This past Thursday night, however, I chose to go see the NCAA Men's Division II basketball national semifinals because they were being played over at the Bank of Kentucky Arena on Northern Kentucky University's campus.
The NCAA brought in all eight of their Elite Eight teams into Northern Kentucky to play the Elite Eight on Wednesday, the Final Four on Thursday, and the championship on Saturday. I have two connections to Bellarmine athletics - Coach Sullivan is an assistant for the women's basketball team, and the men's team has a NAHS graduate in their National Player of the Year, Braydon Hobbs. The men's team spent much of the year ranked #1, so I knew they had a good chance to make it that far. With that spirit I hit up Ticketmaster to get myself and The Girl a pair of tickets for the Final Four round. At only $12 for full price - and The Girl being able to get the three buck student discount, the tickets were a bargain. Sure, the $4 convenience charge didn't thrill me, but that's what I get for wanting to be assured of a ticket.
We got there mid-way through the first half of the first game, in time to see the Western Washington Vikings take on the Stonehill Skyhawks (with their awful mascot costume). Clearly, there was no need for me to worry about getting a ticket...
Seriously, I know that WWU is 2450 miles and that Stonehill is 930 miles from NKU as the Google flies, but I would've thought they might be able to get a bus of students rolling across somewhere. Instead, WWU had about twenty parents cheering for them. Stonehill did have a few students at the game.
Once the Bellarmine crowd started to show up for their 9:30 game,the place at least started to fill in a bit. Bellarmine is only 100 miles away from the Bank of Kentucky Center...
It's not like all the seats in the place were taken up, just that Bellarmine outdrew all the rest of the teams combined.
Sadly, Braydon and the Bellarmine Knights came up short, falling 79-72 to Montevallo.
Of course it saved me from having to pick up tickets for the championship game on Saturday - where Western Washington took down Montevallo 72-65.
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