Dec. 13, 2008

Greetings from Poughkeepsie, New York!!

I am sorry that I haven't been posting as much as I would like, but our frenetic early season schedule (I just love the word frenetic) has given me less time to write than I would like.

Anyway, after completing final exams this week, the Vikings hopped on a plane on Friday evening to head here so that we could play Marist on Saturday night and then Syracuse on Monday.

The guys were very loose all day. With the pressures of fall exams behind them, they will have no academics to worry about for about a month so they are relishing the thought of a road trip with out academic advisor Lisa Hehman holding a study hall session.

We almost left without the sophomores today as D'Aundray Brown and Norris Cole each had a late final to take and joined us at the airport. They arrived just as we were boarding (or in the case of a few of us, we had already boarded).

The flight was uneventful but it did make me wonder about the process of scheduling flights. Our flight to Newark was supposed to take just under two hours and we left 20 minutes late. Yet, because of all the time they build into the schedule, we actually arrived 15 minutes early.

It was nice to walk through the Newark airport without having to hurry. In two of the last three times the team was here - in August on our way to Spain and just about two weeks ago coming back from Florida on Thanksgiving - our first flights were so late that we had to be shuttled from one gate to the next on those shuttle carts in order to catch our connections.

So now that I have seen the Newark Airport at a walking pace, I have just one thing to say. . . it is very unremarkable. (Cedric Jackson was amazed by the $4 they wanted for the bag/handful of gummi bears).

We had to drive about 90 minutes from the Newark Airport to Poughkeepsie and I immediately noticed that our bus driver is going to be the highlight of the weekend. Besides referring to every car in our way as "maggots", he has a very unique way of driving. I don't think he sees the bus as being a very large vehicle which is supposed to transport a number of college student-athletes around New York. Instead, he views it as being one really big bumper car.

After he passed up the restaurant where we were eating dinner (Olive Garden), he decided that the best way to turn the bus around was to turn left at a "T" intersection, back up the bus back into the intersection, and complete the "U" turn back down the street we came up.

Unfortunately, he did all of this in what I would call moderately heavy traffic. Our driver muttered something to one car that took exception to the maneuver, saying something about his bus winning that battle every time.

He made one other interesting maneuver which caused another driver to raise his finger towards us, causing Coach Waters to cringe at all the memories of bad drivers and rude people from his five years at Rutgers.

Anyway, we stopped at the Olive Garden for dinner. Since we are traveling in a group of about 24 people, we eat out in an interesting manner.

At 10 a.m. this morning, I received a text from Bill Buck asking what I wanted for dinner. By 11, I turned in my order of soup and salad and he forwarded the groups order to the restaurant.

When we were 10 minutes away, Bill let the restaurant know so that when we entered the restaurant, the food was served within five minutes. We were in and out of the place in about 30 minutes.

We arrived at our hotel around 10 p.m. and everybody settled in for a quiet night so I thought I would put together a few thoughts about how things are going.

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First off, Trevon Harmon is not with us right now because the NCAA rules say that he can't travel until we know that he will be eligible and since he took a couple of finals on Friday, we won't know until his grades are turned in.

Best case scenario is that Trevon joins the team on Sunday night/Monday morning in Syracuse and plays against the Orange on Monday night. Worst case is that all of his grades aren't posted until the Tuesday deadline and he is not able to play until Saturday against LaRoche.

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If you didn't see the release today, we announced the SportsTime Ohio schedule for the upcoming year. It is less games than last year, but they are all road contests which means that our fans will be able to see more games.

In fact, after we play Wright State on Dec. 30, fans should be able to see every Viking game without too much effort. All of the home games are readily accessible in the comfortable Wolstein Center. That leave just eight league games, five being done by STO, the YSU game being televised on ESPNU and the season-ending Butler game possibly being picked up by ESPNU later in the year (they will televise one league game that day but will pick which one later).

That means the only road game not being televised is the Feb. 26 game at Valparaiso.

The package begins when STO airs the Syracuse Time-Warner Cable version of the game against the Orange. But. . . just like STO has been known to do. . . they weren't happy just showing Viking fans the Syracuse version of the game so they went out of their way to arrange for Coach Waters to be interviewed post-game.

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Again, if you didn't notice the promo on CSUVikings.com, the Dec. 20 game against LaRoche is another Alley-Oop Online Special night. Fans buying a ticket at $15 for that game will not only get a $12 ticket, but they will also receive a CSU Vikings replica game jersey.

This promotion comes to us from new ticket manager Carrie Neville, who had a similar promotion when she worked in minor league hockey. I personally think that the jersey is worth the $15 all by itself so don't miss out on this opportunity.

Besides, the LaRoche game is also another Family Value Saturday which means that the KidZone will be up and the concessions stands selling the Dollar dogs (I am going to have to get me one of those on Saturday because we always have pizza in the media room). Don't forget. . . the LaRoche game is a special 1:00 p.m. matinee.

That's all I have for now. Email me at CSUSID@gmail.com if you have any questions or topics that you want covered. I will try to write on Sunday.