Beyond the Arc : Midnight Madness

Big Blue Nation goes international

Mike Miller — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:11:00 GMT

Ed Reinke/AP

John Calipari greets the Big Blue faithful.

Big Blue Nation is going international.

Via John Calipari’s Twitter account, Kentucky’s athletic department has translated Coach Cal’s speech at Big Blue Madness into eight different languages. This is not a typo.

Maybe it’s just the next step in creating an unstoppable Kentucky basketball force in a 24-7 Internet world, but … it just leaves me kind of speechless. Now Kentucky fans can see Calipari’s speech in Spanish, Kazakh, Russian, Chinese, Afrikaans, German, Arabic and American sign language.

This seems kinda over the top – and a little bit amazing. I only speak one language (I know, typical American), so I don’t have to seek out similar types of translations. I’m also not aware of other schools doing this kind of thing very often. Perhaps it goes on more than I know.

Regardless, it’ll only serve to burnish the images of Calipari, the school, and Kentucky hoops in general.

Everyone else, take note.

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Guide to Midnight Madness (With recruits!)

Mike Miller — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:19:00 GMT

James Crisp/AP

Kentucky fans usually fill Rupp Arena to capacity during Midnight Madness

Tonight, everyone gets caught up in the madness. Well, almost everyone.

Midnight Madness (Thanks, Lefty Driesell) has kicked off the college basketball season for years, but it’s becoming bigger than ever. Once schools figured out the first day of practice (officially, tomorrow, thus the midnight) could be a showcase for fans and an excellent recruiting tool, everyone got in on the act.

It’s even televised. (Though you could always follow the events on Rush the Court’s live blog.) The only thing better would be if it were March Madness. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Here’s a guide to Midnight Madness.

ESPNU is handling the live coverage, from 9 p.m.-1 a.m. ET, with a simulcast on ESPN2 from 11:30 p.m.-Midnight, ET. (Mostly scrimmages and highlights on the simulcast, none of the skits and speeches.) It’s no small production, either.

They’ll have cameras and commentators at nine schools – Connecticut, Duke, Georgetown, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan State, North Carolina, North Dakota State and Washington. Yes, NDSU is part of the party. Fresh off their first-ever NCAA tourney berth, the Bison are giving away free pizza and having a $10,000 half-court shot.

And what do other schools have prepped? (Though this is an incomplete list)

It’s the 25^th late night at Kansas, which has gone from Late Night with Larry Brown to Later with Roy Williams, Late Night with Roy Williams and is current version, Late Night in the Phog. That’s a lot of missed sleep.
Tar Heel fans will watch Roy Williams do his shuffle at Late Night with Roy.
John Calipari says Kentucky fans deserve a show tonight. No kidding. They’ve been dying to see this team.
Here’s a fond look at what may have been Georgetown’s first late night.
It’s not just the UConn men, but the national champion UConn women, too.
Washington’s starting things up right after its third-ranked volleyball team plays against UCLA. Gotta love the multi-sport evenings.
Michigan State’s unveiling its new Final Four banner tonight, while in-state rival Michigan is hosting its first midnight event since 1996.
At Indiana, it’s called “Hoosier Hysteria.” At Clemson, it’s called “Rock the ‘John.”
And you didn’t think Maryland – where Lefty started this while – would miss out on this party, right? Comcast is handling the broadcast.

But the real reason most of this is done? For recruits. Coaches figured out long ago that when you fill arenas with fans who came to watch a glorified practice, play some rock music and put on a big light show, it impressed the hell out of high school players who haven’t seen that kind of show before.

Making the Dance has a comprehensive list of which recruits are going to be where, including the top seniors, juniors and sophomores.

Indiana and Marquette have a ton of underclassmen attending, while Kansas and Kentucky seem to be playing host to most of the top N.Y. and N.J. talent. When you’re watching ESPN’s coverage, keep a look out for those guys in the letter jackets right behind the benches. Chances are, they’ll be on those benches again in a few years.

Follow me on Twitter and get more college basketball news at NBCSports.com.

Kentucky faithful taking it to another level

Mike Miller — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Plenty of fan bases – Kansas, Duke, Indiana, UNC – go nuts for their schools. But I’m with The Dagger on this one: Kentucky fans just go above and beyond.

Big Blue Madness, the school’s annual midnight scrimmage, is set for Oct. 16. Tickets go on sale Oct. 3 at 6 a.m. ET. Fans are camping out en masse for those tickets – and have been for days.

Wow. That’s equal parts devotion, excitement and a little bit crazy. Even new coach John Calipari is blown away by the number of tents filled with fans. (Here’s a photo gallery of it all.)

Serious support for Kentucky’s Midnight Madness is nothing new. Rupp Arena is regularly filled to the brim with the Big Blue faithful (usually more than 23,000). But this is taking it to another level. School officials say more than 300 tents are set up.

Check out the quotes from this story in the Kentucky Kernel. These folks can’t wait for hoops season.

