Review of "The Back Roads to March"

Hopefully everyone reading this is safe and healthy.  With the entire sports world shut down, the next best thing for me to do is read even more books and post more reviews.  So, I am starting this game-less period with a great substitute for March Madness - a book on college basketball by one of the best authors on the sport, John Feinstein.  Here is my review of "The Back Roads to March"

Title/Author:

“The Back Roads to March: The Unsung, Unheralded and Unknown Heroes of a College Basketball Season” by John Feinstein

Tags:

Basketball, college, history, coaching

Publish date:

March 3, 2020

Length:

432 pages

Rating:

5 of 5 stars (outstanding)

Review:

While most college basketball fans know much about the high-profile programs such as Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and North Carolina, there are plenty of good basketball players and teams at smaller schools and conferences.  These are referred to as “mid-major” conferences and they are the subject of this excellent college basketball book by John Feinstein.

Feinstein wrote his first college basketball book over thirty years ago and he has become one of the most respected authors on the sport. This book adds to his legacy as he does a wonderful job of covering so many of the unheralded schools in the mid-major conferences, or as Feinstein calls them often throughout the book, the “one-bid” leagues. This reference is used because these conferences very rarely send more than one team, the winner of the conference tournament, to the NCAA tournament.

While most of the conferences highlighted are in the East, such as the Patriot League, Colonial Athletic Association and Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference just to name a few, Feinstein covers a lot of territory and puts a lot of miles on his vehicle as he takes the reader on his journey to visit many of these players and coaches to share their stories and experiences. He writes about so many schools, players and coaches in this book that is it impossible to cover them all in a review without practically rewriting the book. It is safe to say, however, that no matter what type of story one wants to hear about college basketball, especially a story from a coach, then this is the book to read.

Even avid college hoops fans may learn something new from this book. For this reviewer, the best example of that was Feinstein’s many stories about an old arena in Philadelphia, the Palestra.  Many games between the Big Five schools have been played there and from Feinstein’s descriptions of the place, he and many others consider it a shrine for college basketball. Despite its rich history, I had never heard of the place before reading this book.  After reading this, I, along with probably many other readers, will now want to make a trip to Philadelphia to visit this arena and catch a game or two there.

This book is not only a terrific read, it is one that gives some much-needed exposure to the many talented teams, players and coaches in the mid-major – sorry, one-bid – leagues.  For some, including myself, seeing these teams pull off upsets over schools in the power conferences are what make March Madness (trademarked by the NCAA, something Feinstein writes about with some disdain) special.  It is highly recommended for all college basketball fans, no matter what level of fandom or who their favorite school may be.

I wish to thank Doubleday Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

                                                                       

Book Format Read:

E-book (Kindle)                                                                                                                         

Buying Links:

https://www.amazon.com/Back-Roads-March-Unheralded-Basketball/dp/0385544480/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=