Cinderella: Inside the Rise of Mid-Major College Basketball

by Michael Litos

An account of the 2005–2006 Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) season focuses primarily on the accomplishments of the top six teams in the Old Dominion, George Mason, UNC-Wilmington, Hofstra, VCU, and Northeastern.

Genres: Sports, Basketball, Nonfiction

275 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Andrew Eichelberger]

Cinderella was a good informational book about how Mid Majors of college basket succeed to Compete and become good teams. The book talks about how the coaches’ lead there team against the big basketball teams in college. It informs on the topic of how Mid-major teams have to compete in recruiting with other teams around the US. It said that Mid-major teams always compete very well against each other and it is always a good game. It shows that Mid-major teams are getting better and can upset some big teams or get close to shocking there opponents. The book was written in 2006, so the book said that the teams don’t do very well in The NCAA Basketball Tournament and this shows how good Mid-major teams are now by having success in the tournament. It also mentioned that coaches have a hard time scheduling Big teams because it would hurt the big team résumé, now they don’t want to play Mid-majors because they don’t want to lose to them. The Mid -Major fans according to the book are the best fans because they always support there team and always pack the arena. I think this book was very well written and you get to know what its like to be a Mid-Major team. I would read this book if you are a fan of Mid-Majors having success because it tells you what they have to go though to win .

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book describes one season in the Colonial Athletic Association in great detail. It has way too much play-by-play and not nearly enough research that might have told us more about mid-majors. The book is also rife with errors (such as consistent misspellings of names). Only diehard fans of the CAA should read this book.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an alumna of Old Dominion and a fan of the CAA from back then, this book definitely caught my attention. Overall, the book was an ok read, however it got tedious at time. The author jumped back and forth from team to team which made it hard to follow at times. I had to re-read passages often to figure out who or which teams he was referring to