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Okay, my 3rd Valley roadie this year and 5th overall. Here are my experiences:
-My recommendation is to make this a two and a half day trip. We made it to Osceola Friday night, donated a little money and headed to Cedar Falls Saturday morning. You can do a 16 hour up and back in two days, but it's just not much fun. Denver for one night would be about the same thing.
-Several different ways to get there once you hit Des Moines, all of them snowy and cold. Highway 20 was especially bleak as I expected Buffalo Bill Cody to come riding over the hill at any second trying to sell me furs and hides. Wanted to go to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, a bit off the beating path, to pay homage to Buddy Holly's last show but the damn thing is closed on Saturdays.
-Stayed in Waterloo due to a great hotel rate on Saturday but hung around in Cedar Falls most of the day. Waterloo is an armpit compared to Cedar Falls. Think Junction City/Manhattan. Cedar Falls has a nice downtown area of shops and eateries, a college bar section, and just a neat feel to it. If it wasn't just so freakin cold!
-Pregamed at Becks, your typical college bar with decent burgers and other fare. Met a good number of other fans there who I called out on another thread....I stayed true to my commitment and bought some pitchers. Somewhere a group photo of us is swirling around and may be published soon.
-So far no parking at any venue including the Sprint Center has been as bad as it is at Koch. Price of success I suppose.
-The McCleod Center is a pit-literally. It has the capability of getting extremely loud due to the acoustics IMHO but I'm not an engineer so I can't tell you exactly why. Not a bad homecourt advantage for the Panthers and I can see why they are tough to play there, although their crowds usually are damn poor. C'mon its not like there is anything else to do there in the winter in the evening. Our seats were great but it was a straight up bench with no back; I used to laugh at the old buzzards that would complain about that in the days of HLA--not so much now.
-Fans were accomodating and even laughed at me (in a respectful sort of way) when I was screaming at the refs all night. Students were great, not too vulgar and a little more creative than MSU but less than Drake. The Ron Baker freshman photo was nice.
-Now the game...overall I was only worried for a minute at the start of the second half. We had taken the crowd out of it for the most part and they scored the first several points and got them back into it. But then we settled down and just do what we do best-wore them down, demoralized them with perfect sets to end the shot clock and started rolling our bigs out from up top down low. Once that happened a few times you could just see the exasperation on Jake's face that it really didn't matter what they did to defend us, we were going to score.
-Washpun and Mitchell for some reason don't play particularly well together, which I think hurts UNI. Morgan is okay but is a freshman and Bohannan is purely a shooter.
-Steed is a horrible ref. Why on earth the Valley would have him do a ESPN2 Saturday night game featuring the #2 team in the country is beyond me. Some of the calls he made both ways were beyond belief.
-Nick will not like his film session. A couple of times I was closer to his man from 8 rows up behind the basket than he was.
-Our fans were great as usual. @SPEShox25, @sdshox:
and @InWuWeTrust and all of the other folks were loud and heard. Great job!
Thinking seriously of making the trek to E'Ville since I don't have to work Monday. Mrs Lax is begging me to seek professional help.
-My recommendation is to make this a two and a half day trip. We made it to Osceola Friday night, donated a little money and headed to Cedar Falls Saturday morning. You can do a 16 hour up and back in two days, but it's just not much fun. Denver for one night would be about the same thing.
-Several different ways to get there once you hit Des Moines, all of them snowy and cold. Highway 20 was especially bleak as I expected Buffalo Bill Cody to come riding over the hill at any second trying to sell me furs and hides. Wanted to go to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, a bit off the beating path, to pay homage to Buddy Holly's last show but the damn thing is closed on Saturdays.
-Stayed in Waterloo due to a great hotel rate on Saturday but hung around in Cedar Falls most of the day. Waterloo is an armpit compared to Cedar Falls. Think Junction City/Manhattan. Cedar Falls has a nice downtown area of shops and eateries, a college bar section, and just a neat feel to it. If it wasn't just so freakin cold!
-Pregamed at Becks, your typical college bar with decent burgers and other fare. Met a good number of other fans there who I called out on another thread....I stayed true to my commitment and bought some pitchers. Somewhere a group photo of us is swirling around and may be published soon.
-So far no parking at any venue including the Sprint Center has been as bad as it is at Koch. Price of success I suppose.
-The McCleod Center is a pit-literally. It has the capability of getting extremely loud due to the acoustics IMHO but I'm not an engineer so I can't tell you exactly why. Not a bad homecourt advantage for the Panthers and I can see why they are tough to play there, although their crowds usually are damn poor. C'mon its not like there is anything else to do there in the winter in the evening. Our seats were great but it was a straight up bench with no back; I used to laugh at the old buzzards that would complain about that in the days of HLA--not so much now.
-Fans were accomodating and even laughed at me (in a respectful sort of way) when I was screaming at the refs all night. Students were great, not too vulgar and a little more creative than MSU but less than Drake. The Ron Baker freshman photo was nice.
-Now the game...overall I was only worried for a minute at the start of the second half. We had taken the crowd out of it for the most part and they scored the first several points and got them back into it. But then we settled down and just do what we do best-wore them down, demoralized them with perfect sets to end the shot clock and started rolling our bigs out from up top down low. Once that happened a few times you could just see the exasperation on Jake's face that it really didn't matter what they did to defend us, we were going to score.
-Washpun and Mitchell for some reason don't play particularly well together, which I think hurts UNI. Morgan is okay but is a freshman and Bohannan is purely a shooter.
-Steed is a horrible ref. Why on earth the Valley would have him do a ESPN2 Saturday night game featuring the #2 team in the country is beyond me. Some of the calls he made both ways were beyond belief.
-Nick will not like his film session. A couple of times I was closer to his man from 8 rows up behind the basket than he was.
-Our fans were great as usual. @SPEShox25, @sdshox:
and @InWuWeTrust and all of the other folks were loud and heard. Great job!
Thinking seriously of making the trek to E'Ville since I don't have to work Monday. Mrs Lax is begging me to seek professional help.
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