. Life is much more competitive than a few decades ago. Selective breeding is more commonplace in thought. The best advantaged really do carry on the majority of surviving genes, the genes on way to Na’vi of Pandora proportions. It’s still considered subtle, but by gosh and golly, it’s there. Kids get professional training in technology, if not sports…not sports, music and so on. Every stage of budding age is calculated, parents in watch of prodigies yet bloomed.
The playing field’s been leveled to that of worn cliché. Parity in college basketball came at a time of Bob’s perceived decline, the cusp of changing times in stink of times less stunk. Conferences of all reputations have some teams with ballers come-to-play, ballers who on any given lucky night, can hang tough long enough for upset wins…battles fought, to no one’s fault, in fight so well deserved.
It’s those early tourney, year-end “upsets” that reeled in a lot of haters onto Bob’s fishing boat. Those temporary turncoats should have cut him more slack for some of those losses, esp. with injured players, like Haston being one, affecting the outcome’s finality.
I’m still hoping Bob’s death will somehow, spiritually or otherwise, will this year’s team to great determination in effort, put forth always well done, resulting in wins that would make Coach Knight proud and with that dimpled smile, knowing anything can happen mostly anytime. I want it this time. I feel it, but is it enough? Yes, it is!
Think of it as one of those Bob Knight-proud, we-proud somehow mostly through osmosis, less than scientific sort of things never thought. We feed on the spiritual energy of each other, keeping quantum physics in mind where all things possible in time never ending always happen, but you knew that from an earlier time the second I first told you, almost as if I did. One of those possibilities just happened in a lot of different ways- How is that even possible?
Confucius suggests this team will gather many followers. We take it, his suggested take on mentioned things somehow known, as call for scattering the seeds in reckless abandon to the soiled beds of IU followers, sprouted for generations yet sown. Spread thy seeds of love, devotee of all good things IU sports, to the bounty of better fed bed wetters most becoming, the IU followers of tomorrow always coming.
Okay, now it’s time to play the game for real and end this spiel of shenanigans in wait of first meaningful game. The tune up is over. Show us what you got. Play this next one for real like it really feels real this time. Feel the real, deal with it, get it done, Hoosiers! Think we can!
