Giving Thanks for the MVC & OVC

Special People & Unique Accomplishments

(St. Louis, MO) – Happy Thanksgiving! Today, I am giving thanks for the MVC & OVC. This is my twenty-eighth full season of covering these great leagues and the fourteenth of the existence of this site.

We are on the verge of setting records for readership and for that I am grateful.

The Missouri Valley and Ohio Valley Conferences are filled with special people who produce unique accomplishments. I have such great respect for the people I’ve met in these two wonderful leagues.

I’m giving thanks.

Giving Thanks for Great Experiences

For the past twenty-seven years I have announced games, interviewed people, written stories and watched thousands of hours of outstanding basketball. Because of these two leagues, I have covered NCAA Tournaments, met hundreds of people, learned more about life, basketball and leadership.

Watching Southern Illinois Edwardsville and Southeast Missouri play in their first-ever NCAA Tournament games was a privilege. I will never forget Homer Drew and Valparaiso fans after a Sweet Sixteen game loss and the great affection he and those fans had for one another and for that team.

Wichita State’s 35-0 start. Loyola’s Final Four push. Doug McDermott scoring explosions. Ja Morant’s athleticism. Jake and ‘The Giant Killers’ taking down number one ranked teams. The list is endless.

Gracious Players & Coaches

I’ll never forget the kindness of so many of the players and coaches that have given me time, respect and their insights. I’ve learned much from them and getting to know them away from the competitive arena is a privilege. I don’t take it lightly.

During one Arch Madness weekend early in Loyola’s MVC life, Porter Moser made it a point to walk the full length of the court to greet me and thank me for my coverage of the Ramblers and the Valley. We hadn’t really met and I was setting up equipment for a pregame interview.

Players that I’ve interviewed via a video link remembering and appreciating our conversations, blow me away. It happened again recently with Indiana State’s Camp Wagner.

During Josh Schertz’s first year with the Sycamores, he left a meal with his team to sit for a radio segment with Brendan Wiese and me for KTRS radio. Why? He cared about his team, the league and us.

SIUE’s Brian Barone always takes more time to speak with me than required. He and so many coaches have understood what reporters need to help us do our jobs. Barone goes above and beyond the requirements.

Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things

Our friend and ESPN broadcaster Mark Adams coined the phrase #DoMoreWithLess and his Twitter posts on this topic are epic. Yes, I still call it Twitter and the Valley and OVC basketball programs and the league offices do that every day.

While working with a fraction of the money that the ‘power five’ conferences spend, the programs from these two leagues do extraordinary things. That hill to climb seems to be getting steeper and still these league offices and basketball teams ‘fight the good fight’ and accomplish great things.

Who is among four programs nationally that have won twenty or more games for fifteen straight seasons? Belmont has done that while splitting time between the OVC and MVC.

Deep NCAA Tournament runs by Loyola, Wichita State, Bradley, UNI, SIU and Missouri State remind us that great things can be accomplished by people doing things the right way for the right reasons.

Money may buy championships in today’s sports world, but it doesn’t buy accomplishments. When we watch a hard nosed Bradley team give Michigan State all they can handle in the Big Dance, or Northern Iowa take out Kansas, or Evansville claim the CIT championship, remember, they are all doing this with far less resources than their opponents.

OVC teams routinely schedule three ‘buy games’ at the home floors of ‘money conference’ teams simply to help finance their athletic departments and then compete like crazy against those same programs.

Giving Thanks for the Hidden Gems

For twenty-seven years I have been served by people at the league offices and by those on each and every campus that handle the information and set up media opportunities.

MVC Associate Commissioner Mike Kern and OVC Associate Commissioner Kyle Schwartz are unbelievable at what they do and they are amazing people! These two men ‘go the extra mile’. Well, that’s not true.

They go the extra ten miles. Any time and every time someone in the media needs information, help with an issue, clarification on league or team details, these two are available and seemingly glad to be!

Every person in any role like mine, knows that Mike and Kyle are absolutely the best in the business. And they are incredible people

Similarly, the Sports Information Directors at all twenty-two of these institutions are invaluable and people like me. We could not do our jobs without them. The pressures they face are enormous. They do way more than just basketball media notes.

Providing incredible insights and information on the hoops teams I’m trying to cover is a huge part of their job. But they are doing the same kind of work for numerous other sports during the whole school year.

I would say it is a thankless job, but I’m GIVING THANKS!

I shouldn’t name names, because if I named five of them, I’d be leaving off 17 great ones, but people that have been doing it forever like Dave Winder at Murray State, Greg Sage at Belmont, Joe Pott at SIUE, Morehead State’s Matt Schabert and Evansville’s Bob Pristash and the departed Rick Kindhart at Missouri State have become more than conduits of information. They’ve become friends.

Broadcasters & Writers

So many broadcasters, fellow writers, players and fans have made my time covering these two ‘valley’ conferences truly special. Hall-of-famers like Mike Riese, Art Hains, Mike Kennedy, Dick Luedke, Dave Snell, Neal Bradley, Gary Rima and the late Larry Cotlar have been mentors and friends. The younger crop will join those men with their own legendary status soon.

I’m grateful to have worked with the likes of Rich Zvosek, Kevin Lehman, Dan Muller and Marcus Wilson on the TV side and a huge number of people on the radio side. Kevin Paulus, you can’t be replaced.

The current crop of writers that have taken the reins from the likes of Dave Reynolds, Jim Benson, Todd Hefferman and Todd Golden are exploring new ways to serve the fans. Podcasts, Twitter posts and private websites have taken over the newspaper beats. It’s a good, but different journalistic world. I’m giving thanks to be a small part of it.

While the OVC is looking for a new Commissioner, I’m grateful for the last one. Beth DeBauche is a quality person. Jeff Jackson is doing an amazing job in the MVC Commissioner’s role and former Commissioner Doug Elgin ‘set the tone’ for this great league for a long, long time.

By-the-way, I’m still giving thanks for Aaron Borchelt.

Today, I’m giving thanks.

Do Good