The TipOff Crowd

[SelectionSunday]

Speaking as someone who far & away considers college/Gopher basketball his #1 interest outside of his family & friends, I find Midnight Madness boring. It's neat for about 2 minutes & then I'm ready to leave. Watching dunks & other nonsense just doesn't do it for me. I'd rather watch a real practice.

 

[bga1]

Speaking as someone who far & away considers college/Gopher basketball his #1 interest outside of his family & friends, I find Midnight Madness boring. It's neat for about 2 minutes & then I'm ready to leave. Watching dunks & other nonsense just doesn't do it for me. I'd rather watch a real practice.

I totally agree with you on this. But give me a real intrasquad game and warmup. I agree on a practice- I attended one of Clem's and loved it, but that's not interesting to enough people to make it a big event.

Were it me arranging this I'd get a big name local band in at about 8:30PM, do player intros at 9:45 and do a full 40 minute maroon/gold intrasquad game complete with timeouts etc. starting at 10:00 (if that's the first allowed tip off time). There would be flyers all over the campus on the thing and a bunch of nice prizes for students at half time- TVs, a free semester of tuition, season tickets, the works. Spend some cash and get the place jumping to kick the year off. People like us wouldn't show up until 9:45 but it would be great for the students earlier.

 

[underground629]

But since you can't watch practice (well, maybe you can), don't you still think it's worth going to? I thought last year was well worth the time. I thought it was pretty damn entertaining watching the dunk contest, seeing the new players play, and talking to them while getting autographs. I didn't get a chance to talk to players this year and I was pretty disappointed in the dunk contest, but I thought it was still worth it just to see some new players.

Speaking as someone who far & away considers college/Gopher basketball his #1 interest outside of his family & friends, I find Midnight Madness boring. It's neat for about 2 minutes & then I'm ready to leave. Watching dunks & other nonsense just doesn't do it for me. I'd rather watch a real practice.

 

[underground629]

That would be nice for the students but there's no way the school would ever fork out even close to that amount of money. I agree on the ideas, just not quite to that extreme (because realistically they wouldn't happen).

I totally agree with you on this. But give me a real intrasquad game and warmup. I agree on a practice- I attended one of Clem's and loved it, but that's not interesting to enough people to make it a big event.

Were it me arranging this I'd get a big name local band in at about 8:30PM, do player intros at 9:45 and do a full 40 minute maroon/gold intrasquad game complete with timeouts etc. starting at 10:00 (if that's the first allowed tip off time). There would be flyers all over the campus on the thing and a bunch of nice prizes for students at half time- TVs, a free semester of tuition, season tickets, the works. Spend some cash and get the place jumping to kick the year off. People like us wouldn't show up until 9:45 but it would be great for the students earlier.

 

[Jackson5]

This was another thing I was thinking. I think if a recruit comes to a Big 10 game, they're impressed. The Barn isn't what it used to be, but is impressive. But if you're a recruit, and you watch these packed Midnight Madnesses all over the nation, and you come to this...how is that a recruiting tool?

The Big Ten Network had a tipoff special. Crowds at Illinois and Wisconsin were about the same size as ours. Northwestern had 100 people standing around. Indiana's was bigger, but not as big as I expected, the upper deck was empty and of course Assembly Hall has no seating behind the baskets so it makes the sides fuller.

 

[GopherJack]

Football game is away at Purdue. Believe it or not they have fans travel. Also, there was a hockey game going on at the same time.

To be quite honest, the whole event only took a little over an hour. It would have been nice to see a 40 minute scrimmage. Also that 3 point contest was lame. And Rodney didn't even dunk.

The barn needs a new scoreboard too, that place is a dump. I'm all about history, but you can keep a historic building and upgrade the technology inside it.

Anybody attend the hockey game beforehand? I'd be curious to know if they made an announcement instructing people to "head on over to Williams Arena" to attend the Tipoff