First Place!

I have three regular season games left in my Ball State managerial career, and it's awful hard to be in a better position than I am now. We played undoubtedly the biggest regular season game I've ever been a part of last night, and we actually freaking won. The team is now 13-13 (my best season as a manager by four wins), and 7-6 in the conference. Now, of course, that's ridiculously unimpressive. However, it's good enough for first place in our division. Not only that, last night's game gave us a one game lead on the division, and a virtual two game lead on second place!

The MAC has been absolutely god awful this season, and especially the MAC West, the division in which we participate. It should be telling that we're the only divisional team with more than nine wins, and we were one of the most impressive West teams in the cross-division match-ups--going 2-4 against the East. But you know what, I don't really care that much. This is the most competitive we've been in my four years, and I'm going to enjoy it.

Ball State also boasts the odds-on favorite for conference freshman player of the year in Jarrod Jones, who is likely to finish one of the most impressive freshman campaigns for a post player since the late 90s. He's among the top five in freshman scoring and top three in freshman rebounding in the Ball State record books, considering Ball State's basketball history, that's some select company. All signs point to him NOT transferring, something that previous freshman stars (our previous starting point Melvin Goins and Marquette's Maurice Acker) can't claim. So the best is clearly still to come.

It's also impressive considering that we lost our best player Anthony Newell, who was probably a favorite for conference player of the year, in the first conference game at Eastern Michigan. He was the leading scorer and rebounder, and among the tops in the league the past two seasons. His career ended just five points short of 1,000. Even with that, we're still in control of our destiny for a division title...