Basketball Hall Of Fame Tournament

The past few days provided yet another great weekend for college basketball. The Marist basketball traveled to Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Connecticut to play in the Basketball Hall of Fame Tip-Off Classic. From the moment we arrived at the casino I could sense that this was going to be another exciting weekend. We got to the hotel around 6:15pm on Friday night and had a banquet dinner with all the other 8 teams competing in the tourney at the casino's convention center. This event was a huge networking opportunity for the members of all the participating teams; special guests included Kentucky's head coach John Calipari, Tom Heinsohn  (10 time NBA Champion as Boston Celtics player and coach), Nancy Lieberman (1st female coach to coach a professional male team [Texas Legends], and many more Hall of Famers.

After the meet and greet dinner, each of the players received special suite passes to the Kayne West and Jay Z concert. This concert was definitely one of the highlights, as it featured two of the greatest hip hop artists today and was a complete surprise for all of the players. After the concert ended, my fellow Marist manager Edmond Penn joined me back at the hotel to prepare for the actual basketball game Saturday night against Vermont.

We got off to a slow but steady start in the Vermont game, and although we were trailing by 3 at the half we tied the score at the start of the second half. The second half was back and forth for the first 5 minutes until Vermont eventually took control of the game. The Catamounts ended up winning 84-75. For Marist, Chavaughn Lewis and Devin Price both contributed with 15 points.

On Sunday night, Marist came up with the first victory of the '11-'12 season by defeating Radford University of the Big South Conference. We ended up winning by 13 after only being up 2 at the half. Lewis and Price once again lead the Red Foxes, with Lewis scoring 17 and grabbing 6 rebounds while Price tallied 16 points. The victory was a great way to end the tournament.

In the future, I'm sure I will look back on this trip as one of the most entertaining trips I've been on as a manager. Special thanks goes out to everyone at Mohegan Sun who helped us out, especially when it came time to do that laundry. We are currently on the bus en route back to Poughkeepsie. We will only have tomorrow to prepare for our home opener on Tuesday in the newly renovated McCann Arena against Bucknell, who is coming off an NCAA Tournament appearance last year. This would be a great win if we can pull it off.