Back by popular demand, from the basketball team at least, here is the second blog entry of the season. This one will cover the entire trip to Utah, so keep checking back between today and Sunday to get updates on the team’s trip to BYU and the Traveler's Invitational.

As always feel free to e-mail me at slafata@unf.edu if you have a question or comment!

Saturday

The Utah adventure continues with one last day of play out here at BYU and one day of travel tomorrow. Wheels touch down in Jacksonville a little before midnight. I will be looking forward to my own bed, but I will certainly miss the breakfast buffet here at the Marriott. I’m not going to know what to do when there isn’t a chef in my kitchen cooking my omelets.

I saw Cameron Lovelace first thing this morning at breakfast and his first words to me were “I was ice cold last night.”

Cameron did struggle, he was 0-for-7 from the field, and didn’t score a point for the first time in his young career here as an Osprey. He has many better days to come, however. What I can appreciate is the fact that he took ownership of his performance. So many times people make excuses, blaming their performance on the refs or the basketball or the arena floor or the fact that they were checking out the cheerleaders instead of running the offense. Cameron admitted it was on him and now all he can do is put it behind him and keep shooting the ball. He gets another chance this evening against Rice.

I’m not sure how appropriate this is to include in the blog, but the irony of it all makes it too hard to resist. We were in the grocery store this morning looking for snacks for the tip back and Mark Power noticed this beverage named Polygamy Porter and the slogan on the box said “Why have just one?” And we were at a place called Smith’s! For those who don’t know about Utah, and the Mormon faith, this means nothing to you. But I know the rest of you are at least chuckling right now.

I also ran across some chocolate chip pumpkin cookies. What an incredible combination! That is like Superman and Bat Man joining forces to fight the taste villains. It’s almost unheard of.

Today’s weather update according to the pleasant voice on the other end of the wakeup call: High of 50, lows in the 20s. It was definitely colder outside today. No snow in the forecast, however.

Our hotel has pretty much been college athletics central this week. Here are all the teams that have been staying here: Rice (men’s basketball), Cal-Poly (men’s basketball), Louisiana-Lafayette (men’s basketball), Oregon (women’s basketball) and San Jose State (men’s ice hockey). It’s like our own little Olympic village here.   

Before shootaround today I claimed the trivia prize from coach Kilcullen. The answer to his question was Claude Rains and the question revolved around the movie “The Invisible Man.” Rains also played Captain Louis Renault in one of my favorite movies, “Casablanca.” Rains will have to do for now, but next time I would rather discuss Ingrid Bergman!

On the ride over to the arena this morning I learned of another casualty. Apparently coach Jimmy Link blew out an ankle while running.

There is a rumor that team manager Josh Baker could take his spot on the bench if Jimmy can’t go tonight. That is of course if Josh can’t get on the court. He did a pretty good job in the walk-through this morning. In either case he will have to watch his potty mouth so he doesn’t get T-ed up.

Cudos to the Osprey defense, which held BYU to 74 points, compared to a rice defense that had 83 dropped on it by the Cougars last night. Those 74 points are still BYU’s lowest point total this season.

With the game against Rice tonight, UNF will now have taken on four teams from four different time zones this season. The year started with Savannah State (Eastern), moved onto BYU (Mountain) before games with Cal-Poly (Pacific) and Rice (Central). Looks like we will miss out on Hawaii and Alaska this year, but we got the contiguous 48 states covered.

 
We are here at the Marriott Center getting ready for one last contest. The BYU-Utah football game is on the big screen here. It’s kinda funny to hear everyone talk about a big football rivalry to somebody who lives in the Southeast. The locals would be amazed if they came down to see how we did college football in the part of the country where we live.

Zack Riggins, Cortez Riley and Matt Sauey rank third, fourth and fifth, respectively in tournament rebounds coming into tonight’s game, while Stan Januska is seventh. Sauey and Riggins will have a chance to add to those totals right away. They will start tonight along with fellow freshman Cameron Lovelace, Riley and Januska.  

Friday

The day is off to a pretty slow start. The team is at shoot-around right now and I am chilling on press row, literally. Thanks to head trainer Mark Power for wrapping my knee in ice. I got in an early run this morning, so the knee needs a little recovery time to be in shape for the broadcast tonight. Running on the flat land is a little easier than the hills!

