I chose division II

Actually, I chose Division III, but it wasn't because of my athletics.

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.

Lonnieburger Baskets: Skinny Legs in Bellevue

On our way to NKU for the DII Final Four, The Girl and I stopped off in Bellevue to knock off another burger on the Cincinnati Magazine list. We're something like two years out since the burger article came out, and we're approaching a point on the list when we have to search pretty far afield or accept that some of the places have gone out of business at this point.

Skinny Legs Pub & Grill, however, was certainly still in business as we stopped in on a Thursday evening around 5:45 to check out what the have to offer. Here's what Cincinnati Mag had to say about the place...

32 Black & Bleu Burger
SKINNY LEGS PUB & GRILL
$6.95
►The Cajun spices added to the Angus beef give this burger a spicy crust, cut by a generous dollop of bleu cheese dressing. Unfortunately, our bun was overtoasted, rendering it
almost stale, but our sassy waitress more than made up for it. / 519 Fairfield Ave., Bellevue, (859) 261-5111

I'm not much of a bleu cheese kind of guy, and I've pledged to hit only cheddar and bacon on my quest, so I didn't sample the Black & Bleu Burger. Nonetheless, here's what I found about Skinny Legs.

Burger

• I went for my burger medium with bacon and cheddar, lettuce, pickle, onion, tomato, but no mayo. The burger was freshly formed and of good, quality beef. The burger lacked the rich crust that the best burgers have. Maybe because of the recent run-in with Tanks, I felt that the burger could have been more well spiced - a little more salt and pepper, even, would have been appreciated. The real issue that I had with the burger was the desperate pinkness and the blood dripping onto my bun. I'm okay with a little medium rare, especially on a steak, but I ordered my burger medium (mine was the top two and the last above) and got a barely cooked pink burger. That's not right, man. The Girl's medium-well burger is cut in half up and second from the bottom. She ordered hers medium well (barely any pink in the middle), and there's a lot more pink there than a medium well burger should have. Burger - 6 

 Toppings

• Pretty standard fare here. The bacon was better than average but wasn't exactly thick-cut. The cheddar was nicely melted. The lettuce and tomato were serviceable. The garlic dill pickles were nicely thick and crisp. The onion was sharp as the dickens. The Girl went with barbeque sauce on the side of her burger and didn't end up using it. She wasn't impressed with the sauce. Toppings - 6

 Fries

• These are fries from a frozen bag, but they were served nice and hot. They were very lightly salted and had very little browning on them. Solid effort but nothing to write home about. Fries - 6 

Ambiance

• The main room of Skinny Legs is a two-story bar with the upper level reserved mostly for live music and empty on our Thursday at 6:00. The bar itself was populated by one regular when we got there and three when we left. We chose to sit off to the side in a room with a half dozen booths and a couple of two tops. The place seems like a decent neighborhood bar, though we were there a little early to say what the nightlife would be like. Skinny Legs is in Kentucky meaning it's a smoking establishment, and the regular and bartender were both smoking at the bar. Sadly for our gorgeous day there wasn't any outside seating as Skinny Legs is right on the corner of the streets. It's a friendly bar. Ambiance - 6

image from turnerbudds-burgerblog

Cost

• Thursdays are burger mania - we didn't know until we saw the chalkboard outside the front door, so every specialty burger was $6, cheaper than their usual $7.95 price. Fries are an extra dollar, and a Diet Coke was two more bucks. The menu does say that all the specialty burgers are $6. I foolishly asked for a burger with cheese and bacon and got charged fifty cents each for those. The Girl went for the Memphis burger with the barbeque sauce on the side. So she got a $6 burger with bacon and cheese on it and bbq on the side for $6. I got a burger ($6) and was charged an extra dollar for bacon and cheddar. We'll deal with that lower in the 'other stuff' section. My burger was $7 + fries $1 + drink $2 = $10. Right there in the middle range. Cost - 5 

Other stuff

• It's a simple enough thing for the waitress to ring my burger as a Memphis without barbeque. She didn't do that, and it was fully within her control. I took the buck out of my tip. -1 
• The onions were sharp enough that I - who likes a good, sharp onion - ended up not eating them all. That's not the fault of the bar. They just cut fresh onions and don't taste them all.
• Both of our burgers were undercooked...by a lot. -2
• Skinny Legs is a smoking establishment. When we were there, The Girl mentioned that the smoke was giving her a headache. I didn't notice it while were there, but I did notice that even two smokers in the bar made my shirt smell of smoke half an hour after we'd left the bar. -1 
• There's not much else to say about Skinny Legs. It's a fine place but one that exists in a hundred different places around the country. 

 Let's add it all up...6+6+6+6+5-1-2-1 = 25 pts

That's not so good...realistically that's selling Skinny Legs short. It doesn't feel as bad as Sammy's or Arthur's. It's more in line with a Habits or Tank's, they just lost out with their Other Stuff score, but the numbers don't lie.

• Terry's Turf Club - 45
• Cafe de Wheels - 44
• Senate - 43 
• City View Tavern - 40 (scaled from 32/40)
• Stuffed on Vine - 38
• Five Guys Burgers and Fries - 36 
• Roxy's - 36
• VanZandt - 34
• Gabby's - 34 
• Oakley Pub & Grill - 34 
• Quatman's - 32 / 34.5
• Troy's - 32 
• By Golly's - 32
• Wildflower Cafe - 31.25 (scaled from 26/40) 
• Sidetracks - 31
• Virgil's Cafe - 28 
• Tank's Bar & Grill - 28
• The Pub at Rookwood Mews - 28
• Smashburger - 28
• Habits Cafe - 28
• Graffiti Burger - 27
• Arthur's - 26
• Sammy's - 25 
• Skinny Legs - 25
• Gordo's - 20

Next up...um...man, I have no clue. I wanna catch at least one burger over break, though.

For a few other opinions on Skinny Legs, check out...

• Cincy Metromix
• TurnerBudds Burgerblog
• The Food Hussy