As many have already heard, Michigan Tech’s men’s basketball team made national news this week and by doing so, showed that the Upper Peninsula is not to be ignored.

University of Wisconsin-Green Bay coach and sports radio personality Doug Gottlieb put his foot in his mouth last week before playing Michigan Tech on Wednesday.

“Part of the reason I want to play better teams is, it’s two degrees, snowing outside,” Gottlieb said to reporters following a loss to Milwaukee on Dec. 11. “I don’t really like the idea of Nobody U coming in here and what do we learn from playing a game where we win by 20. There’s a methodology to it. And I’m gonna have to adjust moving forward.”

It just so happened that UWGB’s next game was against Division II Michigan Tech.

Well, needless to say that Gottlieb learned something after Tech came in and beat Gottlieb’s squad 72-70 on their home court Wednesday.

With the state of the world these days, a slight against a Division II basketball team might not mean much in the grand scheme of things and while it is good for a laugh, it’s not the kind of thing that people are going to be thinking about for years.

Unless you’re from the Upper Peninsula.

Many of the people reading this will no doubt be Northern Michigan University alumni and will hold a healthy distain for the Huskies but you will be hard pressed to find a Yooper who doesn’t understand the fact that we are often an afterthought in the state and in the nation as a whole.

By no means does this imply that Gottlieb was insinuating that Yoopers are lesser people or something to be laughed at but it does speak to many people’s impressions of the Upper Peninsula as some kind of forgotten place.

This is why Michigan Tech’s win against the struggling UWGB team is such a joy for many in the U.P., we have all experienced the idea of being the underdog.

We applaud the Huskies team for their big win against a team who has previously appeared in March Madness and hope this will lead to more respect for not only U.P. sports teams, but the area as a whole.

— The Mining Journal, Marquette