Men's Basketball
2002 National Invitational Tournament (NIT) 1st Round
Home Team: Butler Bulldogs
Visiting Team: Bowling Green Falcons
Venue: Hinkle Fieldhouse (Indianapolis, Indiana)
Game Time: 7:00 p.m.
Game Story | Box Score
(Written January 19, 2013)
With Gonzaga visiting Butler tonight for a primetime ESPN game, and a matchup of two highly ranked teams, it got me thinking about my visit to Butler's venerable arena.
Being a basketball junkie, you have to love Hinkle Fieldhouse. It's a historic venue in the heart of basketball-mad Indiana, famous as the place where the championship game scenes were filmed for the movie Hoosiers. As soon as you walk in, you can feel the history. Besides that, it's just a cool building and a great place to see a game. I'm glad I had an opportunity to go.
Unfortunately, I didn't appreciate it as much as I should have. I was really emotionally invested in that BG team, attending all their home games, a number of away games, and their entire run through the MAC Tournament in Cleveland. I remember feeling in this game like they were getting jobbed by the refs, and thus I spent most of this game in a state of high irritation (to say the least). Nonetheless, I kept thinking BG would come back, that Keith McLeod had one more miracle left in him.
Sadly, it didn't happen; Butler pulled away toward the end, and thus ended the season for the best BG men's basketball team I've ever seen. Man, I loved those guys. And what was there not to love? McLeod was the MAC Player of the Year that year, leading the conference in scoring, and he was just so, so clutch. His backcourt mate, Brandon Pardon is still, for me, the absolute epitome of a point guard. Throw in center Lenny Matela, the Cowboy Brent Klassen, and perhaps the biggest athletic freak I've seen play for BG, Germain Fitch (before a couple of ACL injuries ended his career), and they were quite a collection. That was the team that briefly got coach Dan Dakich the head job at West Virginia, before changing his mind and returning to BG (where, sadly, things were never quite the same for him).
And really, as great a matchup as this game was, it was a game that never should have happened the way it did. Butler was 25-5 coming in; BG was 24-8, with three of those losses coming to Kent State (including one in the MAC Championship game), who made it all the way to the Elite Eight that year. Both teams should have been in the NCAA Tournament. Even in the NIT, this shouldn't have been a first-round matchup.
Still, it gave me a reason to visit Hinkle Fieldhouse, and even though BG lost and I didn't enjoy it as much as I should have, I'm glad I can say I've been there. It's just hard to believe it was almost eleven years ago. Hopefully someday I'll have a chance and a reason to go back.
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