What's a Hokie?

[kccougar]

Yes, they were, along with one more CUFFER.

The CUF contingent really pulled this one through for BYU tonight. The three of us, along with three hanger-ons, joined forces in the second half, and pushed the Cougars to victory.

If Pellegrino and Surfah had shown up, I'm sure we would have won by 20.

Parrot Head and Tim are both sitting in their respective cars right now, still a couple of hours from home. I am sitting in a hotel room, because I hate driving late at night.

It was a fun game, at least as fun as a game can be when we only shoot 30%. The crowd was not that great; it was always spotty, rarely that loud, and many left early, even though the game was in doubt until the end. Shortly after the CUF Raleigh and Charlotte factions joined forces at half-time, the group of elderly Hokies in front of us stood up and left, evidently in displeasure of having so many loud opposing fans right behind them.

BYU fans did make a pretty good showing. My guess is there were only 7K to 8K people in the building total, and probably around 1,000 were BYU fans. It was hard to tell exactly how many, as we were scattered across the arena pretty well, but there was definitely some noise when Brock hot his three.

I'm sure Parrot Head will be along sometime to make fun of the tickets I ended up buying (which was why we joined with the Raleigh group at half-time).

Are you staying in Blacksburg? You need to eat breakfast at Gillie's. Best vegetarian restaurant I've been in.

[Surfah]

The Pilgrim doesn't make the pilgrimage?

How long of a drive is it from DC to VPI? For some reason, I thought surfah was posting on his phone from the game.

Did you snap any cell phone pics of the arena or the crowd? Sounds like a really fun roadie. Exciting win even if they had to grind it out. Are you staying in Blacksburg? What are the local food haunts? that is where I would be :rockon2:

About 6 hours for the pilgrim. A little more than 4 for me. I couldn't take the day off and no way was I going to drive home after.

[kccougar]

The Pilgrim doesn't make the pilgrimage?

How long of a drive is it from DC to VPI? For some reason, I thought surfah was posting on his phone from the game.

Did you snap any cell phone pics of the arena or the crowd? Sounds like a really fun roadie. Exciting win even if they had to grind it out. Are you staying in Blacksburg? What are the local food haunts? that is where I would be :rockon2:

It's a bit over 4 hours from Blacksburg to DC.

[Omaha 680]

I think it is a reference to St. Mary's gaijin point guard. He also happens to be an entry-level mouth breather, so the combination makes for some cruel message board sport.

When BYU played @ St. Mary's, said PG had a good game and this caused much frustration among the BYU fanbase.

I believe that the references you are seeing now are somehow related to what I am describing above.

DDD is correct. That Dellavadovdelladova kid from St. Mary's torched us and also happens to wear a mouth guard akin to Apollo Creed's.

[CardiacCoug]

Carlino has made 5 of 29 shots from the field the past three games. Hope that means he's due for a big game on Saturday.

[BoylenOver]

Nice win Cougs.

[hostile]

I just don't see us winning this one, not on the road, not this season with this team. I do see some role player Hokie going 5-7 from 3-land. This just feels like a lose-lose game...that we will lose.

Please let me be dead wrong.

Congrats on the win. Has anyone seen/heard from OhioBlue? I hope he is ok.

[Parrot Head]

CA mentioned it, but, yes, you know it's not a good sign when StubHub says the arena generally only goes to Row CC and your seats are in Row EE. On the other hand, summitting the arena counts as exercise for the day.

It was an exciting game, the out-of-bounds-on-BYU call at the end was HORRIBLE! We had a great view of it and it was easily one of the worst mis-calls I've seen at a decent level of hoops. There were some nice Hokie fans there; one pointed out that they only wear the VPI unis once a year or so, so we got lucky! The BYU contingent was strong, but our cheers needed to be more organized and we could have really rocked the place.


So maybe the camera on my phone sucks, but here's what I've got. Here's the view from our seats. Tim was about 4-5 rows out of view of the top of the shot, slightly right of direct middle. That's where we spent the second half, but I didn't get any pics.



Here's a shot of the awesome halftime entertainment: baton-twirling to the sweet sounds of Salt-n-Pepa. Yes, it was 1980-something.

[Tim]

I'm home. Made it back in good time. Great game, great campus, cool little arena... Really great driving up and back with my brother-in-law, plus hanging out with CA and PH during the second half.

[Tim]

Wow.

Listened to it on the radio in my car and I almost crashed when we muffed that in-bounds play at the end. Phew. Amazing win, considering how we have been shooting. Definitely something to build on for a late season push. Here's to CJ's prediction coming true.

That was no muff. It was right down in front of us and clearly went off of the VT player's leg. Bad call.

[Clark Addison]

Here are a few pics from last night. I forgot to take more:

For those wondering what a Hokie is, here is a statue of one in the entrance to Cassell Coliseum (I liked the arena, but I will say that calling this 9,500 seat venue a coliseum is a kind of Appalachian conceit)


I love going to away games. One of the many reasons is that you always see something you have never seen before. This game, the thing that I had never seen was someone wearing a Nick Martineau jersey. I'm assuming he is Nick's brother, and it seems fitting that Nick's family would have seats in the next to top row:


This is a picture of Tim. You can't really see him, but trust me, he is right in the middle of this picture. Looking at this one, I may have been a bit optimistic with my estimate of 7K to 8K attendees, although I will say that the area in this pic is the least densely populated in the stadium. These are a lot of the good seats, and a lot of the geezers and high rollers sat this one out. The student section was to the left, and was pretty full, and the side that this picture was taken from was more filled in that the side shown here. This was a time-out in the first half.

[Tim]

Man, I am wiped out this morning, but that was so incredibly worth the 7 hours of driving yesterday!

[TripletDaddy]

My main takeaway from this game after having a night to sleep on it: Parrot Head has the worst cell phone camera of all time.

[Katy Lied]

I'm still furious about that last missed call. It could have been a game changer. The ESPN3 replay showed clearly that the ball went off of the VT player. The replay also showed that both refs obviously had no idea who touched the ball last. The first one admitted as much when he went to the second ref for the determination, who looked puzzled, and then ruled for the hokies.

Arent there supposed to be 3 refs? And in a hotly contested game, shouldn't 2 of them be baseline to see the inbounds pass?

And if neither one of them had any idea, wouldn't it be a jump ball? Instead of them just making this #@$% up? Or do they just award it to the home team?

I agree with Lebowski, this team has fallen down on the inbounds pass this year.

In other news, what the heck happened to Baylor? They looked all world early in the season, and now have dropped 2 straight?

[PaloAltoCougar]

As bad as that final call was, I was impressed that Zylstra and the rest didn't whine about it or let it get them down. Their D in the final ten seconds was stout (although I was holding my breath on what I thought was going to be a dagger three at the very end).

And I suspect Parrothead leaves the cleaning of his phone camera lens up to my two granddaughters.