March 20, 2009

Well, as I am sitting in my hotel room about five hours from tipoff, I thought I would check my email. And boy, am I glad I did.

For those of you who happened to read my blog yesterday, you may remember that I said this was my second NCAA tournament in the last two years. But I was wrong!!

Former CSU volleyball great (and sports information student worker Mel Snyder), must be back home reading up on the blog page as she was quick to point out that this tournament will be my THIRD NCAA tournament. So I would like to send my sincere apologies out to Chuck Voss, his staff and players for that lapse in my memory, but I am going to blame it on the fact that I will be 30 in three weeks!!

But since I got Mel's note, I guess I should also point out that I attended two other NCAA tournaments, the first coming in 2001 when I accompanied the Washington & Lee volleyball team to its opening weekend matches in San Antonio. In addition, while serving as the SID at Colorado School of Mines, our football team played in the NCAA playoffs in 2004. We actually hosted a first round game before losing at Pittsburg State in the second round.

So, to sum things up, this will be my SECOND NCAA basketball tournament and my FIFTH NCAA tournament overall.

And they are all special and memorable in their own way.

Anyway, things are still going well down here in Miami. Today has been fairly quiet as we don't have to much going on until tonight. Syracuse won the early game at American Airlines Arena today and Arizona State is up on Temple in the second game.

We'll probably head over to the arena in a few hours to get settled for our tipoff, which follows the Utah/Arizona game.

Stay tuned for some more updates as we get set for tonight's game.