Happy Thanksgiving

Drive and Dish is a basketball blog, so one might expect us to be engrossed in Thanksgiving college basketball tournaments. But we've never spent much time covering college Thanksgiving basketball tournaments on this blog. Of course, since we're basketball people, Thanksgiving basketball tournaments have been part of our lives. We played in them during high school and college. We've attended several of them as spectators. In general, we like Thanksgiving tournaments. They're fun. But we've never spent much time blogging about them. That's probably because Thanksgiving tournaments, fun though they may be, take place so early in the college basketball season that they're not terribly significant in the overall scheme of things.

November college basketball games are usually long-forgotten by the first week of January. By the time March Madness rolls around, November is usually such a distant memory that, for most observers, Thanksgiving tournament games seem like they were played in a previous decade. So Drive and Dish no longer spends much time fretting about them (in the first two or three years of this blog, we actually did give them some attention [more here, and here]).

But basketball commentary or not, it has become something of a Drive and Dish tradition to wish its readership a Happy Thanksgiving. And this year, it's no different. So Happy Thanksgiving, Drive and Dish readers!

At one point, it also became something of a Drive and Dish tradition to celebrate the opening weekend of the 'holiday season' -- one of the biggest party weekends of the year -- by posting one of Drive and Dish writer/editor Trashtalk Superstar's new DJ mixes on Thanksgiving day (Mr. Trashtalk spent several years rocking parties and clubs from behind the turntables, in addition to his many other duties). But last year, Drive and Dish wished its readers Thanksgiving pleasantries without posting a new DJ mix. That new 'tradition' will be extended to this year, as we have no new Thanksgiving weekend DJ mix to post. A special New Year's Eve Drive and Dish DJ mix to send 2011 out in style and welcome 2012 may not, however, be entirely out of the question. Stay tuned...

In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving!

Wichita State Wins NIT

Thursday night, Wichita State captured the N.I.T. title by upsetting Alabama 66-57 in the N.I.T. finals at Madison Square Garden in New York City. With the win, the Shockers became the first Missouri Valley Conference team to win a men's basketball postseason championship since Bradley won the N.I.T. in 1982. Though the the Missouri Valley has a rich and storied history, and though it's been one of college basketball's most prominent Mid Major conferences in the recent past, the league has been perceived as sub-par for the last four seasons. And that bad image has kept the Valley from garnering an at large bid to the NCAA Tournament over that period of time. This year, regular season conference champion Missouri State lost in the Missouri Valley tournament failed to land an NCAA Tournament bid. But with Wichita State winning the N.I.T, and with Creighton facing off against former coach Dana Altman's Oregon Ducks in the College Basketball Invitational (C.B.I.), the Valley has shown well this postseason.

Through his tenure at Wichita State -- and during his earlier days at Winthrop -- Shockers head coach Gregg Marshall has proven to be an outstanding college basketball coach. Over the years, his name has been mentioned frequently in conjunction with head coaching openings at higher profile programs. Whether or not Marshall has actually pursued any of those coaching positions remains unclear. As we've mentioned before, writers like to speculatively throw coaches' names around when writing about coaching vacancies. But for what it's worth, Marshall's name is being thrown around again this year with regard to several of the coaching vacancies at high major schools.

Gregg Marshall a long history of fielding highly competitive teams at Mid Major institutions. Now with an N.I.T. title in tow, he's likely to garner significant interest from Athletic Directors at big name schools with vacancies as he heads to the NABC coaches' convention at the Final Four in Houston.
the first postseason championship for the Shockers' basketball program.