No. 11 Wichita State beat No. 10 Northern Iowa 74-60 on Saturday in a college basketball match-up of two highly-ranked mid-major schools. Wichita State won the Missouri Valley Conference regular season title as a result of the game, illustrating one of the benefits of having such solid mid-major schools in the national spotlight.
Northern Iowa had a 16-game winning streak going into the contest against a Shockers squad it defeated in the previous match-up between the teams. It had also risen to the first top-10 ranking in program history. Not since Ali Farokhmanesh’s Northern Iowa team upset a top-seeded Kansas in the 2010 NCAA Tournament has Northern Iowa had a national profile, yet it is now one of the top teams in the country.
The successes of Northern Iowa and Wichita State are examples of the rise of mid-major schools currently reflected in college basketball. The AP Top 25 currently contains eight programs that are considered mid-majors, including No. 3 Gonzaga. Gonzaga is part of a group of mid-major programs including two-time national runner-up Butler and fellow perennial power Wichita State that consistently delivers outstanding seasons.
With all of the mid-major schools playing well, the college basketball landscape is altered. It becomes rarer for traditional powers to overlook smaller programs and still win games. This in turn makes college basketball more exciting, and otherwise unknown schools like Florida Gulf Coast and Mercer can pull off massive tournament upsets of powers like Georgetown and Duke, respectively.
Everyone loves an underdog, and mid-majors provide scrappy and overlooked teams for fans to root for. Part of what makes the NCAA Tournament a popular event is that any team can win, regardless of its status or enrollment size. In college football, teams like Florida Atlantic and Western Carolina get blown out by Alabama in games that never seem close. In college basketball, upsets and surprises are much more common.
This adds up to a much more enjoyable experience. Fans love rooting for the unheralded senior point guard from a mid-major school who plays every game like it is his last, because with no hope of making it to the NBA, it very well may be. College basketball is better off with strong mid-majors, and with schools like Northern Iowa and Wichita State ranked so high, it doesn’t seem like they are leaving anytime soon.
