Transcontinental Musings: Beavers Basketball

My coworker Kelly knows I'm a sports fan. We spend Mondays commiserating most times. I, the Bengals fan and she, the Cowboys fan. (I'm not a Cowboys fan at all, but tolerate them just for Kelly.) She and her family have season tickets to Beaver Basketball. Sad for her, she and her family couldn't make the University of Illinois-Chicago game and asked if I would be interested in taking them off of her hands. Of course I would be interested. I graciously accepted the offer.

My friends, Kevin, Whitney and Todd joined me for the game.

View from original seats.

The original seats were really nice. They were up high so you could see the entire court. We weren't there long before someone from the stadium offered us a free pass to get closer to the action. We took the passes and ended up behind one of the baskets only 4 rows up. I could see the sweat on Cunningham.

It's not easy taking good photos with my cameraphone, but this is Cunningham going up for a dunk. You'll have to take my word for it that it was pretty sweet.

A cheer I have heard before, but never at a basketball game, was "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oy! Oy! Oy!" The beavers have not one, but two players on their team from Australia: Angus Brandt and Rhys Murphy. Whitney cracked me up when she asked, "Can we just have them talk in the mic for a second. I want to hear their Australian accents!" I thought it was a reasonable request.

Angus Brandt free throw.

There is some really great talent on this team. They are ranked number one in the Pac-12 for steals and 5th in the nation. That was apparent during this game. And Roberto Nelson's back-to-back-to-BACK three pointers, bringing his game total to 5, was truly amazing! If you're interested in reading the Post-Game Notes, you can find them here.

The 95-53 win over the Flames was Coach Robinson's 50th win as the Beavers Head Coach and his 80th of his career. The Beaver 42 point margin of defeat is the best since 2002.