2019 NCAA Tournament

[WUPHF]

The Acme Bar and Grill looks very good.

If I were going, I would head there...

[Greek Tragedy]

The Acme Bar and Grill looks very good.

If I were going, I would head there...

The Pub @ 1802 looks fine as well.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Here in Ft. Wayne, already ran into Aston Francis in the weight room as I was exploring the hotel.  They really have done up the welcome wagon pretty well - balloons and banners everywhere.  Haven't been up to the arena yet - flight delays - but I hear it's a pretty good set-up as well.  My flight had two of the officials for this weekend and NABC All-Star Nick DePersia from Rowan.  Pretty cool.

[RogK]

A little trivia for those doing the weekend in Fort Wayne :
Allen County War Memorial Coliseum opened in September 1952. The NBA Fort Wayne Pistons moved into the new arena for the '52-'53 season, having previously been situated in a large high school gym. Sharing the NBA Western Division with the Pistons that season were the Milwaukee Hawks, Indianapolis Olympians, Rochester (NY) Royals and Minneapolis Lakers. The Eastern Division consisted of the Philadelphia Warriors, Baltimore Bullets, Boston Celtics, Syracuse Nationals and New York Knicks.
Indianapolis folded, leaving the Western Division with four teams for the '53-'54 season.
Baltimore folded after a 3-11 start to the '54-'55 season and those games were voided. The remaining 8 teams (4 per division) completed a revised 72 game schedule.
The '55-'56 campaign saw the Hawks move from Milwaukee to St Louis.
No franchise movement for the '56-'57 season, but then the Fort Wayne Pistons relocated to Detroit and the Rochester Royals shifted to Cincinnati for '57-'58.
So, the War Memorial Coliseum saw NBA action for five seasons. Ponder that for a minute or three. An old Pistons program might still be lodged behind a seat somewhere.

[ronk]

A little trivia for those doing the weekend in Fort Wayne :
Allen County War Memorial Coliseum opened in September 1952. The NBA Fort Wayne Pistons moved into the new arena for the '52-'53 season, having previously been situated in a large high school gym. Sharing the NBA Western Division with the Pistons that season were the Milwaukee Hawks, Indianapolis Olympians, Rochester (NY) Royals and Minneapolis Lakers. The Eastern Division consisted of the Philadelphia Warriors, Baltimore Bullets, Boston Celtics, Syracuse Nationals and New York Knicks.
Indianapolis folded, leaving the Western Division with four teams for the '53-'54 season.
Baltimore folded after a 3-11 start to the '54-'55 season and those games were voided. The remaining 8 teams (4 per division) completed a revised 72 game schedule.
The '55-'56 campaign saw the Hawks move from Milwaukee to St Louis.
No franchise movement for the '56-'57 season, but then the Fort Wayne Pistons relocated to Detroit and the Rochester Royals shifted to Cincinnati for '57-'58.
So, the War Memorial Coliseum saw NBA action for five seasons. Ponder that for a minute or three. An old Pistons program might still be lodged behind a seat somewhere.

 I've mentioned this before: when the Celtics came to "town" by train, they had to get off some distance outside of town and hitchhike or grab some local transportation to get into Ft Wayne. 

[RogK]

That's pretty revealing, ronk. The early NBA must have been a frequently low-budget operation.
Basketball may have looked rather primitive back then, too.
Click on the "show box score scan" here :
https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/195211150INO.html
The starting 5 are identified as C LF RF LG RG! I assume that stands for Left Forward, Right Forward, etc.
They apparently thought it was useful to have rigidly-defined positions.

[AO]

The NBA definitely had humble beginnings.  The Lakers had to play a couple playoff games at Hamline when they ran into scheduling conflicts with the Minneapolis Auditorium and Armory.

[Mr. Ypsi]

That's pretty revealing, ronk. The early NBA must have been a frequently low-budget operation.
Basketball may have looked rather primitive back then, too.
Click on the "show box score scan" here :
https://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/195211150INO.html
The starting 5 are identified as C LF RF LG RG! I assume that stands for Left Forward, Right Forward, etc.
They apparently thought it was useful to have rigidly-defined positions.

Although the reality is much more fluid for at least most teams, is that necessarily that much more rigid than power forward, small forward, shooting guard, and point guard?

[y_jack_lok]

Here's another food option: https://noriasiancuisine.com. Asian fusion, really good, not too expensive. It's just West of I-69 at exit 316 (which is a few miles north of the coliseum exit) in a complex with several other restaurants.

[RogK]

Mr Ypsi, it would be rigid if "Right Forward" really meant he was told to confine himself to a small sector of the floor on offense. As you suggest, labels don't necessarily match actual movement of players. I guess "point guard" is the most accurate label, for someone who is primary dribbler / ball handler. If indeed a team has a primary dribbler.
I don't see any purpose in calling someone a power forward, for example. It's hard to define the dividing line between what is a 2 or 3 or 4 when they have overlapping skills.
Does a power forward have to get more than 28 rebounds per 100 minutes?
So-called 2s and 3s certainly seem interchangeable.
I guess my idea is to observe the game without preconceptions of what various players in alleged positions are supposed to do.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Can't argue with anything you said.  I'm just wondering if RF and LF were in actuality as rigidly defined as the name suggests?  And I don't know the answer for that.  Have roles on the court really evolved that much in fluidity, or have they always been that way?  (I suspect they have gotten more fluid, but I wonder if they were ever as restricted as the old names implied?)

[RogK]

Looking a little through the results of the ABA Indiana Pacers, they played a few home games in Fort Wayne (the Coliseum) such as 1/12/73 vs the Denver Rockets and 2/24/74 vs the Virginia Squires. I'm sure those dates seem ancient to the guys who'll play at the Coliseum this weekend, but they'll be able to say they've played in a building that saw regular season ABA and NBA games.

[sac]

Neat D3 trivia, Trine University's football stadium is named after Fred Zollner owner of the Ft. Wayne Pistons(they were actually known as the Ft. Wayne Zollner Pistons) as is the on campus golf course.  I was lucky to have played there twice in college when it was still Tri-State University.

Their new basketball arena actually houses the clubhouse for the golf course on the lower level and is built on the site of the old clubhouse.

[kiko]

We actually used the LG/RG/etc. designations when I was on the junior high school team in the sixth grade.  (Not joking -- this was in the era juuuuust before MTV came online.)  It indicated where you started before the team ran whatever play it was trying to execute in the half court offense, and where you were assigned if you were playing zone on the defensive end.

Whether this was the NBA system or not, I can't say... we were more than a few rungs down the pyramid from them.  It may have just been a way to organize things in a way that kids could understand, and maybe execute properly one time out of every six or so.

[BluesBrother]

Slightly off-topic, but...

Whitman men's basketball senior guard Austin Butler is a finalist in the "Darkhorse Dunker" contest. On the line is a trip to the NCAA Division I Final Four in Minneapolis, Minn. to compete in the 2019 College Slam Dunk contest broadcast live on ESPN.

Voting starts today and ends Friday, March 22. You can vote once per day and do so on each of your devices and on each of the browsers installed on those devices. (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.) Several browsers feature an "incognito" mode which you can also use to vote, and do so up to three times per day.

If you'd like to see Austin represent D3, go to http://www.darkhorsedunker.com/ and click "VOTE NOW" under Austin's headshot.