Portland : NCAA Round 2
Saturday’s round 2 games were great. I was delighted that both UW and Gonzaga made it to the second round. In their initial appearances both teams handily won their games and it looked like they were both poised to do well in the second round. Unfortunately, UW played a flat first half against Purdue and was never really in the game until well into the second half. By then the inertia was in Purdue’s favor. Although my alma mater only lost by 2 points, they were never really all that close to winning.
Gonzaga put up a great fight agains WKU, and the game came down to the final few seconds. Seeing the Zags pull of a last-minute victory basket was incredible. Everyone was really impresesed with the whole game. Honestly, I thought WKU was the best team of the weekend. They played with intensity and speed. The fact that Gonzaga pulled out the victory was a testament to their tenacity. Great game!
The concession disorganization continued Saturday, with lines continuing to block passage in the corridors, and wait times of up to an hour for food. I had expected they might make some kind of adjustment to improve logistics, but apparently not. I tried to pretend I’m not a PM and did my best to ignore the unaddressed inefficiency. Meh. It’s hard for me… I want to fix things and plan iterative improvement. Thankfully, there wasn’t a whiteboard handy or I might have started diagramming.
This was such a fun weekend of sports, great company (family and friends in abundance), crazy running around in Portland, yummy food and of course, excellent microbrews. So, with my first NCAA tournament games behind me, I’m really looking forward to going again next year. We’re putting in for 2010 tickets for rounds 1 and 2 in Spokane. Teri and I are planning to watch the next round of games on TV, even Friday night’s game – which occurs on our wedding annivarsary! Before this year I never spent much time watching college basketball… I think during the whole time I was a college student (which, admittedly, was a pretty long time) I might have attended 2 games in total. I guess I just never really thought about it when I was a student at the UW or WWU. I always had my snoot in a book or was practicing music. Go figure.