 Travel Blog: Atlantic 10 Tournament
March 10, 2009 We will give the Travel Blog a shot as we get set to roll down to Atlantic City for the Atlantic 10 Championships. The ATH COMM staff will put forth a combined effort to keep you up to date on the happenings by the sea. Enjoy, and FIGHT ON EXPLORERS!
Wednesday, March 11th
10:45 AM EST
UMass is shooting right now and our team is in the house!
9:45 AM EST
It took a little longer to get to the Hall than I hoped to. It took a lot longer to get out of the hotel and retrieve my car than I anticipated.
Right now I am setting up as Charlotte is going through their shoot-around. The joke with them when they entered – as I am assuming it is with every team – is to yell “Don’t touch the balls!” Everybody mockingly and over emphatically reminding each other . . . See, in order to preserve fairness and not give any perceived competitive advantage, no single ball can be touched before the official clock starts and not one shot can be taken after the time has expired. Ath Comm Assistants Michelle Martin and Anthony Bonagura have arrived as has student worker Steve Helm. They have all volunteered their services to the A-10 for the tournament. I really encourage the assistants to do this and volunteer for anything like this that they can. It’s great experience – it gets them networking with people from all over the country and the conference and it helps out the great people at the A-10. Plus, we have a unique group this year. The full-time assistants are very passionate about their work and always looking for more that they can do and Steve Helm – who is only a sophomore – paid for his own room and just offered himself to the conference for the week. That’s a great sign and if he wants it – he will have a great career in this field –just as Michelle and Anthony can go as far as they want as well. OK, gotta’ set up radio gear. 8:15 AM EST Good morning Explorer fans! I am awake and ready to go after a not-so-good night’s sleep. I had what sounded like a generator emanating from the stairwell across the hall. Fortunately, the team was no where near it so it didn’t affect them. I hope to get to Boardwalk Hall by about 9:30 AM Don’t forget that today’s game is not on television but it is video streamed by the conference. If it is the same as last year that means that they will use the higher seed’s audio for the stream – which would be us. However, please keep in mind that I do not have any influence or authority over the stream. So, if something goes wrong with it – there is little I can do except to tell the A_10 people what is wrong – and I usually have the stream on my laptop courtside anyway. If I can get a trouble number or email – I will post it here. OK, time to get ready to leave. Go Explorers! Tuesday, March 10th
10:45 PM EST I just got back to my room after a game of spades. Correction . . . the CRAZIEST game we have ever played. Postseason Game 1 #2 Kale & Rod: 351 (4-4/1-0) #1 Yves & Paul: 260 (4-4/0-1) Kale and Rod lead all-time series 10-5 I won't bore you all with the details - but if you are curious - hit me with an email and I can explain how this happened. Suffice it to say that we went from up 131-10 and about to be up 201- -50 until I accidentally reneged. Then, we trailed 345-11! The game is only to 350 - and Rod and I pulled out the almost impossible. It was the equivalent of being down 20 points with two minutes to play. I think Yves was genuinely angry when I left. Pappy Owens sat with us for a little while and seemed to be enjoying the entertainment that the guys were providing. He's a pinochle guy but says that it seems similar to spades. The guys seem loose and well-rested and ready to go. I have come to Atlantic City any times in my life - probably one of the first was as a student in 1994 to see our Explorers play UMass in the old Boardwalk (Convention) Hall but I never crossed that causeway with the same thoughts I had today . . . just hoping and wishing with all that I have that I will not be heading back up the A.C.E. for another four-five days. It really is weird pulling into town with five days worth of clothes and not knowing how much of it was needed. Again, this was even more cumbersome when we had to fly somewhere. I know all you true Explorer fans out there will be approaching with the same sort of thought even if you are making the daily commute. More than ever. FIGHT ON EXPLORERS! 9:02 PM EST Dinner took a while. If we are in town to eat hereagain tomorrow, I will share the place we ate. It took a little longer than usual but it was good. We watched some of the UConn/Louisville women, Penn-Princeton and the North Dakota State/Oakland game. The orders wer an assortment of burgers, lasagna, salads and wraps. It was sad to se how empty The Palestra was tonight.
