My dream week of college hoops!

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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I got really lucky with some work travel this week as I have to be in North Carolina today through Thursday for meetings. As luck would have it, I will be able to see three great Big Ten/ACC Challenge games in three nights!

Last night: The Barn - fun second half and a solid Gopher win.

Tonight: I am at Starbucks in Chapel Hill right now and I got a single ticket for the Maryland/UNC game at the Dean Dome! Surprisingly there are a number of Maryland fans on campus.

Tomorrow night: After my work meetings I'll be heading over to Cameron Indoor for the Indiana/Duke game!

Seeing games at UNC and Duke have been high on my sports bucket list, and I am very lucky to do it in back to back nights, against two very good opponents.

I imagine last night's atmosphere at The Barn may not quite equal what I'll see the next two nights! :cool:

Go Gophers!!
 

Wow! That's amazing!! Glad we could start the week off right last night - hope you have a fabulous time!
 

Awesome Bleed. I know Cameron Indoor is a really tough ticket and I assume the Dean Dome is the same. Glad the Gophers got your week off to a strong start. One of the added perks of the Gophers (hopefully someday soon) being better would be getting to play UNC or Duke...or even Syracuse or Notre Dame in the Challenge. I would guess we will get Louisville because of the Pitino angle at some point.
 

Have a good time Bleed. 3 in 3 days is quite the accomplishment. Hope you let us know how it goes.
 






Will be interesting to hear your experience at Cameron, I was there on Nov 13th when they played Sienna was really really loud in there for a non-conf game. I am not a duke fan in fact loathe them. i I paid way to much for kind of a crappy arena in my opinion, paid 155 to stand on bleachers with no assigned seating, and the site lines in there are horrendous. Give me the Barn any time. Dean dome is great, and liked the NCST arena as well. Happy I went to Cameron will never do it again barring the Gophers playing there. My buddy from up here moved to Raleigh we hit up Duke and NCST BB while I was there and UNC football. If you are ever in Chapel Hill for college baseball season highly recomend going and seeing there stadium it is great and $4 to get in.
 



We won't tell your boss if you show up late one of the mornings! I would be jealous but I just got back from 8 days in warm weather and four college hoops games in one sitting, none of your caliber, though.
 


BleedGopher said:
I got really lucky with some work travel this week as I have to be in North Carolina today through Thursday for meetings. As luck would have it, I will be able to see three great Big Ten/ACC Challenge games in three nights!

Last night: The Barn - fun second half and a solid Gopher win.

Tonight: I am at Starbucks in Chapel Hill right now and I got a single ticket for the Maryland/UNC game at the Dean Dome! Surprisingly there are a number of Maryland fans on campus.

Tomorrow night: After my work meetings I'll be heading over to Cameron Indoor for the Indiana/Duke game!

Seeing games at UNC and Duke have been high on my sports bucket list, and I am very lucky to do it in back to back nights, against two very good opponents.

I imagine last night's atmosphere at The Barn may not quite equal what I'll see the next two nights! :cool:

Go Gophers!!
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You're my hero, Bleed.
 

Pathetic. Might as well change your name to BleedBlueBlood...

Just kidding. That's awesome.
 



Looks like you're enjoying a good one in Chapel Hill tonight!
 


Good for you Bleed.

Remember Thursday night the Gopher Women play @ Duke.
 



All those colleges close together sure make it handy for a hoops fan. Last year, I went to the Gophers at Wake Forest, Iowa at UNC, toured Duke and Cameron indoor on the next day without a game to go to and then went to an NC State game the next night. I go to alot of games around here, but if i lived in that part of the country, I would never be at home.
Cameron indoor is surprisingly open and available during the day, we wandered through the Hall of Fame and then ended up coming back through Cameron and I noticed a rack of balls sitting in an empty gym. So of course, we had to sneak down and take a few shots. I made my first 3 attempt and quit while I was ahead.
 

Those are all decent games, Bleed, but hurry back for the Gophers/SoDakSt game Saturday afternoon! (If you can get a ticket.)
 

jamiche said:
Those are all decent games, Bleed, but hurry back for the Gophers/SoDakSt game Saturday afternoon! (If you can get a ticket.)
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C'mon Jamiche! That game isn't till Tuesday.

Here you go Bleed.
Four teams take different paths along Tobacco Road
http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...ndiana-create-two-special-nights-tobacco-road

Great line.........To say Tom Crean's Hoosiers played matador defense against Duke would be insulting to the matador who at least on occasion gets close to the bull.
 

Minnesconsin fan, that sounds like it was a great trip! It really is amazing how many D1 programs are within an hour of Raleigh. I flirted with trying to fit in a UNC Greensboro game as well, but I couldn't pull it off.

