NIT

Reminder: Turn in your brackets by tomorrow at noon if you want to be in the pool!  This is Chris' favorite time of year and he loves to highlight all your brackets, so the more the merrier!

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W&M made the NIT this year for the second time in school history.  It was pretty exciting for all of us W&M alums, and especially for Chris who played with many of these guys.

This picture is of Tribe Men's Basketball (taken by Pete Clawson) when they found out they got invited to the NIT and were playing Carolina - the team who won the NCAA Championship last year.  They unfortunately didn't get the home game, but were still excited about it.

So that means Chris spent all day Tuesday on the CAA boards seeing if by chance anyone had extra tickets.  Someone did, and when they found out he was a former player, they let him have them for free.  So after work we rode down to Chapel Hill to see the first round of the NIT.

When we got there, we picked up our tickets, looked for our seats and found out mine didn't exist! My seat was row K seat *12, but the seats only went from 1 - 11.  We had no idea what the star meant.

So we asked one of the ushers - who didn't know either.  You see, UNC wasn't even going to play on their home court, the Dean Dome.  They were playing in the Carmichael Center, where the women play.  They apparently had construction going on in their home court, but I think they just wanted the place to sell out and get loud.  UNC hasn't had a great season this year so they haven't been selling out their games.  Since the small gym only holds about 7,000 people, they tried to sell it out by selling the tickets at $40 a pop.  And when no one bought them, they dropped it to $20.  And we heard that by the time the game came around, they gave people tickets for $5.  They should have given our team more tickets!  They only gave W&M 50 comp-tickets, and not enough student tickets.  They had to wait list students who didn't get to go, and they would have paid more than $5!

Aaaanyway, back to my non-existent seat.  Since no one could figure the situation out, they upgraded our tickets.  Our first tickets were way in the back in a little corner.  We were sitting right to the left of that 3 on the shot clock.

Those seats don't look too bad in that picture, but here's some perspective:  that creepy dark corner to the left of that shot clock doesn't look so good anymore.

Our new seats were great!  It was a pretty packed house and it definitely got loud.

The Tribe played a great game and it was close down to the end. The lead changed at least 4-5 times during the second half, but in the end, Carolina won.  But it was great to see all that green and gold in a sea of blue. Our fans travel well this year :)

It was a great game. And today I'm suffering the effects of that.  The game didn't end until after 11:30 PM, and we didn't get home until after 3:00 AM.  I also had an event today at work that I've been planning since last semester, so I worked 11 hours today.  And I'm exhausted!  It was totally worth it though... :)