A trip to Scobey, Montana

There are places in America where you can’t just go to a college basketball game on a whim. A trip must be planned, time off must be taken from work, and you need to get someone to watch the dog for a few days. No town has Scobey, Montana beaten in this regard. According to Google Maps, it’s a seven hour and 49 minute drive from Scobey to Max Worthington Arena in Bozeman. It takes seven hours and 58 minutes to make the trip to the Betty Englestad Sioux Center in Grand Forks. Basically, it involves a lot of work to see Division I college basketball in person. Scobey is the farthest from D-I basketball of any town in the lower 48. Few, if any, college hoops fans know what this degree of isolation is like. And I’m guessing that few, if any, residents of Scobey care about college hoops. That’s not to say that basketball isn’t important here. The Scobey Spartans won Montana’s Class C boys basketball title last title. (Technically, it was the Scobey/Opheim Spartans that won it, bec...