Mid-Major Madness

4 days ago | midmajormadness.com | Lance Hartzler

James Snook-Imagn Images The transfer portal has really messed with the idea of a mid-major player going in the top 10 of the NBA Draft, huh? Long-gone are the days that players that came from the mid-major level like Damian Lillard (Weber State), Obi Toppin (Dayton), Jarace Walker (pre-Big 12 Houston), Jalen Williams (Santa Clara) CJ McCollum (Lehigh) get major buzz in the lottery. Instead, our sons land themselves (generally) later or they explode at a high-major squad.

1 week ago | midmajormadness.com | Sam Federman

I’m Jewish, from New York, and did not even attend a religious school past elementary. I should have no input on any of this. But even I was struck by how down bad Saint Joseph’s University must be right now. For some background and a little history lesson:There are hundreds of Judeo-Christian schools in America, all from different denominations. Some schools are evangelical, some schools are Lutheran, some schools are Baptist, some non-denominational. Most of those schools are in the south.

1 week ago | midmajormadness.com | Ian Sacks

Eakin Howard-Imagn Images Will Smith and the English band The Clash. Wait, I thought this article was about the transfer portal, not music. Going to tie both of them into the craziness of the month-long portal season. Should I Stay or Should I Go? There we go, that’s one. The Clash released that hit song in the early 80s. You’re welcome, it’s now stuck in your head. That is the question that faces every single college basketball player each year now.

1 week ago | midmajormadness.com | Sam Federman

Orlando Ramirez-Imagn Images Forty-one mid-major Division I programs across 21 of the 26 mid-major leagues have a new head coach representing their school who are tasked with working on building up a roster for the 2025-26 season. This year’s hiring cycle featured a ton of different wrinkles. The new wave of hiring coaches off of NBA staffs has gotten lots of talk, and even two mid-major programs hired coaches with primarily NBA backgrounds.

2 weeks ago | midmajormadness.com | Lance Hartzler

Followers of the Big Sky Conference know Sacramento State well. The program with just two winning seasons since the early 1990s is most known for its charming high-school-level of a gym fondly called “The Nest” — which is one of the NCAA’s oldest facilities being in operation since 1955. It sits a whopping 1,000 attendees. The Hornets have often been feisty in a number of Big Sky seasons but have never amounted to much at all. The Nest is rumbling, though, with a run of major moves in 2025.