After a Texas Roadhouse stop in St. George, Utah, we were in this tiny ski town! We rode up there with a few of Robbie's coworkers who were also excited about our small-school basketball tour, and also meeting a few more coworkers in Cedar City as they went up earlier in the day to ski.
Before I get into the meat of this post, I'll preface it by saying that 2 years ago, Robbie and I went to a SUU game in Cedar City, and they were playing North Dakota State. We were 2 of probably only 200 people in the stands, so needless to say, people could hear us when we cheered. With that in mind, we were prepared to heckle and be heard the second time around.
Unfortunately with SUU hosting UNLV, there were a lot more fans there this time, so our cheers and jeers were drowned out by the other hardcore fans (probably 85% of them favoring UNLV).
As usual, we got there for a little bit of the teams' warm-ups, and shortly after was tip-off. It's always fun for me to go to events like this with Robbie and his coworkers where there isn't a personal favorite because the whole game, all they do is analyze and predict, and make small in-game wagers. Analytical minds do think alike! :)
The game itself was pretty fun, very fast-paced. Being the Badger fan that I am, I am used to the Badger offense taking 33 of the 35 seconds off the shot-clock before attempting a basket, so this was very different for me. For me, teams that run up and down the court make more mistakes and cause more turnovers and cause more fouls.
Speaking of fouls, SUU had about of 6 them within the first 10 minutes. That most likely had to do with their fast pace. There's a reason why the Badgers are 11-0!!!
UNLV ultimately ran away with the game, the score being 73-51. With all the college basketball picks Robbie runs each week, he was only one free throw off the final score. His model spit out a final of 73-52.
One of the funniest, yet saddest part of the game was watching their mascot, Thor. He stood the whole game right in front of us, and that's all he did, just stood there. He had no spirit, wasn't trying to get the crowd excited during timeouts or at halftime, etc. One of the guys who was with us was Hey Reb, UNLV's mascot, in college, and he was disgusted. So half the time, we were heckling the mascot, which was pretty fun!
Going to college basketball games at these small schools is a really fun experience, and we made tentative plans to go to Flagstaff in February for the Northern Arizona game, so be on the lookout for that post in the next few months!
"No matter how you travel, it's still you going." -Jeff Goldblum
