As people with a sense of basketball history, we’re pretty geeked up to see Evansville on the schedule.
Evansville was a huge D-II power for years and years. The Aces won five national championships and beat D-I teams like UCLA, Notre Dame and Purdue. The first team to wear T-shirt uniforms?
The Purple Aces.
The coach who built the program, Arad McCutcheon, retired in 1976.
Then, in 1977, tragedy struck.
A plane leaving Evansville crashed, killing the entire team and several other people as well. A total of 29 people died that day.
To the best of our knowledge, this has only happened to two college sports programs, Evansville and Marshall football.