Saturday, March 3, 2007

Day 3 - Game 2 Pregame thoughts

Greetings again from the Scott Trade Center. Jays vs. Missouri St.

First, great game with SIU and Bradley. I made a fool out of myself in the press room watching the game on TV, as I openly cheered (loudly) as Matt Shaw dropped in the game winner. Yes, that is a MAJOR no-no and I have often ripped members of the media (Brian Rosenthal) for cheering at games. My fault. Tom Shatel of the OWH was right next to me and scolded me for doing it - rightfully so. He said "I know you aren't a media member in your mind but try to keep it down". I'm pretty red faced about it but I want to go to the NCAA tournament. It's my favorite thing to cover and I simply forgot where I was. Gotta check myself I little bit here in St. Louis. I have to at least act professionally. Tom asked me if I was a Bluejay fan, cheering for CU...great.....I have to even explain things to my fellow media members.

Ok, with that out of the way. Some news to report: After the firing of Royce Waltman yesterday, the Valley schools have started to act like big time schools. Porter Moser is rumored to have been fired at Illinios St after 4 seasons and Steve Murfeld has been let go supposively by Evansville. The Purple Aces don't have much coming back but the Redbirds could be very good with the right coach.

The crowd here in St. Louis is huge! 22,000+, the largest crowd ever for basketball in the Scott Trade Center. This is also the largest crowd ever to see the Jays play (22,612) Lots and lots of SIU fans that will be staying til tomorrow. Reports are that there were up to 3,000 Bluejays fans who came down without tickets and have been shut out of the game. Not good considering that Missouri St has a ton of people here. We'll have to see if there is a game to go to tomorrow.

Like I said in the pregame - MSU by 10. I hope I'm wrong. Like I said before, I want to go to the tourney and a loss today makes many people sweat at CU til next Sunday.

PS - Nebraska lost today at Colorado like I thought they would. CU plays pretty good at home. I've heard Ryan Anderson got tossed, which means he's out for Oklahoma State game too. Not good and crashing way to end a pretty good freshman season. I talked with a national writer today who said that he expected Billy Gillispie to be offered the Arkansas job and turn it down. Arkansas would then offer it to Doc Sadler. We'll see if they fire Stan Heath first but watch for that story to really heat up in about 2 weeks.

I'll post again at halftime....Good Luck Jays.

1 comment:

BLV said...

Apparently the Jays are just going to free throw their way into the tourney.

Also, because you may have missed it, Papelbon pitched two innings, gave up no hits and struck out four.

Salty!