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Keeping Time

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BYANDREWR.GRAYBILL

W

HEN I MOVED
to Manhattan in
the mid-1990s, I
became an avid
listener of “Mike
and the Mad Dog,” an afternoon sports
radio program on 660 WFAN. Al-
though the focus most days was on
New York’s jumble of professional
teams, the show boasted a national
profile. Thus, during my first spring
as a devotee, I was mystified (if also
charmed) by the airtime that the
co-hosts—Mike Francesa and Chris
Russo—allotted to discussing the tour-
naments put on by various obscure
New York-area Division I basketball
conferences, such as the Metro Atlan-
tic or the Northeast. While there was
an automatic bid to the NCAAs at
stake for the leagues’ champions,
winners like the Iona Gaels or the
Monmouth Hawks were virtually as-
sured a low seed and therefore a quick
exit from “the Dance.” Still, even if
early March is a fallow season for
many sports fans, squeezed between
the Super Bowl and Opening Day,
Mike and Mad Dog understood that
a certain portion of their listenership
hungered for this coverage.
“The Back Roads to March: The
Unsung, Unheralded, and Unknown
Heroes of a College Basketball Sea-
son” is aimed at just such an audi-
ence. To be sure, author John Fein-
stein makes passing mention of
perennial heavyweights like Kansas,
Kentucky, North Carolina and Duke
(his alma mater; class of ’77), but he
is far more interested in teams from
schools such as the University of
Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC),
which upset top-ranked Virginia in
an opening-round game of the 2018
NCAA tournament, becoming the
first-ever No. 16 seed to defeat a
No. 1. There are 353 squads that com-
pete in NCAA men’s Division I basket-
ball, most of them much closer in
profile to UMBC than UVA. In his new
book, Mr. Feinstein spends the 2018-9
season with some of these over-
looked teams, introducing readers
to players and coaches familiar only
(if at all) to the most ardent hoops
enthusiast.
There is no better guide to this
world than Mr. Feinstein, who has
been enchanted with the college game
since 1965, when, as a boy growing
up in New York, he attended his first
tournament at the old Madison
Square Garden. He has since become
one of the nation’s most successful
and revered sports reporters, writing
for venues such as the Washington
Post and offering in-game commen-
tary on the CBS Sports Radio Net-
work. He is most famous, of course,
for the first of his three dozen pre-
vious books, “A Season on the Brink”
(1986), which chronicled his time
among the Indiana Hoosiers during
the 1985-6 basketball campaign, fo-
cusing especially on IU’s legendary
but irascible head coach, Bob Knight.
That volume has taken its deserved

place among the classics of sports-

writing, often appearing on “best-of”

lists with the likes of George Plimp-

ton’s “Paper Lion” (1966) and John

McPhee’s “Levels of the Game” (1969).

“The Back Roads to March” could

as well be titled “A Season on I-95,”

given all the time that Mr. Feinstein

spends in his car shuttling between

stops along the northeast corridor,

between New England and the mid-

Atlantic, as he drops in on countless

games from November through March.

(Mr. Feinstein’s gaze rarely crosses the

Appalachians, which will no doubt

distress fans of West Coast schools.)

We learn that despite basketball’s

being an indoor sport, the weather is

no small factor in the game, especially

for the coaches and players of these

smaller programs, who can only dream

of flying on chartered planes like the

sport’s royalty. (When Mike Krzyze-

wski of Duke, unhappy with an un-

inspired practice session, threatened

his team with a commercial flight,

they got the message.) Take, for in-

stance, the Black Knights of Army, who

early in the season must get out and

push their bus uphill after it dies in

a snowstorm on the way to a tour-

nament in Providence, where the ex-

hausted team promptly loses all three

of its matchups.

The theme that unites this dizzying

dramatis personae is an unquenchable

love of the game, even though most

will never coach or play in a March

Madness contest of much conse-

quence. As Mr. Feinstein explains in

the introduction: “In many ways, this

book is about Bjorn Broman,” a four-

year starter at Winthrop University in

Rock Hill, S.C. Although his Eagles

were soundly thumped in the quarter-

finals of the 2019 Big South Confer-

ence Tournament, Mr. Broman was

making hustle plays until the final

horn. “I just didn’t want it to end,”

he said afterward. “Basketball’s been

such a big part of my life for so long,

I wanted to play as long as I could

and as hard as I could.”

The heart and soul of the book,

however, is neither a player nor a

coach, but rather the Palestra, a sto-

ried Philadelphia gym, little changed

GREG NELSON/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED/GETTY IMAGES

The Back Roads to March

By John Feinstein

Doubleday, 416 pages, $28.95

since its opening in 1927, known as

the Cathedral of College Basketball

and home to the Penn Quakers as well

as the Philadelphia Big 5, an informal

grouping of local schools who face

off annually for bragging rights.

Mr. Feinstein makes multiple visits

during his reporting for the book.

For all its appeal, “The Back Roads

to March” misfires here and there.

Sports reporting, admittedly, is a genre

prone to cliché, but Mr. Feinstein is far

too good a writer to describe a UMBC

player having a great game as “un-

conscious,” or Sister Jean, the nona-

genarian team chaplain of the Loyola

(Chicago) Ramblers, as “sharp as a

tack.” More distracting are those

moments when Mr. Feinstein makes

himself the story, as when he describes

his behind-the-scenes campaign to get

Lefty Driesell—one of the winningest

coaches in college basketball history,

and clearly an author favorite—elected

to the Basketball Hall of Fame. I would

have preferred this episode stripped

of its self-congratulatory wrapping;

as Chris “Mad Dog” Russo often says

about commentators who suffocate

their listeners with too much informa-

tion, “Let the game breathe!”

Additionally, Mr. Feinstein largely

avoids criticism of any kind, save for

repeated (and merited) swipes at the

hypocrisy of the NCAA. Given the na-

tional conversation about the astro-

nomical cost of a college education,

one might expect Mr. Feinstein to

offer even brief commentary on the

vast sums spent by colleges and

universities on Division I basketball,

where—as of 2017—hoops coaches

were the highest paid public employ-

ees in eight U.S. states. (In 31 others,

that spot was locked down by a col-

lege football coach.) That UMBC, with

nearly 14,000 students but an endow-

ment of just over $100 million, would

open a $85 million state-funded

arena—and this months before the

historic win over Virginia—goes un-

questioned. Even for a relentlessly

uplifting book like this one, surely

there is room for a little more clear-

eyed skepticism.

On the other hand, love letters

rarely traffic in doubt or other un-

pleasantries, and “The Back Roads

to March” is nothing if not a long,

meandering, heartfelt missive to col-

lege basketball, best summed up for

Mr. Feinstein in the words of a plaque

that hangs inside the Palestra: “To

winthegameisgreat...Toplay the

gameisgreater...Buttolovethe

game is the greatest of all.” Words

to live by, whatever the contest.

Mr. Graybill is a professor

of history and director of the

William P. Clements Center

for Southwest Studies at

Southern Methodist University.

BOOKS

Like Life

Lorrie Moore’s

art of the short story

C10

TheBoysofWinter

Forget the ESPN highlight reel. If you want to see spirited, hell-for-leather basketball, visit a regional college gym.

A veteran sportswriter

returns to his first love,

the unsung players and

coaches of Division I

college hoops.

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