The UNC and Duke games were amazing. I really lucked out to have them back to back nights against two very good opponents. I bought a single ticket to the UNC game on StubHub the day of the game for $37 and was about 8 rows up in the second deck, with about 15 rows behind me. The Duke single game tickets were going for about $250 all week on StubHub, so I gambled and was able to buy a single ticket for $65 (face value) outside the game from a guy who's wife backed out at the last minute. The ticket was 3 rows behind the student section on the baseline by the Duke bench. Awesome seats for a great price.

Chapel Hill is a beautiful campus. I really enjoyed walking around it. The Dean Smith Center reminded me of a nicer version of Pauley Pavilion. The banners speak for themselves and it really is amazing to see how many legends played there through the years. It felt a little weird looking at Michael Jordan's jersey with Rashad McCants retired jersey right behind it. That just doesn't feel right. The crowd was rocking from the opening tip and the students were fired up, but once the opening tip happened, I don't recall a single orchestrated/group cheer from the students the entire game. It was obviously loud, but I can see how they have a "wine and cheese" crowd label during lesser games. No doubt the UNC students don't express their admiration for Ol Roy as much as KU students did. UNC did a nice job of highlighting former players who were in attendance. They would show a highlight package of players (Harrison Barnes for example was there) and then show them on the big screen and the place went nuts. The UNC fans gave an ovation when they showed former Maryland HC Gary Williams who was in attendance.

The Duke game - wow! What a crowd, what an atmosphere! Cameron Indoor is similar to Fenway Park - short on modern amenities, but rich in tradition and character. The Cameron Crazies blew away my high expectations that I had for them. I have never seen anything like it. I went to 40+ games during my time at Kansas, and never once did I see a student section that approached Duke's last night. While the choreographed cheers you see on TV are impressive, what's more impressive is what happens during every single timeout. The Cameron Crazies don't let up, in fact it was often more rocking during the timeouts than during the game. Every other timeout they do a cheer with the cheerleaders/band, etc. It's loud, impressive and orchestrated. During the opposite timeouts, they do what our students do in between 3rd and 4th quarters of football games, with just one or two songs, but its an all out dance party each time. I was also surprised at how much Coach K gets the crowd fired up. During a call he was complaining about, he pointed to the students to get them on the officials, and a few times he would point at the non-student areas to get those fans on their feet during a big run.

Overall, my two-night/game jaunt on Tobacco Road was better than I expected. And for those keeping score at home, both Dean Dome and Cameron have troughs in the restrooms, although Duke added dividers on Trough Row to give a bit of privacy.

Go Gophers!!
 


BleedGopher said:
I was also surprised at how much Coach K gets the crowd fired up. During a call he was complaining about, he pointed to the students to get them on the officials, and a few times he would point at the non-student areas to get those fans on their feet during a big run.
Go Gophers!!
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I'm pretty shocked to read this. Thanks for sharing all the stories--they were a lot of fun to read. I plan to see as many interesting stadiums, campuses, and arenas in pro/college sports as I can in my lifetime.
 

What a great trip and what a great report! Thanks, Bleed. How do you think Williams compares when it is full during an important B1G game?

The only other college arenas that I've been in for games are Carver Hawkeye at Iowa, Welsh Ryan at NU and Crisler at Michigan (all gopher away games). All three were morgues when I was there even though two were home team victories. I briefly walked into Assembly Hall at Indiana during practice and I couldn't believe how vertical the stands and the players were.
 

great report - thanks. I attended Yale at Duke the day before Thanksgiving and as you stated - it was awesome. I actually stayed at Chapel Hill at a place called the Carolina Inn - very cool hotel that is all about UNC. Was able to enjoy Chapel Hill and a cool restaurant called Top of the Hill - then Ubered to Cameron and back - not far at all. I was on the 2nd row behind the Yale bench and it was a 2 point game at half, so it was a fun game to watch.

I don't know if you stayed around after, but one really cool feature at Duke was that they let the fans on the court for a good 20-30 minutes after the game. People could take pictures at center court, and generally hang around on the court for quite a while.

I attended a game at Allen Fieldhouse last season, and Duke is very different (as one might expect). Allen was awesome too, but Duke is much smaller and very intimate. I wish I could have gone to a game at UNC while there, but that did not work out.

great stuff - nice report. I love college basketball. I intended to go to the Barn already, but had to cancel that trip. I hope to get up there for a game this season, and also want to go to Assembly Hall.

Are there any other road BiG venues that others would recommend? I would like to go to games this year or next, and besides Assembly, should anything else be on my list?
 

Thanks for the report, Bleed. Someday, someday, I'll do it. A former student is in grad school at Puke but apparently it is impossible fora student to pass a ticket to a non-student.

My one question is how all the in arena advertisers react to people not hearing their ads during the deafening time-outs?:rolleyes:
 

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