Editor’s Note: what follows is a five-part series that provides a first-hand account of a trip to Indianapolis for the 2021 NCAA men’s basketball tournament by Colter Nuanez and Riley Corcoran. The co-founder of Skyline Sports and the head of ESPN Missoula was accompanied by the Voice of the Griz to America’s heartland for the most unorthodox Big Dance of all time.
INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana — One thing we noticed almost right away is, it seems at least, like most people in Indy wear white shoes.
Some of the sneakers are scuffed and dirty while others have almost certainly just been taken out of their boxes. Some folks wear low-top Vans, others sport Nike Air Max 90s and some choose Chuck Taylors.
It’s hard to miss the footwear of the tens of thousands of hoops seekers in sneakers walking around downtown America’s heartland, particularly those trekking between state of the art professional arenas in Indiana’s capital city or traipsing to and from historic Hinkle Fieldhouse.
The attendance at the first-ever single-site NCAA men’s basketball tournament isn’t what it might be if not for a global pandemic. For a pair of Montana natives on site to take in a truly once in a lifetime spectacle, the scene is a bit overwhelming at first as we realize very quickly we are about to worship at the great tabernacle of basketball.
While basketball was born in Kansas, it’s a religion to Hoosiers, a fact instantly apparent as we begin a weekend with an itinerary that includes covering the best in the Big Sky Conference along with attending games featuring a few of the most successful basketball figures to come out of Montana since the turn of the 21st century.
Strange life circumstances aside, Indianapolis is a city that takes great pride in hosting events that draw visitors in from coast to coast. This weekend, one of America’s most central capital cities is abuzz for the first time in a long time.
When we first sat down at iconic Kilroy’s Irish Pub in the heart of downtown Indy — the first stop seemed fitting given it was the day after St. Patrick’s Day of 2021 — it felt like we were in uptown Butte, America and at the center of the basketball universe all at the same time.
The waitress had big hair and a friendly disposition. The cheesy pretzel melted in your mouth. The buzz of a much anticipated event could be felt all around the bar and downtown Indy in general.
Despite covering the Big Sky Conference in some form or fashion since 2006, I had never been to a NCAA men’s basketball Tournament. Riley Corcoran, the Voice of the Griz and my travel partner for the weekend, had been before. But this version of the Big Dance is the first of its kind, a 68-team basketball extravaganza set in the heart of one of America’s most underrated cities.
Thus began five days visiting the cathedrals of college basketball, a journey that reminded us, even 2,000 miles away from Montana, you can find a tie to the Last Best Place just around the corner at most every turn.
As we strolled or scurried around the city (via randomly acquired personal driver) the first weekend of the first March Madness in eons, we quickly realized that many of the paths that the greatest spectacle in college athletics would lead us down had some sort of tie back to the Treasure State, even if a few degrees of separation create the comfortable buffer of anonymity most of us Montanans covet.
On the first plane ride from Missoula to Dallas, I sat next to a man who said he worked in law enforcement. Turns out, he was a federal agent who had a high-level security position monitoring some of the largest sporting events in the world.
He was a passionate sports fan, particularly when it came to the Texas Longhorns. Less than 15 minutes after sitting down next to him, he told me he had watched the Skyline Sports video of former Montana State head football coach Jeff Choate “farewell” press conference that followed the news breaking that Choate had taken a position as co-defensive coordinator on Steve Sarkisian’s staff in Austin a few months earlier.
“That guy will fit right in in Austin,” the man said with a laugh, a burnt orange Longhorn cap hat atop his head.
The “Griz” script always seems to spark conversation, no matter what airport its owner might find themselves waiting in. After enduring a turbulent three-hour airplane ride from Missoula to Dallas, we sat down in a TGI Friday’s at the DFW Airport next to a young man in his early 30s who introduced himself as a sports agent.
He recognized the University of Montana logo on the duffel bag of the “Voice of the Griz” and quickly struck up a conversation, telling us about his playing career at Eastern Illinois that overlapped with San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garapollo.
While we enjoyed some finger food, we watched the beginning of the first game of the First Four. And the man performing the opening tip happened to be Karl Nicholas, a talented forward who started his career at the University of Montana.
The fourth-year junior who now goes by Joirdon Karl finished with six points and seven rebounds as TSU posted a 60-52 win over Mount St. Mary’s to move into the NCAA Tournament field for the ninth time in school history, the second-most among any Southwest Athletic Conference program. Nicholas averaged 11.1 points and 6.8 rebounds for team that finished 17-9 last season.
After a short layover in DFW, we landed in Indiana after dark. Meanwhile, Drake closed in on its first NCAA Tournament victory in 50 years to the day, ironically dating back to a 1971 victory over the team from South Bend: the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, a school located 140 miles north of Indy. In the second game of the 2021 tournament, the Bulldogs earned a 53-52 win over Wichita State for third-year head coach Darian DeVries.
The Dana Altman disciple coached under Oregon’s current head coach while at Creighton from 2001 to 2010 before serving on Doug McDermott’s staff for the Blue Jays from 2011 until 2018. From 2004 until 2010, DeVries also worked alongside Brian Fish, an Altman assistant for that stint and from 1994 until 1996 as well. Fish followed Altman to Oregon for five seasons before becoming the head coach at Montana State, a position he held for five seasons between 2014 and 2019.
Fish, who is from Seymour, Indiana, about an hour south of Indianapolis, is now a part of Tom Crean’s staff at Georgia. Fish had a part in the development and promotion of Anthony Edwards, the No. 1 overall pick in last year’s NBA Draft by the Minnesota Timberwolves.
We wound down our first evening with a cold beer at Brothers, a Midwest chain that showed the UCLA-Michigan State game despite the end not coming until the wee hours of Friday morning.
Some 50 years ago, Judd Heathcote first laid the foundation at Montana for a coaching tree that is nearly unrivaled in college basketball. In 2020 just months before the pandemic hit, ESPN Missoula produced “Griz Greats: the Coaching Tree”, a 10-part podcast series chronicling the historic group of hoops mentors.
Heathcote’s first signature run came in 1975 when he led the Grizzlies into the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history. A 69-63 win over Utah State punched Montana’s ticket into its first and only Sweet 16 appearance (the tournament was only 32 teams back then) in program history.
In the round of 16, the Griz played a UCLA team that would go on to win its 10th national championship in 12 years, marking the last title under legendary head coach John Wooden. But UM pushed the eventual national champs down to the wire. Eric Hays poured in 32 points on 13-of-16 shooting but his Griz lost 67-64.
BOX SCORE OF UCLA-MONTANA 1975 SWEET 16 GAME
Three years later, Heathcote led Michigan State to the 1979 national championship behind the stellar play of a rising star named Magic Johnson. That championship was a launching point for a new era in college basketball that would include eight Final Four appearances by the Spartans, including a second championship run in 2000 under Tom Izzo, a Heathcote disciple.
The recent MSU prestige — the Spartans were in the Final Four in 2019 — didn’t matter as UCLA emerged with an 86-80 overtime victory in the early hours of the first official day of the first NCAA Tournament in more than 700 days.
Before we went to sleep the first night, we watched a late-night SportsCenter anchored by Neil Everett, a popular ESPN figurehead who once spent a night telling stories from his college days in Eugene at Oregon while hanging at Spectator’s Bar in Bozeman with a few members of the Skyline Sports roster, Fish egging him on all the while.
