Link Dump: Final Four in Charlotte? UConn vs. UNC in Greensboro
Welcome to crossover season.
Hey y’all. No big intro, column or notebook this week. The election is over, college basketball season is underway, and I had a wisdom tooth removed a few days ago.
Here’s a few links of everything I’ve worked on recently…
I went to the second annual Ally Tipoff this past Sunday in Charlotte, where attendance eclipsed the record it set last year for the highest attended regular season women’s college basketball game in the state of North Carolina. Charlotte hasn’t hosted a Final Four since 1996 — so I asked Dawn Staley, the South Carolina coach and former Charlotte Sting point guard, if she thought the Queen City could host women’s basketball’s signature event again. I wrote about what she had to say at WUNC, and then I joined WCNC’s Nick Carboni to talk more about Staley’s comments and Charlotte’s potential.
Whether or not Charlotte will host a Final Four again was also a topic of conversation on THE WOMEN’S BASKETBALL PODCAST this week. Mia O’Brien and I talked about that, South Carolina’s inevitability, Katie Smith joining Ohio State and more. By the way, here’s a press release with some more info about our podcast.
At The Next, I spent some time previewing Friday night’s matchup in Greensboro between No. 2 UConn and No. 14 North Carolina. For UNC coach Courtney Banghart, it’s a game that will feature familiar faces on the opposing sideline: she recruited Kaitlyn Chen to Princeton and spent a lot of time recruiting Sarah Strong last season (in my upcoming book, I write in detail about UNC’s all-hands-on-deck pursuit of Strong, which ultimately came up short).
Also at WUNC, I wrote about Don Davis’ narrow victory over challenger Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, the only real toss-up U.S. House race in the Tar Heel state in this election cycle because of rampant partisan gerrymandering by the state’s Republican supermajority legislature. Millions of dollars from both sides of the aisle were poured into this race. I’m really proud of the way we covered the 2024 Election at WUNC, from the presidential race to the hyperlocal level.
Last Friday, I covered Duke’s men’s basketball win over Army for the Associated Press. The story of the game was not just Cooper Flagg’s first-half double-double, but his lingering issues with cramping, which I wrote about at For The Win. For Field Level Media, I then wrote a primer of the Champions Classic, which featured some interesting storylines across men’s basketball. By the way, I’m also voting in the AP Top 25 Poll for men’s basketball now too.
All season long at For The Win, I’ve been writing the weekly College Football Watchability column, in which I tell y’all which games you should watch. This week, I make the case why Washington State deserves your attention.
Also at For The Win, I talked to Haley Cavinder and wrote about why she returned to college basketball after a year off, and what we can expect from a new-look Miami in Year One under Tricia Cullop.
I joined Delmarva Public Media recently to talk about the 1974 UMES men’s basketball team, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. The 1974 Hawks are, by far, the greatest team UMES has ever assembled, and the first from an HBCU to play in a major postseason tournament. I wrote about this team a few years ago when I worked at the AJC and also included a bit about its best players in my 2022 book about High School Basketball on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Speaking of books, on Saturday, Nov. 23 from 12 to 4 p.m., I’ll be signing and selling books in Ocean City, Maryland at Books on the Bay. See you there.
Also read…
For The Assembly, Carroll Walton went long on UNC-Charlotte football and Biff Poggi.
This is a tough but important read. Simply put, it is Pulitzer-level reporting and writing. The headline from the Washington Post: A police chief was accused of paying $100 to rape a teen — and trying to cover it up.
As a Salisbury University graduate, this story makes me sick and angry. However, as someone who cares about the coverage of news on the Eastern Shore, I’m incredibly thankful that the Baltimore Banner exists, because they continue to cover big stories on the Shore better than anyone else.
Can Mount St. Mary’s be the Georgia of women’s flag football? They’re going to try.
You can support All in the Game by subscribing. When you hit the subscribe button, you’ll notice there’s options for free, monthly and yearly subscriptions. All of these posts are free and visible to everyone. But if you want to throw me $5 a month, or $41 a year, I won’t stop you. It’ll go towards paying my way to covering the Final Four again (or coffee).
Mitchell Northam is an award-winning journalist based in North Carolina. He grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and is a graduate of Salisbury University. He is a digital producer at WUNC and a writer at USA Today’s For The Win. His work has also been featured at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Orlando Sentinel, the Baltimore Banner, NCAA.com, the Next, the Associated Press, Pittsburgh Sports Now and elsewhere. He is a member of FWAA and USBWA and is an AP Top 25 voter for women’s and men’s college basketball. He’s on BlueSky at @northam67. More of his work can be found at MuckRack.