There is a quaintness, an innocence, a satin-warmup-jacket, canvas-basketball-sneaker naivete about watching the dots on the Nevada map decide their high school state basketball championships at Orleans Arena on Saturday that one doesn’t necessarily get when the big and haughty schools from Las Vegas and Reno decide theirs on Friday night.
SAN DIEGO — This was the scene: On one end of the basketball court at Viejas Arena, San Diego State players danced and pranced and hooted and hollered, bumping chests and slapping hands and laughing up a storm while expending all sorts of energy dunking.
The biggest basketball game in Mountain West Conference history (Part II) is today at Viejas Arena. There will be a sold-out crowd of more than 12,000 and a national TV audience on CBS and some of the country’s most creative students, many of whom camped out for days to purchase tickets.
Even the most passionate followers of the NBA were weary of hearing about Carmelo Anthony’s next move. It was a lot like the annoying reality show that drags on for months and finally ends when the guy hands out his final rose and proposes.
You want to bottle it. To gently unscrew the top and slowly pour in the fight, the determination, the unselfishness, the hustle, the terrific effort by Quintrell Thomas, the shooting accuracy of Tre’Von Willis, the will not to lose a game in an atmosphere where most teams would fade.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Messages can be sent different ways. Letters. E-mails. Texts. Tweets. When it comes to college basketball, the most important ones deal in numbers.
