The Day Ahead
3/18/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
March 18, 2009
MIAMI, Fla. (Hilton Miami Airport) - March 18 • 6:34 p.m. (We're on eastern now. I've traveled forward in time, Doc Brown style)
As I hinted earlier, the NCAA takes the liberty of planning your entire tournament trip for you, at least as far as team activities in and around the competition arena are concerned. Thursday promises a full slate for the players and coaches, as well as myself and the rest of the administrative types tagging along on this trip.
We're on our own tonight, so we'll get checked in to the hotel, grab a good team dinner and kick back for some rest. Tomorrow morning, though, the tournament begins in earnest for Stephen F. Austin.
The American Airlines Arena will open its workrooms and courtside media areas to attending media at 9 a.m. I'll attend a sports information directors meeting at 10. (As a side note, you'll never see the folks in my office at SFA refer to ourselves as sports information directors. Not that we have any aversion to the use of that title; we just jumped aboard the bandwagon of trendy change a few years ago to rename ourselves the SFA Athletics media relations office. When your telephone listing says something as general as "Sports Information," you tend to get a lot of goofy phone calls asking when the pool will be open for recreational use or what time the intramural dodgeball championship game will be held. Ugh! Where was I?)
The meeting will include media relations representatives from all eight teams competing in Miami this weekend, as well as the site's media coordinator. I fully expect to be the most clueless person in attendance, this being my first tournament experience. I hope there's no rookie hazing involved.
At 10:30 a.m., the team entrance to the arena opens. Our guys are scheduled for their first news conference at 11:20 a.m. The way it's set up, a select group -- usually three to five -- of players is called to the interview room for a formal news conference that runs approximately 15 minutes. While this is going on, the rest of the team is available to the media in the locker room.
All the while, Coach Kaspar will be waiting -- presumably in a sound-proof booth somewhere -- for his turn in the interview room. He will hold court at his own press conference, set to last around half an hour, starting at 11:35 a.m.
So that's nearly 50 minutes of potential interview time, or double that, if you consider that there will be additional questioning taking place simultaneously in the locker room. I'd set the over/under -- Disclaimer: strictly for recreational purposes -- at four mispronunciations of Nacogdoches, three questions regarding Eric Bell's actual height, and at least one query into why a school located in a hot, dry state like Texas would choose the Lumberjack as a mascot. It's nobody's fault; we're just not a household name.
Immediately following the interview period, we're due on the court at noon for a 40-minute public practice. This practice is open to the media and any fan with a ticket, so it'll basically be an oversized layup drill. I might even get the chance to play a little one-on-one with sophomore guard Eddie Williams. He's been ducking my challenge for over a year now.
After the open run, we'll hop a bus and head to an undisclosed, secure location for our real practice. I count eight local facilities available for off-site practice.
Coach Kaspar and I, along with director of athletics Robert Hill, are due back at the arena by 3 p.m. for a pretournament meeting. I'm guessing these proceedings will take no longer than 30 or 40 minutes, since the Utah news conference is scheduled to begin at 3:45.
And, after that, my friends, our day is over, as far as the NCAA is concerned. That's the best thing about being the No. 14 seed, I guess. They get you in and out as quickly as possible, and you've got the rest of the day to yourself.
If you've got some time to yourself, and you're looking for a constructive way to spend it, shoot me an e-mail, and tell me how proud/giddy/excited/nervous you are over SFA's first trip to the NCAA Championships.
-- SFA --