Weather update: Partly cloudy, expected to be colder today with temperatures in the low 50s.

“You’re not from Utah are you?” That was the quote of the night last night. Mike Ridaught and I checked out this little burger joint down the road and the guy behind the counter asked if I wanted fry sauce. What is fry sauce? That was my question exactly. It’s a combination of ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, lemon juice and something else. Tastes kinda like tartar sauce. It was OK, but apparently people out here love it.

What I loved waaaaay more than the fry sauce was the milkshake I had. They actually chopped up pies and put them in a milk shake! I had a cheesecake, pumpkin pie milkshake. It actually had pieces of crust in the shake. I had to eat it with a spoon. I had dreams about it in my sleep last night!

Now you understand why I have to run. I know the team will be jealous when they read about my shake experience.

The team is one down right now. Jordan Fair is sick, so he did not make shootaround. Speaking of shootaround, Rice is trying to bust into our session. There could be a fight… no fight. Cooler heads have prevailed. Actually there was no drama. Rice was understanding because the team got on the court 10 minutes late. Hopefully Coach Kilcullen does not have to run 17s now.

We didn’t get a lot of favorable comments from the local papers today, but maybe we will turn some heads against Cal-Poly.

We are only moments away from more chicken meatballs!

Check back later in the day for more updates. 

Got a little bit of bad news. No chicken meatballs. But the ravioli was really good at lunch, so I have a fully tummy and I am ready for game time.

I tried my basketball warmup pants on for the first time today and it looked like I had footie pajamas on. Needless to say, basketball gear is not made for somebody like me. While I do struggle with the basketball clothing I can say that I have never understood how basketball players handle the hotel showers and bathrooms. They are perfect for someone like me, but I bet those guys have really clean knees and not much more.

About to tip it off. Ospreys are wearing their new home grey uniforms. They will be the home team tonight. I love the new look!

Unfortunately the uniforms were the best thing the Ospreys had going tonight. A tough one for the good guys. This is a young team that is learning some tough lessons right now. But they will keep getting better. Zack Riggins had a good night and the freshmen continue to get a lot of playing time. Cortez Riley and Stan Januska both played tough, but they couldn’t do it all on their own.

That’s it for today’s blog. Check back tomorrow when the team will take on Rice in its final contest of the weekend. Tipoff is at 8 p.m. EST.

Thursday

Today is our second day in Utah and I must say this whole blog thing is taking off. I might have to start charging a subscription rate for this. We need to raise funds at UNF in these tough economic times!

We haven’t even arrived at the arena yet for tonight’s game, but it has already been a day full of adventure.

First of all I will give everyone an update on the weather. It’s partly cloudy and in the 50s. Not quite as nice as yesterday, but still a pretty decent day. I have gotten more questions from people back home about the weather out here than I can count, and everyone here in Utah wants to know what the weather is like in Florida. We need some new topics to talk about people. If you have any suggestions, feel free to pass them along.

The day started off with a good breakfast in the Marriott restaurant downstairs. I did, however, start the day in coach Kilcullen’s dog house because I forgot to mention yesterday that play-by-play man Mike Ridaught was on the court shooting with the team.  Mike struggled a little bit at first, but he knocked down a few jumpers.

Coack Kilcullen’s day got worse when we told him that Kenny Loggins was in town last night and he stayed at our hotel. Coach – who informed us that Loggins used to have a group by a different name – started singing some song I have never heard of. He should have gone with “Danger Zone.” I mean it is his ring tone on his phone. Apparently Loggins checked in under the name Mr. Freeman and the people at the front desk thought he was a homeless guy.

Quote of the day thus far courtesy of trainer Mark Power: “From the Danger Zone to the Homeless Zone.”

Seriously though, does anyone even know what Kenny Loggins looks like? And do they even care about him any more? Does he really need to check in under an alias? I guess he was afraid coach Kilcullen might start beating down his door asking him for a late night rendition of “Footloose.”

