The College Basketball Invitational is the leader in silly postseason hoops, and I base my observation on the stories I’ve read the past few hours.
The teams, the places and the sponsor make me think of the CBI as the Crazy Basketball Invitational, a ridiculous third-tier event as pointless as the second-tier National Invitation Tournament and the bottom-feeding
CollegeInsider.com Tournament . The tournament that matters has the First Four, the Sweet Sixteen, the Elite Eight and the Final Four.
Roman is crazy about the CBI, so much so that the official name of the tournament is the Roman College Basketball Invitational. The online company, which provides what it calls the discreet delivery of medications for many common male health conditions, is sponsoring the tournament for the first time.
I wonder if Roman will offer samples to CBI coaches.
Imagine this happening before a game.
“Coach, here’s a package for you. Enjoy.”
I’ll refrain from specifying what Roman sells. No indecent jokes here about manhood and the cloud pharmacy. Like Roman, I’m discreet.
The 12th annual CBI is the Tiny Dancer of March with a 16-team field that includes Brown, Grand Canyon, Stony Brook, Cal Baptist and Longwood.
Oh, Longwood! The Lancers have an all-time record of 145-329 and are 15-17 this season. They’ve had only one winning season and were 1-30 in 2004-05, the program’s inaugural year in NCAA Division I.
Longwood is a small public liberal arts university in Farmville, Va., also the home of The Fishin’ Pig “Eat Like A Pig, Drink Like A Fish” barbecue and seafood restaurant, which is just five miles from the campus.
Farmville! One day it might become as famous as the video game if the Lancers win the 2019 CBI championship in their first postseason tournament in Division I and celebrate the title at The Fishin’ Pig. That would be wacky and wild.
The Lancers have home-court advantage in the first round, where they will play the Southern Miss Golden Eagles (20-12) on Wednesday night. Longwood has lost its last four games, but if it makes a run in the CBI, it might host the best-of-three finals.
Junior guard Shabooty Phillips is perhaps the Lancers’ top player. His first name reminds me of Mick Jagger free-styling the word “shabooty” in the lyrics for the 1978 Rolling Stones song “Shattered.”
Maybe Shabooty will have the Eagles in tatters.
C’mon, it’s the Crazy Basketball Invitational.
