NIT Madness

I hope that everyone has their NIT brackets filled out because the 'Cats travel to Tulsa tomorrow to take on the Golden Hurricane in the first round of NIT action. This will be the first time that Northwestern plays in the NIT away from the Chicago area. Tulsa is of course known for its Golden Digger, an enormous yellow statue that guards the Tulsa County Fairgrounds and wards off evil spirits and malevolent djinns.

The Golden Digger must defend the Tulsa County Fairgrounds from Big Tex,
who emerges from the prairie every so often to plunder elephant ears, send the
tractors into disarray and menace the carnies

Tulsa went 24-10 this season, finishing second in Conference USA to Memphis. The Golden Hurricane is led by guard Ben Uzoh, center Jerome Jordan, and their mascot Captain Cane, who was stolen from a misguided Dairy Queen promotional effort.

Captain Cane's hollow, funnel-shaped
head has led to a series of unfortunate
mascot drownings on rainy football
afternoons and a near catastrophe with
a disastrous wadded up paper
night promotion

The city of Tulsa prided itself on a 1957 time capsule project that included a 1957 Pontiac Belvedere. The capsule leaked, destroying the car, but preserved the rest of the contents of the capsule, which according to this picture seem to be a mysterious series of jugs.

Tulsa's thwarted attempts to mess with time have thankfully prevented an inevitable
Bifftown apocalypse

NIT SEEDING

Seeding for the NIT is, of course, a mysterious science that has little in common with NCAA tournament bracketology. While the NCAAs have a series of pundits looking at record, RPI ranking, conference standings, and conference RPI, the NIT uses the telepathic dolphin from Johnny Mnemonic.

Ecstatic fans react to the dolphin's selection of Tennessee-Martin as an eight seed in the NIT

Johnny Mnemonic is a tremendous movie because no one in his or her right mind can turn down Keanu Reeves, Ice T, and Dolph Lundgren battling the Yakuza in a poorly-thought-out cyberpunk setting with computers operated by what appear to be Power Gloves. Dolph Lundgren had a brief run in the 1990s as the poor man's Schwarzenegger, selflessly churning out direct to video gems at an laudable clip. Try to guess which of the following Dolph Lundgren movie titles are fake: Hidden Agenda, Bridge of Dragons, Storm Catcher, Danish Vengeance, Silent Trigger, The Minion, The Clobberer, Red Scorpion.

Welsh-Ryan Ramblings has assailed the NIT seeding process, arguing that Notre Dame got an undeserved home game while the 'Cats have to take a prairie schooner out to Tulsa. The complaints are logical and make sense except for that Welsh-Ryan Ramblings might be the only person on the face of the earth to take NIT seedings seriously. Not even the NIT selection committee cares about where teams are seeded as they're too busy escaping from the Future Yakuza and Johnny Mnemonic's demands for room service and a $10,000 a night hooker. Still, you can contact the NIT and give them a piece of your mind, but I believe that they'd just laugh at you like a Zaporozhian Cossack.

The NIT Committee responds to Stephen F. Austin fans' remonstrances at getting
an unjust seven seed

SO THE ZAPOROZHIANS DECLARE

According to legend, in 1676, the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed IV sent a letter to the Zaporozhian Cossacks in the lower Dniepher river area a demand to "submit to me voluntarily and without any resistance, and to desist from troubling me with your attacks." The Cossacks apocryphally replied:

Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Turkish Sultan!

You, turkish devil and damned devil's brother and friend, secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight are you, that can't slay a hedgehog with your naked arse? The devil shits, and your army eats. You will not, you son of a bitch, make subjects of Christian sons; we've no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck your mother.

You Babylonian scullion, Macedonian wheelwright, brewer of Jerusalem, goat-fucker of Alexandria, swineherd of Greater and Lesser Egypt, Armenian pig, Podolian villain, catamite of Tartary, hangman of Kamyanets, and fool of all the world and underworld, an idiot before God, grandson of the Serpent, and the crick in our dick. Pig's snout, mare's arse, slaughterhouse cur, unchristened brow, screw your own mother!

So the Zaporozhians declare, you lowlife. You won't even be herding Christian pigs. Now we'll conclude, for we don't know the date and don't own a calendar; the moon's in the sky, the year in the book, the day's the same over here as it is over there; for this kiss our arse!

Koshovyi Otaman Ivan Sirko, with the whole Zaporozhian Host

Let's hope the 'Cats can make an NIT run starting with those wheelrights and scullions over at Tulsa.