5:45 PM EST Just got done with a quick run out on the boardwalk. The first thing I realized, and I realized this quickly, is that it is much colder out there right now then it was when I packed . . . yesterday. I had no sleeves and just shorts and not much time. So, I decided to run a really hard 20-25 minutes. My hands were really freezing at the start but it got better as I warmed up. Plus, being seaside means that I had to deal with my nemesis - the Wind. It is supposed to warm up tomorrow I think and hopefully I will be able to get out there before the sun starts fading. Time to quickly shower and meet up with the team. Looks like we are going to get to sneak a card game in tonight. After we ruined Paul's Senior Night in St. Louis Yves made sure we knew that it was just the end of the regular season. 4:24 PM
I am in the back A-10 work room at Boardwalk Hall and this is exactly why I drove down myself. The team left after practice two and half hours ago. I am still currently trying to upload the video for the home page on GoExplorers.com. First, as I saved the video on MovieMaker, my computer froze. In the middle of trying to retrieve it - UMass showed up for practice, so I had to relocate back here from my spot on press row. These practices are closed to everyone except for team personnel. So, after recovering the file - with minimal lost edits - I then saved the video. Next problem came with the upload. The FTP (which is like a high-powered e-mail) timed out before it uploaded. Next attempt was to upload on Filezilla. We are still waiting for CBS-C to confirm that the video is usable after multile discussions about the file size and bit rates and other "techy" things that are barely on the periphery of my comprehension. I am pretty happy with the video. There are a few hot spots and tough edits that Sid Macleod will kill me over but, with limited time and the most simle of editing program, and a laptop that can be moody, I am pleased.As soon as I confirm that the video is uploaded I am heading out for a run and then to rendezvous with the team for team meal. I came across the Duquesne contingent in the media work room whle waiting for my upload. S.I.D. Dave Saba and radio guys Ray Goss and Gerge Von Benko were waiting for their practice time. It's great to see them - they are a real good bunch of guys and it reiterates what I really enjoy about the tournament besides the obvious thrill of the competition. I like getting to see all of our colleagues from around the league that you only get a few minutes with when your teams play during the season. It's just a good feeling that never gets old for me and I feel bad for GW and Fordham this year, St. Bona the past few years and anyone else that doesn't get to participate. We know how it feels to be left out of the party - and it is not fun on any level.
As soon as I confirm that the video is uploaded I am heading out for a run and then to rendezvous with the team for team meal.
9:30 AM
Our work is done on the post-season book and now we just need to pick them up for the trip. I am leaving with the team but travlling separately. The tournament presents some unusual challenges. Since we, as a conference, are all in the same place at the same time for the only time of the year it is a chance to catch up with everybody and conduct some business that may not be basketball related. The practice times are very regimented and then there is the obvious extra media presence. For those reasons among others, it is good to have a sepearate set of wheels handy. I am rarely ever able to leave the arena when the team does and I need to get there to set up earlier than they will arrive - and since we are staying a good ways out of town - it will be best to be independently mobile. Another advantage of this is being able to take Coach Giannini to and from any other media engagements he may have. Last season after we won the first round and I did not have my car Comcast SportsNet wanted to interview Coach live on the boardwalk but not until about 90 minutes or so after the game. After the interview was over, Coach and I had a hard time finding a ride back to the hotel since we were not going to keep the entire team around and sent them back with the bus. In another instance I had to hitch a ride with the good people at Richmond to get back to the hotel. Therefore, an extra car is in order. Again, that's an advantage of being within driving distance. 6:15 AM Early start for us this morning. Early game tomorrow, means early practice time today, means early departure for Atlantic City (hereafter referred to as A.C.). The University was closed yesterday for Spring Break but most of us were here the whole day. Michelle stayed extremely late putting some touches on the post-season media guide. One of the biggest challenges between the end of the regular season and the tourney is publishing the post-season book. Basically, what it is is a massive record of what happened during the season. It includes updated stats on the team and players, recaps and box scores from all of the games, clippings from newspapers and various other media sources, extended game notes, A-10 championship history and some other stuff. It is a 50-60 page production that we need to take to A.C. with us. This used to be an even bigger challenge when we had to hop a flight to go out of state - and remains so for those who have to fly into the tournament. Much of the post-season guide is done before Saturday but that final sweep of stats and box scores and the final compilation still causes some stress and bringing it all together still takes up some time. To add to issues, there was scheduled maintainance to some of the servers on campus yesterday and then an unxpected glitch kept us from accessing the master document until about 3:00 PM. We were still able to do some work but it still set us back a few hours. We came up with a pretty neat solution to one of the most time-consuming aspects of the post-season book this year. I had about 200 extra covers from the regular season media guide printed and devised a way to retro-fit them for use as the post-season book. This saves us a lot of money for not having to run a new set of covers and a good deal of time since we would otherwise have to go off campus for these covers. Once our work is done - we rely on the good people at the campus printshop who will run copies and bind them. The goal is to have about 25-50 ready for when I leave at about 11:00 AM and the rest when Michelle comes down either later today or tomorrow.
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