On October 21st, Franciscan University partnered with the men's and women's basketball team and threw on "Midnight Madness". I thought it was a perfect way to kick off the 2023-2024 season. With all the tough pre-season practices and now the three hour long regular season practices going underway to prepare for their first game on November 8th against Penn State Fayette, men's coach Joe Wallace wanted to give his players a break and to have some fun. Midnight Madness has been a tradition every single year at Franciscan, except for last year due to a flood that happened the summer of 2022. Midnight Madness is always a huge hit and a great way to introduce the men's and women's team and to engage with the students.
To kick off the night, players were introduced and ran through the curtain with a fog machine shooting up fog with green LED lights. This was very cool and also new. When I participated in Midnight Madness my sophomore year, everything was quite simple and not as fun. This year, Coach Martello, Coach Wallace, and Coach Spoelman wanted to bump up things a notch and to give a performance of a life time. After the players were introduced, the men's basketball players did a dunk competition which electrified the crowd. When we did it two years go, only three players on the team could dunk: Josh Zimmerman, Tristan McDannell, and Yann Yonkeu. Tristan could barely dunk so the dunk competition wasn't the best at all. But this years dunk competition had 4 players, and three of them were freshman.
Senior Joe Ciola throws an alley-oop off of the backboard to Junior Yann Yonkeu during the dunk competition.
After the dunk competition, three men's and three women's players each called up a student from the crowd to do a three-point competition with them. One of my friends actually got called up and he went 0-8 from three. This competition was a great way to get students involved. Out of the two Midnight Madnesses I have attended/witnessed, this one was the best by a mile. I thought the athletic department and the men's and women's basketball teams did a great job putting on this event and creating hype for the 2023-2024 basketball season.
Franciscan students engage in the competition "knockout".
After this event ended, the men's players had the next day off and then continued their everyday three hour practice the next day on Monday. Coach Wallace and the entire coaching staff wants their players ready before their first game. The Barons kick off their season against Penn State Fayette Wednesday, November 8th at 7pm in the Finnegan Fieldhouse. Admission will be free for students and will be $5 for all non-Franciscan visitors.
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