Moving onto other breakfast topics. Stan Januska avoided having to do some push ups this morning. He made a little friendly wager with student manager Josh Baker that he would do 20 push ups for every 10 sausages Josh ate. Needless to say, Josh is no eating champion, but Stan got a great picture of the attempt.

After breakfast, we headed off to shoot-around so the guys could go over final preparations for the game. While they were doing that I was taking a jog around campus. Altitude+hills=nothing like running in Florida. It was a tough run, but it was really cool to see all the mountains along the way and check out the athletic fields on the run as well.

We had an awesome lunch at Ottavios Italian restaurant. Two words: chicken meatballs!

Let me just fill you in on what life is like on the road with basketball. Pretty much your only concerns are when do we leave for practice/shoot-around, when do we leave for the game and where do we eat?  

On the way back from lunch Cameron Lovelace was almost attacked by a dog while he was trying to hit on a couple girls. Smart dog!

We still have more than four hours until we tip. Everyone is resting up and getting ready for BYU. Let’s hope for a good game tonight. 

The good news is, coach Kilcullen informed me I am now out of the dog house and Mike Ridaught has taken my place. We were a little late getting out of the Marriott Parking lot because the only recording device we had for pregame interviews was sitting up in our room. Coach said Mike will owe him some 17s as punishment. I said I would run them with him because my recorder is back in Jacksonville.

By the way, first question I received when I arrived at the media table: “Why did you leave the beautiful weather of Florida to come here?”

We live in the Sunshine State, not the Hot All the Time State. 

Oooooh, they have candy in the press room here! This beats Savannah State. Snickers trump Blow Pops any day. I just ate a Starkist, hopefully I can talk on the radio now. If I’m muffled it’s not because I have a cold, it’s just that Starkists are stuck to the roof of my mouth.

Rice wins the first game of the tournament. Cal-Poly had a chance to tie with 10 seconds left but had a 3-pointer go in and out.

They gave us a flashlight to read in the dark when the lights went out for the starting lineups. I’m going to bring that back to my room to use when I have to get up in the middle of the night and get a drink. I almost fell over the bed last night.

Well, the game didn’t go as planned, neither did our broadcast this evening. I think Mike gets out of running his 17s after having to broadcast the majority of the game over the cell phone. Tomorrow is another day and we will pick it up and do it all over again, hopefully with a better result against Cal-Poly. Check back on Friday to see what will happen next!

 Wednesday

The morning got off to an early start. We departed UNF at 5 a.m., where I rode shot gun with Earnest “The Rocker” Crumbley. Nobody was awake enough to speak on the trip to the airport. If Earnest wasn’t rocking he probably would have fallen asleep.

I received some really bad news when I got to the airport. The Cinn-a-Bon was not open. I was not happy about that. I settled for a Cheese Danish instead, but I had been dreaming about that Cinn-a-Bon all week.

I’m not sure if this is a medical condition or just bad luck, but I seem to have this ailment when I get on an airplane. It’s called screaming-kid-next-to-me syndrome. Coach Kilcullen, however, saved us on the first leg of the trip when he gave the kid a lollipop. Wisely, he moved seats after the first leg of the trip.

You would think with a steady of diet of twizzlers and my specialty peanut butter, honey and cinnamon sandwiches that I brought along to snack on there would be no way I could sleep on the plane. But I managed.

Zack Riggins got a row to himself. Lucky! I’m not sure he saw anything but the back of his eyelids from Chicago to Salt Lake City.

We finally arrived in Utah about Noon local time (Mountain), and felt right at home the second we arrived. The weather here was a balmy 65-degrees and our bus driver had a sister from Jacksonville. This might as well be three home games this week.

Best comment of the day thus far was made to Devon Jones when he was pushing the elevator button at the Marriott Center: “Hey Devon, how is the elevator business going? I hear it has its ups and downs.” Such comedians!

We are at practice right now in the 22,000 seat Marriott Center. Home to BYU. Mike Ridaught and I are not convinced there are 22,000 seats here, so we are going to go count them. Coach Kilcullen also wants everyone to know that we are ahead of schedule. 

Well, that’s all I have for now. I will keep everyone posted on the trip. Tune in at 9:30 EST Thursday on AM-1320 WBOB to catch all the action as the Ospreys take on BYU. Pregame starts at 9:15.