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Being born in Omaha and raised in Chicago, both Creighton and DePaul hold special places in my heart. My first ever live basketball game was a Creighton-Missouri State game in '99 (RIP Civic Auditorium). My memories of DePaul span back to when Dave Leitao was roaming the sidelines the first time around. I've followed both of them ever since. Eventually, they came together (8 years apart) and helped form a modern Big East where private schools play big-time basketball in big-time venues.
My favorite modern Big East moment was Kris Jenkins's shot from this past April. A lot of things pale in comparison to a buzzer-beater for the chance to win it all. DePaul's upset over Georgetown in 2014 was amusing to me, and shows how rough it has been since they arrived in this conference. American Dad even took a shot at them! And of course, Doug McDermott leading the Bluejays to the Big East title game in their first year in the league was pretty dope. I can only hope that his scoring acumen from college is present for the 2016-17 Bulls. They're going to need it.
I'm a recent graduate of Western Illinois University (a school that has gone 2-8 all-time against the midwest Big East schools) where I did a lot of cool broadcasting stuff on the mic and behind the scenes. Nowadays, in addition to writing for BECB, I run my own blog called Crucial Baskets where I focus on discussing pro basketball. I've been blogging about sports since my senior year of high school.
I spend my free time reading, researching, and making media about basketball. I try to not go a day without finding out something new about the sport: a team, player, moment from history, or even the latest happenings in pro or college hoops. I'm basically a deep diver when it comes to learning anything: sports, film, music, politics, etc. If I open up one article about a topic, chances are at least three more tabs will end up being opened to look up related topics. I intend to bring that same type of passion to BECB.
If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me over on Twitter @CrucialBaskets, or hanging around here in the comments section! I'm sure it's going to be fun times for me, you, and for Big East basketball moving forward.