NCAA Tourney Fun!

It all started when Florida's name was called during the NCAA Tournament selection show.

Team cheers as their name is called.

The team was sent North to State College, PA. This was doable! We frantically started searching for flights and hotel rooms. We already knew we could easily get Tourney tickets from the UAA.

The early departure from State College was rough.

We found our flight - decided to fly straight into State College and reserved our rental car. Now, to find a hotel. This would prove the most difficult. We wanted to stay at the team hotel but it got booked up immediately after the selection show. So, we found another local hotel - booked it for the entire stay - then had a change of heart. We checked the State College/University Park area on line and found a decided lack of fun things to do. Its a college town and far from everything. We proceeded to map out a route to two historical cities - Philly and DC. It was about the same distance, to each so we decided to spend our time between round one and two at our nation's capital - Washington, DC. We found an Embassy Suites in the Georgetown area and booked it! Without going into detail it was a pain in the ass changing our original booking in State College. We used Orbitz as our travel agent and to alter these hotel plans required us to cancel and then rebook - but we knew we couldn't because the rooms in the area were literally becoming unavailable with every second. Finally, we had to call Orbitz and have them alter our hotel stay. Not fun. Will think twice about using them again...but in the end, we got what we wanted! 

There is nothing more exciting than tournament tickets in hand!

Inside the Bryce Jordan Center.

Our team scouting game one.

A WBB tournament is never perfect unless Alberta is there!

The arena is right next door to Beaver Stadium.  Did you know it was named after a person and not an animal?

Of course, Joe Paterno still resonates here.

Did I mention it was bitching cold? Bitchin! We got lucky on Sunday morning. We went to a place in downtown State College on the boarder of PSU called "The Waffle Shop" for breakfast. It was a cold day...a very cold day. There was a line and quite a few people ahead of us. But, let me say that it pays to be a couple - the folks ahead needed tables for three or more...therefore, parties of two were seated immediately and so we were pulled inside to sit down, order and eat our breakfast. Fantastic!

We won our first game against Dayton - mind you we're the 11 seed and they're the 6 seed. So, a bit of an upset. Penn State won their game and we met on Tuesday evening to play for the Sweet Sixteen. Alas, Penn State was too good for us. We fought hard and never gave up. Looking forward to next year. We've got a very good recruiting class coming in - it should be another exciting season.

In my next blog submission, I'll talk about our amazing trip to Washington DC!

Ciao!