Jim Wikman, John Ries and Tom Bowen - known nationwide as “The Basketball Mavens” - show up at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans for the Final Four in 2022.
LocalSportsJournal.com
For 11 months of the year, Jim Wikman is just a normal guy from Muskegon who enjoys doing normal guy stuff.
Then comes March.
March is “Wik’s month,” when he and two of his longtime work buddies at Verizon morph into The Basketball Mavens - who have attended more than 500 NCAA Tournament games since 1977, including 18 more in this year’s event.
“I am just as excited right now as I was as a college student back in the 70s,” said Wikman, 69, a 1973 Muskegon High School graduate.
Wikman left his home in Dallas and said his temporary goodbyes to his wife, Milissa, daughters, Annika and Emily, and three grandchildren to spend the better part of three weeks with buddies John Ries (JR) and Tom Bowen (Opie) - three “ordinary Joes” who have taken America’s obsession with March Madness to the next level.
The three basketball junkies, who met when they were all working for GTE in Indianapolis in the early 1980s, are now known everywhere they go as the Basketball Mavens, and have been featured in many regional and national newspaper articles and broadcasts.
This year’s odyssey began with four games in Cleveland. As soon as the final game was finished, they drove to Lexington, Kent., for four games. As soon as the final game was done there, they drove back to Cleveland for two games then back to Lexington for two games. That’s 12 games - and just the first weekend.
“Some people think we’re crazy that we’re still doing this,” said Wikman, who spends three months of the year at his summer home in northern Michigan. “But we absolutely love it. Every year is different and you never know what is going to happen.”
Wikman, who grew up a Big Red and was also a big fan of the Muskegon Mohawks and the Muskegon Panthers, played two years of tennis at Muskegon Community College, before transferring to Michigan State University.
It was during spring break of his senior year at MSU, in 1977, that Wikman’s love affair with March Madness began.
Wikman and a couple of college friends were driving down to Florida for spring break, when they heard on the radio that some college basketball tournament games were being played at one-year-old Rupp Arena in Kentucky, which was on their route.
They went to the box office and told the worker that they wanted three tickets for that night’s games.
After they were informed it was sold out, they gave her their sob story about driving all the way down from Michigan and asked if there was anything she could do to help them.
The lady went in the back room and emerged a few minutes later with three complimentary tickets, saying: “Consider this a little Kentucky hospitality.
That was their first of many stories of good luck, crazy timing, kind people and hilarious stories that Wikman and his buddies have experienced over the last 40-plus years.
Those tales were chronicled in his book, “The Basketball Mavens: Marching to Madness,” which was released in 2022 and is still available for purchase on Amazon.
The book is a great history of the NCAA Tournament, while capturing the off-the-court fun that is a key part of the pageantry of March Madness. While the tournament annually awards a Most Outstanding Player (MOP), the Mavens name their own MOP - the Most Outstanding Personality they have encountered that year.
One year the winner of the MOP award was Carl Izzo, Tom Izzo’s dad, who they hung out with at a Final Four.
Wikman’s favorite MOP winner was UCLA three-time national champion and later head coach Larry Farmer, who they met in 1998 in a bar in St. Louis, where the Mavens told him they loved his cameo on “The White Shadow,” where he beat Coach Reeves in his basketball comeback attempt.
“He laughed so hard that we remembered that show so vividly,” said Wikman, who started his career working for GTE in Muskegon for three years. “Then we ran into him again the next week in San Antonio.”
Wikman took an early retirement from Verizon in 2003 at the age of 48, then worked for 8 years at his “dream job” as a sales representative for the Dallas Mavericks.
Now fully retired, it’s easier for Wikman to pull off his own personal March Madness every year.
This year, for instance, the journey took the Mavens back-and-forth between Cleveland and Lexington, then San Francisco for three games in the regional finals (a new city for the trio) and San Antonio for three games in the Final Four (their fifth Final Four in San Antonio). In all, it will be 18 more games and more than 7,000 miles.
Wikman, who will attend his 600th tournament game in the national semifinals on April 5 in San Antonio, keeps diligent notes and can give you his main numbers right off the top of his head - 187,000 total travel miles, 47 different cities, 26 different states and 66 different arenas - with no end in sight.
Note: Jim Nantz, regarded as the “voice of March Madness” has called a mere 354 games.
Wikman also has a photographic memory and can recall games, situations and plays from hundreds of different games.
He of course remembers some of the classic championship games, such as Villanova’s upset of Georgetown in 1985, but for every Cinderella story that comes true, there are at least as many heartbreak endings that he will never forget.
“I remember in 2007, Ohio State was No. 1 in the country and they were playing Xavier, who they hadn’t played in 73 years,” said Wikman, telling the story as if it were yesterday. “Xavier was up by seven with 3 minutes to play, but Ohio State rallied and won in overtime. That game kind of summed up the highs and lows of March Madness to me.”
Wikman admits he is biased toward his alma mater, Michigan State, and he has been in attendance for 37 different MSU tournament games, including all eight of Tom Izzo’s Final Four teams and the national championship victory over Florida in 2000.
Perhaps his favorite Spartan memory from the road was 2005, when they knocked off blue bloods Duke (Sweet 16) and Kentucky (Elite Eight) in back-to-back games.
Wikman begins another year with the same giddy excitement he had as a college student more than 50 years ago, with the serendipity of adventures on the road and the possibility of another long MSU run.
“I would love to see my Spartans in another Final Four, no doubt,” said Wikman, who is a regular March guest on Jack Ebling’s radio show in Lansing. “But, no matter what, we walk away each year with amazing stories and memories. So why stop?”
Wikman wrote a book on the trio’s March Madness in 2022, entitled: “The Basketball Mavens: Marching to Madness.” The book is available for purchase on Amazon.
Full access to public notices, articles, columns, archives, statistics, calendar and more
Three-County & Full Pass also available
