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By Rhett, March 13, 2010 10:14 am

While Christmas time gives Tourney time a run for its money, in the end it loses out, as tournament style college basketball is the greatest thing on this planet.

The past several days have been epic.

1. UNLV vs Wyoming – The Rebels wrapped up their regular season taking Wyoming to the woodshed. The Cowboys looked like a sad basketball team, and UNLV didn’t play around with them. Final score was 74-56, and it wasn’t even that close. This wrapped up the regular season for UNLV, and was my 23rd game of the season.

2. After this game, it became apparent that my dream of attending 50 college basketball games in one season would continue to be a dream. Attending classes and turning in required assignments took precedent over the WCC tournament, which was a requirement of mine previously. Such is life. It will be here next year, along with the WAC tournament. Options galore!

3. As Nate mentioned below, our very own Jimmy led his Allen Park Jags to a playoff victory against some team called the Crestwood Chargers. I know nothing about the high school basketball make up of the south eastern Michigan area, but I know that Jimmy is a good coach because his drills are excellent. Jimmy ended up losing another heart breaker to some team from Dearborn, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s still better. Just the way we feel.

4. Having cleared my calendar for the next week for a certain trip to Buffalo, NY, I decided to break down and pick up a few duckets to attend the MWC quarterfinal session last night with my beautiful baby. New Mexico vs San Diego State, and BYU vs UNLV. Quite the lineup of games, teams, and story lines from this season.

As you can see, we bought our tickets at the last second, which resulted in us sitting right behind the San Diego State student section in the upper deck level of the Thomas & Mack. This student section is fucking classic though. Their chants are dead on and organized, they crowd surfed some kid in a giant gecko outfit, and then suggested to the New Mexico contingent (which was at least 10,000 strong arena-wide) to sell their tickets once it was apparent the game was over. It was a fun game to watch, example 1 on why March basketball is the greatest shit ever. 1 seeded New Mexico falls to 4 seed San Diego State 69-72. Game was won behind hot shooting from behind the arc for SDSU (to the tune of 10-16), and Billy White’s 11-14 from the field, 5-5 from the line, 28 point domination of the New Mexico defense.

Game two was an entirely different set of circumstances.

Thanks in part to San Diego State’s knocking off of New Mexico, we were able to grift a new set of seats in the lower bowl, in the middle of New Mexico-ville, for the BYU vs UNLV game. New Mexico fans hate BYU as much as any other normal person in this country should hate them. BYU hadn’t won at UNLV vs UNLV in it’s five previous games. BYU was fresh off a victory over TCU, with brother Fredette racking up the shittiest stat line that ever represented 45 points.

• 45 points. 10-23 from the field (including 2-10 from 3), and 23-24 from the FT line. Yes, that is not a joke. This really happened.

Needless to say, I was a bit worried. Fredette was coming into the UNLV game believing he was the prophet Joseph Smith himself.

Now I’m not a bigot or a hater or anything. I know plenty of people who practice the Mormon faith and are perfectly nice normal people. The fast majority are well represented by the parity you’ve probably seen on South Park a few years back. Super nice. Super perfect. Blonde haired, blue eyed giver outters. They all have really cool jackets and want to go home and make brownies or help you build a bookshelf.

I’ll build my own.

BYU and UNLV came out shooting hot, to the tune of each squad trading 3 pointers. After it was 9-9, this dogfight settled out into the dogfight it was meant to be. UNLV’s press after made baskets gave BYU fits in the first half, leading to a few run outs. BYU’s patented fast break offense was a blur off of missed UNLV shots, and the game stayed sort of close, the Rebels up by 7 at the half behind a sweet looking jumper from Chase Stanback.

