Badgers Stumble - Eagles Tumble - Bulldogs Rise

Bucky at home. 1/18/2014 dwm

The Wisconsin Badgers had one job to do Saturday, beat Penn State at home to secure a "double-bye" in the B1G men's basketball tournament that starts in Indianapolis tomorrow. 

A double-bye means the team would only need to win three games to take the championship. Instead, Bucky's boys will have to start play Thursday, needing four wins to earn the crown.

The game against Penn State looked an awful lot like their loss to Oregon where the team seemed to forget the style of play that worked for them once they fell behind and relied on putting up quick three pointers.

The Badgers will still make the field of 68 in the NCAA men's bracket and could still put together a nice run, but the conversation that this particular team felt like the teams that made it all the way to the Final Four was premature.

At the same time Wisconsin lost its opportunity for a bye, the rival east on I-94, Marquette fared worse against St. John's. The Red Storm made it difficult for the Golden Eagles, forcing overtime, then made a put-back as time expired for a gut-punch loss for Marquette. 

Wisconsin is my primary rooting interest but I have a soft-spot for Marquette because their team, then the Warriors, won the national title when I was 13 years old. If they aren't playing each other, I'm pulling for both. 

Drake teams are Bulldogs. 11/1/2019

 Then there's Drake.

 I became a fan of the Bulldogs when I set foot on campus in August 1981. Annually the athletic highlights were at Drake Stadium which hosted the Drake Relays in April. 

 It attracted Olympians each year - I saw Carl Lewis, Gwen Torrence, and many others at the meets I attended.

 The football team played at the division 1 level then and in 1981 they were ranked in the top 20 in the country!

 The basketball team's biggest accomplishment was in 1969 when it reached the Final Four, where they lost to UCLA. There was a long dry spell after that. 

 This may be the golden age of Drake men's basketball (the women's team was a strong team for the better part of 20 years) as they just won a third straight conference tournament to advance to the NCAA March Madness. 

In fact, there was a surprising statistic during Sunday's game when Drake beat rival and second-seed Bradley in the championship game, that indicated Drake had more wins in the last five years than all but one NCAA team, Houston. 

Drake punched it's ticket to the dance. I expect Marquette and Wisconsin will too; I just hope if any two of these three meet, it won't happen until the Sweet Sixteen.