Hoosier Hoops Madness

I mentioned awhile back that things were kind of slow on the blog because I was working on some extracurricular activities for work in my free time. Well, here is the first of those two (more on the second one later). You might remember last year I did a crossword puzzle for The Herald-Palladium's Focus page for Selection Sunday. I "focused" (see what I did there) on the 35 teams that had won the NCAA title.

About a month and a half ago, I decided to make the NCAA Tournament crossword puzzle a tradition. I didn't want to do the same puzzle as last year, although I could have since the readers in Michigan City had never seen it. So this year, I focused on the Indiana Hoosiers basketball program. The state is arguably the most basketball crazy in the Union, and I thought a whole Sunday front focused on the state's most storied program would be a match made in heaven. Then Indiana struggled to play .500 ball and the page lost a bit of its cachet.

Fortunately, I had a back-up plan built into the page: a small hole in the bottom right corner for a column. I talked a little bit about the tradition of the NIT, which is the "consolation tournament" and how the Hoosiers have used it as a springboard to success in following years. THEN THEY DIDN'T EVEN MAKE THE NIT! So the page was really more of an ode to a terrible season.

But let's look on the bright side, the page looked really good. I didn't do the design last year, but I did this year. Building the crossword puzzle is a huge pain in the ass -- as I learned last year -- and I didn't want to put that onus on the copy desk. And since I was doing that part, which was a bulk of the page, I just did the whole thing.

Also, I had great artwork for the page. Tony Bayer agreed to draw me a few things for the page, which I thought turned out really well. Tony works in the composing department at The Herald-Palladium building ads. He is also the husband of the local news editor in La Porte. The Michigan City and La Porte papers share a lot of stories. Tony draws editorial cartoons for us several times a month, so I knew he'd be up to the task. He didn't disappoint.

For those of you who took the time to try the crossword puzzle, or started reading my column, here is the jump page with the answers and the rest of my column. Maybe next year's puzzle will turn out a little better.