“This beats even when [Rick] Pitino first came,” said Todd Courtney, a factory worker from Versailles, Ky. “Back when Pitino first came, things got rowdy. But this is special here. This is the way UK basketball is supposed to be.”

“The last few years Kentucky hasn’t been Kentucky,” said Brian Noe, an electrician from Versailles. “Now (being the favorites again) is starting to be what we’re expecting.”

To say Kentucky fans have high hopes for Calipari’s debut season is putting it mildly. This could be quite the show.

The Madness hits early -- now start recruiting

Mike Miller — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:43:00 GMT

The 2008-09 college basketball season is here. Well, almost.

Kentucky, Illinois, West Virginia and a handful of others jumped on an NCAA rule that allows schools two hours of team workouts per week (since mid-September) to host their Midnight Madness festivities a week before the season’s official start date of Oct. 17.

The early starts aren’t a big hit with the National Association of Basketball Coaches board, who see it as flouting a rule that was meant to let coaches work with their players more, not parading them around.

“We don’t want to hurt further (NCAA) legislation in trying to have coaches have more access to their players,” NABC spokesman Rick Leddy told the AP.

The NABC’s heart is in the right place – coaches should have more access to their players – but it’s head got in the way. As the Sporting News’ Mike DeCourcy writes, these schools aren’t breaking any rules, nor are they doing anything remotely wrong. It’s just a way of kicking off the season with fans and recruits in mind.

For those who have never attended a Midnight Madness event, it’s not a typical practice, but a way to introduce players with a little fanfare. It’s food, contests, some showing off and a scrimmage. Consider it a cousin to college football’s spring games.

But mostly, it’s great way to sell a program to recruits.

Kentucky expected 12 recruits to attend Friday’s events, including top prospect Daniel Orton. (He’s one of the top centers available in the 2009 class, according to both Scout.com and Rivals.com.)

Illinois has 16 recruits for their event, mostly with an eye on the future. Eight prospects from the class of 2011 should be on hand, notably five-star forward Mike Shaw, a Chicago native.

For more on where recruits are headed, click here.

Next week, it’ll be more of the same, just on a larger scale.

National champion Kansas will reportedly have six five-star recruits on hand (tip of the hat to Making the Dance), including Scout.com’s top prospects at shooting guard and small forward in Xavier Henry and Lance Stephenson.

Guess it’s true what Mel Brooks says.

Midnight Madness ups the ante

Mike Miller — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 21:01:00 GMT

Midnight Madness has gone the way of the summer movie. It used to be a simple thing with skits and a scrimmage. Now it takes fancy cars, fireworks and a bit of panache.

Then again, considering how much I enjoyed The Bourne Identity and Transformers, a bigger show isn’t all that bad -- especially when I think of just how excruciating Midnight Madness could be. Hanging around in the gym on a Friday night just to see an exaggerated scrimmage? Ugh. Fans could use a little entertainment.

Enter the Jerry Bruckheimer version of Midnight Madness.

That would be Maryland coach Gary Williams showing up at the Comcast Center in a yellow Lamborghini, getting out with to shooting flames and “his traditional fist pump as the Shop Boyz hip-hop beat "Party Like a Rock Star" thumped in the background.”

Or it’s the Kansas Jayhawks arriving at Allen Fieldhouse in a “Corvette, Infiniti, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, BMW, Hummer, Avalanche and stretch limousine,” to say nothing of an appearance by a “Survivor” winner.

What about success-starved Minnesota fans showering new coach Tubby Smith with cheers while Dickie V offers up a larger-than-life video tribute? When it comes to wowing fans, go to those absurd lengths.

Of course, some schools went old school, trotting out the new, high-flying freshmen. In Memphis’ case, that’s probably the right call. Derrick Rose is going to amaze people this season. Same deal in Indiana, where fans were more than ready for “Er-ic Gor-don, Er-ic Gor-don.”

(None of this applies if you’re the two-time defending champs. At this point, Florida sets its own tone.)

Other schools had to make a tougher transition. New Wake Forest coach Dino Gaudio will try to help the program recover after the death of popular coach Skip Prosser in the offseason. As one might expect, Prosser’s memory will loom over the school for some time. "We're going to do everything we can to show Coach Prosser that he definitely is not going to be forgotten," forward L.D. Williams told the AP.

Then again, no other school was more amped for Midnight Madness than Kentucky, where the Billy Gillispie era officially began. How amped? A crowd of “23,313 treated the new coach to a 30-second standing ovation.” (The Rupp crowd got a Bruckheimer-esque show of their own, with pyrotechnics and a rappelling mascot.)

As John Clay from the Herald-Leader writes, this day was a long time coming.

“After a summer of speculation and scuttlebutt, Big Blue Nation wants to see with its own eyes, make its own judgments on style of play, and evaluations of talent, philosophy and approach. They want mysteries solved.”

And really, that’s what Midnight Madness is all about. Even in the new blockbuster style.