As a proud Wisconsin Badger, it pains me to no end that the NCAA hoops tournament (where we occasionally make the 2nd round) gets all the attention, while the NCAA hockey tournament (where we occasionally win) is all-too-often overlooked. So help me draw some hoops-pucks parallels to educate the masses:
BC is clearly Duke (affluent fan base that is both reviled and envied).
Minnesota and/or North Dakota would be Kansas (proud tradition, biggest thing in a small state, plenty of banners)
Wisconsin would be Louisville (perennial contender, occasionally it all comes together for a championship but often overshadowed by close rivals).
Which leads me to my question...is this Yale run the equivalent of the 1985 Villanova championship? Does that make Andrew Miller the Ed Pinckney?
— Brody R.
Don't try to distract me with Yale hockey, because I see what you're up to here. Only a Wisconsin fan would lump Minnesota and North Dakota together like that. This is how wars get started. Those fans are like Bloody Mary. I'm afraid to invoke their names. Do you realize that by even printing this e-mail I'm going to receive 900 angry e-mails and tweets from Gophers and The Artists Formerly Known As The Fighting Sioux, all of them getting huffy about being compared with their most-hated rival?
So let's compare North Dakota to, say, Kentucky — a team that one of my friends describes as having "the Bama fans of college basketball." Just as you can't scroll through any college football comment thread without spotting a rogue "ROLL TIDE!," it's impossible to attend a college hockey event that isn't randomly being attended by proud hordes of green-wearing North Dakota fans. I bet even if I went to some D-III NESCAC regular-season game in November there'd still be a pocket of North Dakotans up in the stands, asking everyone who walks by if they've been to Ralph Engelstad Arena. These people are serious.
If BC is Duke, then Jerry York is Mike Krzyzewski. I'll buy that. (Speaking of Jerry York, only he could turn an article about the Watertown manhunt into whimsy. "I got Bauer hockey sticks all over the house as our last line of defense," he said.) And Boston University would have to be UNC. (Northeastern is NC State.)