Wednesday night, I was midway through a horrendous burrito that I'm ashamed to admit I made myself when the sounds of Mr. T blared out of my phone.
"Ain't got time for the Jibba-Jabba...Say what you got to say!"
This meant I had a text; I'm dominant like that. So I opened up the phone, saw it was from my brother, and was not surprised at what it read: "h-time uni 23 drake 17, brother". I'd been counting on Drake beating UNI to move the Jays into a tie for first place, and so far, my father's Bulldogs weren't coming through. Which meant my brother's Panthers were.
An aside for those of you who may be new to the blog in the last couple of weeks: while I'm a Creighton grad and Jaybacker, my father went to Drake back in the early 1970s heydey of Bulldog hoops, and my brother went to UNI in the McDermott early 2000s. So we have a triangular Valley rivalry, and on this night, I was in the uncomfortable position of having to actually root for one of their schools, instead of rooting against both of them.
I was rooting from afar, though: there was no way in hell I was going to be the sort of guy who listens to the webcast radio feed of a non-Jays game. If it had been a video webcast, and it had been free, you could have twisted my arm. But a radio webcast, particularly the KRNT feed with Dolph Pulliam -- the biggest homer in the Valley, God bless him -- yeah, that wasn't gonna happen. So I sat in front of the TV, clearing programs off my DVR by watching them. The Office, 30 Rock, Chuck, WKRP in Cincinnati, you know, the usual stuff.
Besides, the text updates were more entertaining than the webcast would have been.
28-23 uni, under 16 brother, we're pulling away yaha!
33-26 uni, under 12, hahahaha we're awesome
tied 37, under 8, dammit you suck I hate The Drake
And then the score updates stopped coming. I took this as a sign things were not going well for the Big Cats of the Cedar Valley, and I was right. A couple of minutes passed and curiosity got the best of me. I opened up the laptop and did what I swore two paragraphs ago I wouldn't: I listened to the Drake feed on the webcast. I listened as they nearly pulled away, then as they nearly blew it. I got nervous when they fouled Egleseder with five seconds left in a 47-46 game. I exhaled when he missed the first free throw. I damn near dropped my laptop when he missed the second.
Grabbing my phone, I texted the following line to my brother:
I'm trained in the heimlich, you know.
Not so surprisingly, I got an immediate reply.
I'd rather die.
Ouch. Anyway, thanks to UNI's continuing historic choke job and Creighton's late-season surge, the teams are now tied for First Place with two games to play. The second place team, just a game back, is Illinois State. And the Redbirds play both UNI and Creighton next week, back to back. What an absolutely amazing finish this should be.
Because of that, oddly enough, the second place team is the only one who controls their own destiny. The schedules:
Creighton:
at Missouri State
vs Illinois State
Northern Iowa:
at Illinois State
vs Evansville
Illinois State:
vs Northern Iowa
at Creighton
Here's the scenarios:
If Creighton and Illinois State win on Tuesday, the Jays clinch no worse than a tie for the league crown with Illinois State. Saturday's head-to-head game then becomes a de facto Championship Game; if the Jays win, they're outright champs. If they lose, they share the title and the #1 seed in St. Louis is determined by a massively complex formula that I'm not nearly smart enough to digest much less regurgitate for my readers. Sorry.
If Creighton and Northern Iowa win on Tuesday, the Jays and Panthers remain tied for first place, while the Jays clinch no worse than a #2 seed in St. Louis. If both teams win on Saturday, they share the league title and the same massively complex tiebreaker formula will decide who gets the #1 seed. If one or the other loses on Saturday, the team who won their game is the outright champ.
The other two scenarios aren't going to happen, so I won't even discuss them. Why waste pixels on fantasy? Save 'em for your Star Trek blog, nerd. (I kid.)
You bet.
