NKU Norse Championship Shirts Unobxing

Ryan of Cincy Fan Zone unboxes two Northern Kentucky University Norse basketball championship shirts. 

Norse Up

With March Madness finally here, college basketball fans across the nation will be glued to their television sets as the best teams in the country battle it out for the right to be called national champions. I love March Madness and am a tournament junkie. I will try to watch every game simultaneously in order to make sure I do not miss a single second of the action. In the past, I have watched merely as a fan as the Louisville Cardinals, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, the Xavier Musketeers, and the Cincinnati Bearcats took to the hardwood in the national tournament. I root for all of those teams as a fan without any ties of my own to the universities that they represent. The college I attended had never qualified for the “big dance.”

I went to Northern Kentucky University from 2010 to 2014. During my freshman and sophomore years as an undergraduate, the athletic teams competed at the Division II level of the NCAA. They had some success as a D-II university as they won a few national titles in women’s basketball and a men’s soccer national championship my freshman year. Despite the successes, the fandom among students and those who lived around the university was not that great. The logos of other universities were a common sight, and the attendance at sporting events was usually pretty low.

That began to change toward the end of my sophomore year. The university announced that they would be moving up to Division I. They joined the Atlantic Sun conference and even qualified for the conference championship tournament in men’s basketball in their first year at the D-I level. They eventually moved to the Horizon League conference and qualified for that conference championship tournament as well. Even though they participated in conference tournaments, they were not allowed to participate in the national championship tournament for four years per NCAA rules after moving up to D-I. Any chance I had of seeing the Norse play for the national title in March would be as an alum and not a student.

So here we are in 2017 and it is NKU’s first season of national championship eligibility. Under the leadership of second year coach John Brannen, the Norse qualified for the Horizon League Conference Championship tournament as a 3 seed and went on a run that culminated in the school winning its first ever D-I conference championship for men’s basketball as well as qualifying for the national championship tournament. Words cannot describe how proud I am of my alma mater. As a student, nobody cared about Norse athletics. As an alum, Norse athletics are the current talk of the town.

Everybody wants an NKU conference championship shirt and finding one in stores is no easy task. The shirts hit stores last Thursday and sold out in hours. I had to order mine online form the NKU bookstore. Despite this minor inconvenience, I am still very excited to cheer on the Norse as they enter their first ever national championship tournament. I will be glued to a television screen hoping that the Norse become the 2017 Cinderella team. Maybe their magical season can culminate with them cutting down the net on April 3.

Norse up!

2016: Goodbye and Good Riddance

With the new year approaching, I thought I would take a retrospective look at 2016 for this week’s post. A lot of people I know here in the Cincinnati area are saying that 2016 sucked, and I have to agree. Aside from a few highlights such as the debut of FC Cincinnati, Adam Duvall’s breakout year with the Cincinnati Reds, and Dean Ambrose winning the WWE World Heavyweight Championship for the first time in his career, 2016 was an awful year. While I remember 2015 as being a fun and solid year overall, 2016 is a year I would love to forget. It all started in January…

My beloved Cincinnati Bengals rode a 12-4 record into the postseason where they faced their AFC North rival and the most hated football team in the Queen City: the Pittsburgh Steelers. The two teams met in the first round of the playoffs in a rematch that was 10 years in the making. Despite the Bengals playing without starting quarterback Andy Dalton, the team managed to grab the lead late in the fourth quarter. An interception by Vontaze Burfict seemingly ended a playoff win draught that plagued the franchise and the city for 25 years. Then the implosion happened. All the Bengals had to do was run out the clock, but Jeremy Hill fumbled the ball and the Steelers recovered. The defense committed two nonsensical and costly penalties, which put the Steelers in field goal range. The kick was good, and the Bengals were once again bounced from the playoffs in the first round in the most heartbreaking fashion.

Fast forward to the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. March Madness was in full swing and the tourney was producing some heart-stopping moments. The University of Cincinnati became a victim of one of those heart-stopping moments. After falling in the American Athletic Conference tournament in quadruple overtime thriller to the University of Connecticut, the Bearcats fell in the first round of March Madness to St. Joe’s in another exciting game. With the Bearcats down two points, Ocatvius Ellis appeared to have tied the game with a slam-dunk as time expired. Replay showed that the ball was still in the hands of Ellis as time ran out on the clock. The bucket did not count, and the Bearcats lost 78-76.

The University of Xavier Musketeers also suffered a heartbreaking loss to end their season. After arguably their best regular season in school history, the Musketeers secured a two seed in March Madness and looked to make a big splash in the tournament. Unfortunately that would not happen. The Musketeers battled the Wisconsin Badgers in the second round of the tournament. The game was tied at 63-63, and the Badgers inbounded the ball. Bronson Koenig threw up a shot from behind the arc that fell through the net as the buzzer sounded. The Musketeers lost and were denied a trip to the Sweet 16.

After March Madness came baseball, and the Cincinnati Reds were pitiful to watch. I understand that it was a rebuilding year, but I personally didn’t think they would be as awful as they were. The team finished with a record of 68-94 and missed the playoffs for the third straight year. Players were seemingly getting injured everyday, the performances on the field were generally poor, and the season just left a bad taste in the moths of Reds fans.

For as bad as the Reds were, there was a tremendous bright spot during the summer for Queen City sports. Cincinnati’s United Soccer Leauge team began to make a lot of noise on and off the pitch, and soccer fever reached record highs in the city. However, FC Cincinnati was not immune to disappointment. Despite setting numerous attendance records and qualifying for the playoffs, the team fell in the first round of the postseason in front of a record setting home crowd at Nippert Stadium. While not as heartbreaking as the Bengals playoff loss, it was still sad to see such an amazing debut season end with defeat.

Once the soccer season and the baseball season were finished, attention focused back to the Bengals. Almost everybody expected them to compete for the division title and once again be a top team in the NFL. That was not the case. The team has had a very disappointing 2016 season that makes the playoff loss from January even tougher for Who Dey Nation to swallow. Star players such as A.J. Green, Giovani Bernard, and Tyler Eifert having their seasons end prematurely due to injury was like rubbing salt in the wound. The team will finish third in the AFC North and will have a lot of work to do in the offseason if they hope to make the playoffs next year. It is fitting that a year that started with disappointment from the Bengals ends with the Bengals once again disappointing the city.

2016 was a rough one for Cincinnati sports. The Reds have fallen from being division champs to basement dwellers, FC Cincinnati, the UC Bearcats, and the Xavier Musketeers suffered heartbreaking postseason losses, and the Bengals started and ended 2016 with disappointment. I have personally hated 2016 and cannot wait for the fresh year to start. Hopefully it is a much better year for the city of Cincinnati, and its sports teams.

Photo Page Update

Photo Page Update @ https://t.co/JzwEdxiFEu With New #Bengals & #Bearcats Pics#WhoDey #MNF #LetsRoar #CINvsNYG #football #nba #TNF #NFL pic.twitter.com/9ZMvuAtJeX

— Cincy Fan Zone (@CincyFanZone) November 9, 2016