YCGL - Saturday, March 11, 2023 - The Next to “Big Dance” Mountain West Style

Well, it’s Saturday afternoon and it's not college football so it must be MW Championship Basketball! Today is the Men's Final, which will be #1San Diego State U vs #3 Utah State U.  A good friend of mine was the faculty advisor to their ASCE chapter for a long while, they are an Aggie school having done a lot of research in irrigation and drainage.  And they are underdogs, so I’m going to root for them.  

We went to the upper section and off to the side to get above the crowd, but the real noise was from the sound system.  Chip had her earplugs and I had some construction ear plugs in my toolbox in the trailer that I brought.  I measured a peak of 111 dBa and average at 97dBa.  Painful. We had to pull them out in order to talk.  

San Diego State University beat Utah State University 62-57.  They matched up pretty well until the last two or three minutes and SDSU pulled away.  Some frantic quick fouls made the last 90 seconds last forever and didn't make any change to the game.  

At that point, we scurried out as quickly as possible, I had the truck parked for a quick getaway, I dropped Chip off at her hotel for her dinner with some graduate school friends she hadn't seen in 30 years, I topped off the tank in the truck, got hitched up and was on the road at 7:30.  Sadly, it was dark as I drove over the bridge at Hoover Dam.  I got to Kingman, AZ at 10:00.  I hooked up, dumped the tanks (since I didn't have a sewer connection in Las Vegas), filled the water and basically got ready for the rest of the trip. 

I had not mentioned Chip last year because I hadn't asked her if I could, but I did today.  So, this is a little bit better pic of Chip.  

We met on Sunday of tournament week last year.  I had just walked up to the base of the stairs at the Thomas and Mack Arena and was looking up the two flights to get to the entrance.  I heard a voice to my left say, "There's an escalator over here."  So we rode up, checked through the gate and started talking.  She was wearing a green CSU t-shirt and I had my Brown and Gold t-shirt, so teamwise, we knew where we stood.  We both had general admission tickets and sat down together.  She is very knowledgeable about basketball and is very enthusiastic!  (Did I say loud?)  Anyway, we ended up meeting before every session and sat together for most of the games.  

Obviously, for UW-CSU games, we have a little problem and sit in different sections.  OTOH, she coerced me to attend one of the CSU alumni pregame dinners last year.  I had to laugh because I attended CSU longer than probably 95% of the people there (1974-83) but had to find a a green t-shirt at Walmart to wear over my UW duds.  This year, she brought me an extra t-shirt that I could wear over my brown and gold for the (non-UW) CSU games.  She was only there for the Women's games last year and left Wednesday.  This year, she stayed for the whole tournament like I did.  

Joe and I started attending the UW Women's volleyball games last year.  She contacted me before the CSU match , so we sat together for that.  She's just as knowledgeable for Women's volleyball (and loud).  She was also up to Laramie for the Women's basketball game this year,  

In all, it's been fun to have someone to talk to, kid and sympathize with (and explain what's going on during the games since I can't listen on the radio like I normally do).  I'm sure we'll see each other for games next year. :)