A Night With the Terps

As you may know my 3 year old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia last October. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia to be exact.

Last Wednesday we received a call that we were invited to attend the University of Maryland men's basketball game against Longwood University. You may have heard of the University of Maryland. They used to be really good at basketball. Longwood University, as everyone knows, is the independent college from Farmer, Virginia.

We arrived about 30 minutes early at College Park and decided to drive around a bit. I thought we were in the wrong place. If it weren't for the signs indicating it was a college I would have sworn we were in a large military prison or had gone through a time warp and ended up in 1960 Stalingrad. Either way, the builders and architects are the same. I think you can describe the building style of the campus as contemporary urban ugly. Did they put any thought into designing the campus? Or was everything done as simply and as cheaply as possible? I came away from the visit with one conclusion - my children will not go to college there. And this doesn't even take into consideration the high crime at the campus and around the Prince George's County area.

Have you ever visited any of the other ACC campuses? I've been to Virginia, Virginia Tech, Duke, North Carolina, and North Carolina State. Maryland is by far the ugliest of the bunch. In fact, none of the others even come close.

Here is a view inside the arena. It's a jam-packed crowd at the fabulous Comcast Center in College Park, Maryland. Maryland students support their teams!


Here are the Terp basketball players surrendering before the game even starts! Wow, this is a bad season! We could here them shouting, "We surrender!" They must be French.


Anyway, back to the game, we walked into the Comcast Center and were directed to the box section. It was very nice. Fully stocked refrigerator, platters of chicken strips, hot dogs with chili, mozzarella sticks, brownies, potato chips, popcorn, and chocolate chip cookies. There were several comfortable seats and tables, then some bar stools with 2 bars looking out into the arena. Beyond the bar area were about 16 extremely comfortable leather seats. I now see where the University of Maryland's priorities are.

This is the view of our box from the floor seats:



The event was sponsored by Carroll Independent Fuel company. The representative from CIF said that they provide fuel for the new Crown station and the Sunoco station in Eldersburg. He was very nice and after some conversation learned that he went to Calvert Hall and actually knew some people that went to grade school with me. What a small world it is.


We got a visit from the Terrapin mascot. Not sure if he has a name. I think it might be bullet-proof. You need to be bullet-proof in this part of P.G. County.


About 15 minutes before halftime a representative from the college joined us and asked if we'd be interested in sitting in the seats down on the floor. Uh, duh! Of course! I would not miss this opportunity to see the mighty Longwood Lancer's up close and in action.

He escorted my son and me down to the seats. We finally got to our seats and we were in the folding chairs just to the right of the basket right behind the camera men. It was really cool. Missed passes were flying our way. Unfortunately, I'm not good enough with my Nikon D-40X to take action photos. They were all blurry.

This is the view of the players from our seats on the floor:


This is the view of the cheerleaders from our seats on the floor:


From a purely photographic quality perspective, this picture of the referee is one of my better shots. Probably because he was standing still.


At halftime one of the families that my wife has befriended was honored with the game ball at center court. Their daughter is 13 and is nearly done her 2 1/2 year chemotherapy treatment for leukemia. I was surprised to see and hear the crowd of 1,000 stand up and cheer for her. These were the same hostile knuckleheads that yelled, "You suck" and "F**K you" when the other team was introduced.

The game ended as I expected: Maryland more than doubling -up the Lancers 106-52. It was Gary William's 665th victory, passing the great John Wooden - coach of UCLA from the power teams of the 60's and 70's.

All in all it was a good night. I met some great people and we are truly appreciative to the people at Carroll Independent fuel for sponsoring the event for us. Support Crown and Sunoco!


I thought this dude was funny. He draped himself in the Maryland flag. I can see Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley doing this, too.


Easily the funniest thing we saw at the game - some kid dressed up as Bender from Futurama. I'm sure this was a fraternity stunt. He danced back and forth holding a sign of a tooth playing a guitar. I have no idea what this means. The Terp mascot went up to him later and gave him a hug. He even made it up on the jumbo-tron during the game.