My Cats Storm New Orleans, Part 1

One of my items on The List (I refuse to call it a Bucket List because I'm not starring in some shitty movie with Jack Nicholson) is to attend a Final Four at least once, and preferably with UK playing in it. I have no idea if UK will make it this year with the talented team they have, but when my buddy Dan suggested we go to New Orleans for the first two rounds, I couldn't actually think of a reason why not to go.

UK basketball, live in the flesh? Check.
New Orleans? Double-check.
Copious amounts of drinking due to an open container law? Triple-check.
New Orleans has a casino? Let's make that four checks.
A bevy of oysters, gumbo and other cajun food delights? That's a handful of checks everyone.

There are more to cover, but let's be honest, after the seeing UK play in an NCAA Tournament game, the first two reasons were enough.

Getting hotels, flights and tickets proved more troublesome to get mainly based on timing. Everything had to be done in about 30 minutes because flights were selling out fast and by the end of it we had flights that left DC and New Orleans at 7 a.m. and 6 a.m. (brutal).

Once we got there, it was pretty much all basketball, all the time. Buying tickets gets you into every game that is played in the host city, so we got to spend the first day watching ODU beat ND and then watch an epic clusterfuck of coaching by the boys at Texas-Wake Forest.

What stood out in the Old Dominion-Notre Dame game was how brutal it must have been for the Irish to be playing at noon the day after St. Patty's Day. That's just mean. Plus, whether it was crappy fans or too much alcohol, the Irish fans were nowhere to be seen. Come on, Irish, I know it's not the Sugar Bowl, but it is the Big Dance and you gotta come represent. Crap, the ODU faithful outnumbered them 3-1 easily just with a cursory glance. Sitting with a bunch of Baylor and other UK fans, we joked about how bad ND's star Luke Harangody played and how he looked so fat he could have doubled the Irish crowd if he took a seat in row 6. Good times. ODU won beat the Irish, or maybe I should say the Irish lost to a combination of a small school and a hangover.

Watching the Wake-Texas overtime game was awesome, because it was like watching two 4-year-olds try and coach a team. Neither coach seemed to want to win the game, and were actively attempting to get booed out of the arena by their own fans. Reinforced my happiness that we didn't hire Rick Barnes, who was on the shortlist before we hired Calipari.

We upgraded our seats and sat about 10 rows behind the ETSU bench for the Thursday night game. As you can tell from the picture at the top, there were plenty of seats in front of us and we could have served the ETSU players a few beers and some chips while they got hammered by Eric Bledsoe and the rest of the Cats. All-in-all, a good start to the trip.

Back soon for Part 2 ...