The second half saw the prophet casting a light on Jimmer Fredette, and him contorting his gangliy body into the bodies of his foes, and getting to the line with the righteous accomplishment only a BYU fan could be proud of. He also hit some sick deep jumpers. What’s ironic about this guy is that when a questionable call goes the other way, he freaks out, cries, pouts, and stomps all over the floor. He was also called for traveling twice in the second half, which almost made his head explode. Tre’Von Willis gutted out a twisted ankle in the final minutes, made a crazy glasser shot, and the FT’s a leader is expected to make to seal up the victory, regardless of what super natural forces may have been conspiring against the sinners of Southern Nevada. BYU 66, UNLV 70.

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So here I am. I’m going to bail on headed to the MWC title game this afternoon in favor of watching several other games from across the country. I’ve attended 25 college basketball games thus far, with the best yet to come.

5. Western won a game in its conference tournament, and should have probably faced Eastern after that. Thanks to #pixelvision, I was able to watch both teams, including Carlos Medlock’s spirited effort against Akron. EMU fell short, as did WMU against Akron yesterday. WMU will not be dancing this year, and the David Kool era is over in Kalamazoo.

6. Michigan State lost yesterday to Tubbs. Sam called this 100%. Not sure how I feel about Sparty headed into the Tourney. In Izzo I trust though. I don’t know what era is about to end for MSU over the next couple of weeks though. This team / season has been so confusing. I have this feeling that the team is being held together by a thread.

The only way to find out is to play the games.

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By Rhett, January 25, 2009 8:38 pm

Shout out to Obama.

No updates in a while for the 3 people who’ve come to the site are not going to make them return. That is OK, as this is more of a chronicle for members of “The Trip”. I need to log my most recent games, so here you go:

12/22 – Creighton vs Fresno State, Saint Louis vs DePaul: “This place is dead anyways” – sad to see fewer than a thousand or so people at The Las Vegas Classic. With the way the economy is, I can’t imagine they bring this back. These pre conference season tourneys are delicious golden basketball for me and I would hate to see them go. Creighton is solid and DePaul keeps their head above water vs  Saint Louis, but won’t vs the Big East this year.

12/23 – Creighton vs DePaul, Fresno St. vs Saint Louis: Why is it that all Jesuit schools have creepy mascots? Creighton pulls off an entertaining win vs Depaul, Fresno just looks sad out there. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the two games before these on either day due to my work schedule. I would have loved to seen Steph Curry’s brother play for Liberty. Obviously the ability runs in the family and maybe he would have waved to me or something, seeing as I was practically the only one there.

1/3 – UNLV vs New Mexico: Conference hoops begins with a win for the Rebels

1/17 – UNLV vs Wyoming: Maniac head coach finds a suit and tie. Still loses. Wyoming has fast guards and decent bigs, surprised they can’t put something else together.

1/24 – UNLV vs Utah: Utah has (had) a nice SOS and RPI. Huge win for Vegas, keeping Utah’s 7′2″ buffoon in check for most of the game let their shooters loose. Kruger had the right adjustments for the second half with a nice comeback win.

10 + 7 = 17 games on the year for me. Another 5 conference games for the Rebels, will put me at 23. 6 games in Philly for the 1st and 2nd rounds of the NCAA tourney will have me at 29. Throw in another 3 for the Final Four in Detroit and I’ll be at 32. Mix in any random conference championship games (MWC and WCC both here in Vegas) I may be able to snag in early March and I could get close to 40 games.

The Trip agrees that outside of people who do this for a living, we are complete authorities and cannot be stopped. Domination is our only option. Often, conversation with people who are not addicted is impossible. It goes something like this:::

Random: “Hey, Rhett, did you see that guy from Oklahoma last night? He’s pretty good, huh?”

Me: “Yeah, sure.”

And I’m the rude one? Come on man, realize whats going on here. By the time I’m in my 30’s I’ll have HUNDREDS of games under my belt that I’ve actually attended. The trip will realize a decade of being there. This does not count the thousands of games on TV. All of this, and I fall well short of fellow trip members, who’ve been doing this since damn near conception.

Not being cocky. Just facts.