Pittsburgh post

Don't know why Olson chanted "Pittsburgh post! Pittsburgh post!" in a comment on the blog last night. Maybe it was because Coppin State was competing in the play-in game. Maybe he took a charge from Sam Okey in a rec league game.

Maybe it's because the game in Pittsburgh is the only time I've seen the Badgers play in the NCAA Tournament, which starts tomorrow, but this is as good a time as any to mark the 11th anniversary of this memorable experience.

The whole thing started on the last Saturday of the regular season (think it was the last year before the Big Ten Tournament), when Wisconsin upset #2 Minnesota to basically clinch a spot in the tournament. That game ended with me hugging Milinovich; the day ended with me hugging an Ole English 40. The next morning, I was in the Cardinal office working on our mammoth Big Dance preview section (16 whole pages!), when Millie walked in and said "They shot Biggie." With East Coast-West Coast tensions in the rap community simmering, this was inevitable, but no less sad.

Throughout the course of the day several of us made plans to road trip it wherever the Badgers went, which ended up being Pittsburgh. It was me, Olson, Milinovich, and Millie's friend Garza, who worked with him at the Nitty Gritty. Garza and I didn't have credit cards, which meant we couldn't drive the rental car, which worked out well for us.

We left late Thursday afternoon headed for the Steel City, and Erik and Mike drove through the night in less-than-ideal conditions. I remember the precipitation teetering between rain and freezing rain, and made light of the fact that the thermometer was toggling between 32 and 33 degrees - "Ice! Rain! Ice! Rain?" To which Erik barked "Shut the f$&* up! It's not funny!" Erik eventually forgave my distractions and introduced me to pre-"Closing Time" Semisonic.

We pulled into Pittsburgh at the crack of dawn and ate breakfast at a restaurant that seemed shady, and headed to the arena. The place, where the Penguins were still playing at the time, had to be one of the more decrepit facilities the Big Dance was held in at the time, a real dump. Erik and I went to the press room, I opened up an orange juice and a notebook to prepare pregame notes, and promptly fell asleep, waking up 45 minutes later with spiral notebook grooves indented in my face, and my notebook covered with drool. Very professional.

Went to press row courtside about an hour before the noon tipoff, and went to work on a foreign journalism paper I was writing about Benazhir Bhutto. Got a lot done there. Our game against Texas went about as expected. We were a 7 seed and they were a 10 seed, although consensus was those should have been switched. Dick Bennett was mad at Ty Calderwood for not eating his vegetables at the team meal or something like that, and benched him to start the game. Two minutes or so later, with the Badgers down about 25-0, Ty came in. Reggie Freeman and Kris Clack were just too much that day, and the Badgers' feel-good season was over.

But not our fun in Pittsburgh. Next we saw Coppin State beat South Carolina in what I believe was the second #15-#2 upset in tournament history, a really exciting, feel-good story. Every time I hear the name Fang Mitchell, as I did when CSU made it back to the tournament this year, I think of that day. Texas beat Coppin by one in the second round.

The night session was also good, with New Mexico, Millie's second-favorite team for I forget what reason, beat Old Dominion, which featured fans with funny Southern accents ("He woked!" = "He walked!").

The capper was Louisville beating UMass, which was one year removed from the Marcus Camby-led run to the finals. The highlight of that game, arguably of the entire trip, was the Louisville dance team, which was legen ... dary (more legendary than this picture I found). Let's put it this way: not one guy in attendance left to relieve himself at halftime. Millie made one of the more poignant comments I've heard, one I'd repeat if I wasn't relatively sure my mom would be reading this post. I wrote about the Cardinals dance team in the Cardinal the next week, and a few weeks later, getting carded buying beer somewhere in Madison, the guy noticed my name and said "I've seen the Louisville dance team before ... oh my god are they hot!" (Note: Louisville won its sixth national dance title in 2007.)

That night we went out for an evening of Iron City Light and Garza trying to pick fights with Pitt undergrads. After I had gotten done getting fresh with a cannon (details still fuzzy), we made our way back to the hotel, where Erik snuggled with a doll bearing the likeness of his girlfriend and future wife, Molly. Weird.

On the drive home we stopped off in South Bend to pay homage to Rudy Ruettinger and took photos of Touchdown Jesus. It should be noted that Olson, in his first attempt at sports photography, came back with some terrific shots, including an Okey dunk.

Why bring all this up now in such detail? It's a reminder that not so long ago, a trip to the tournament made an entire season worthwhile. Once in the postseason, we didn't do much winning of note - it was the extracurriculars that made it fun as much as anything. A return trip the next season was not something you took for granted. The 1998 team lost Calderwood early and Okey halfway through and finished with a losing record. Figures, my senior year.

Of course, the 1999 team overachieved and righted the ship, and we're now sporting a 10-year tournament streak, one of the longest in the nation. In a decade's time we've gone from "just happy to be here" to being disappointed by anything less than a Sweet 16 appearance. That's OK, raising the bar is how you achieve more in life. But don't get spoiled, and don't forget to try an Iron City Light along the way.