UCI has always faced two obstacles that have worsened with time. First, there are the high academic standards that turn away prospects who look on studies more as an irritation than an opportunity. And, second, the lack of national visibility in the UCI program doesn’t sit well with players who are looking to big money in the pros.
For someone like me from the Midwest, where real estate doesn’t sell unless there is a basket on the garage and schools are built around the gymnasium, we take our basketball wherever we can find it, and UCI is the only show in town that leads to March Madness.
So we go. And sometimes — like partisans of the visiting teams — we outnumber the UCI students in the stands, which is hard to comprehend for an Indiana boy who never saw an empty seat at a basketball game until he moved west.
The notable exception to this picture has, of course, been the program of UCLA’s John Wooden who was born, raised, played and first coached in Indiana.
My high school — South Side of Fort Wayne — won the state championship in my senior year, the first time that prize went to one of Indiana’s half-dozen larger cities.
I wasn’t able to make the team, but I shared the celebration that surpassed the one that took place seven years later when we won World War II. We had our priorities in place.
The focus of all this joy was, and continues to be, the tournament. I don’t know if it was created in Indiana or we just refined it, but it has served as a role model for the March Madness that starts next week when 64 college teams will begin the fratricide that will reduce the competitors left standing to 16 by the end of the week.
