Road Trip Tales: CU in Philadelphia

This marks the first official installment of what we hope will be a semi-regular series at Bluejay Basketball — Road Trip Tales. Many die-hard fans travel from locations all across the nation to catch the Jays wherever and whenever they can. We hope to highlight some of those trips.

The following narrative marks Michael B.'s travels from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia to watch the Jays defeat the St. Joe's Hawks. And although he might have picked the wrong food for his stomach, he picked a good game to travel to. Here's his story:

CU in Philadelphia

The City of Brotherly Love. The Heart of American Independence. Home to the Philly Cheesesteak. Philadelphia this is one of America’s oldest cities…and it shows. W.C. Fields said he’d like to see Paris before he died, but in the meantime Philadelphia would do. Now, I’ve never been to Paris, but if someone thinks Philadelphia is an adequate substitute, I’m pretty sure I can scratch Gay-Pariś off my list of places to visit.

Venturing north for the second time in 2 years, I returned to Philadelphia to watch the Jays play St. Joe’s. And once again, I came away from the city with the distinct impression that the town is a total dump. Populated by a people who were surprised to hear that the Midwest had actual cities and thus, revealing themselves to have no understanding of where Omaha might actually be, I soured early on my visit and was reduced to self-medicating through heavy drinking. That worked well enough to get me through the two nights I was there.

Within the dank and decrepit confines of Philadelphia’s University City — an area of town home to Drexel, UPenn, St. Joseph’s and sundry other institutions of higher learning — is the Palestra, that fabled Cathedral of College Basketball. From everything I’d been told about this place I half-expected to see the risen Christ within its walls.

If Jesus isn’t in your heart friends, don’t go looking for Him at the Palestra — ‘cause He’s not there either. In fact, nobody was. Attendance was light, with fewer than 5,000 filling a gym with a capacity of 9K.

This Cathedral wasn't as full as Mike thought it might be

And though you could tell that being there for the big Ivy League rivalry of Penn-Princeton would probably be kind of exciting — or at least as exciting as an Ivy League game can probably be — I wasn’t exactly struck by a get-on-your-feet excitement. I was struck by a real sympathy however for St. Joe’s mascot – a hawk – who can’t stop flapping his wings for the entire game, for which he gets a full scholarship.

With a stomach full of cheesesteak and fine libations, it was game time in more ways than one. This was my first time seeing the Jays play in person this season, and while I don’t have the encyclopedic knowledge of this team that many readers of this blog do, I’ll do my best to offer a few observations of our young team.

"This tasted really good, until about 5 mintues after I finished it."

• I see we are still fighting our problem of building a nice lead at the half and then pissing it away in the second. It happened in Little Rock. It happened in Lincoln. And it nearly happened in Philly; we were up 21 at the half, only to win by 11 after turning the ball over 8 times in the second stanza (compared to just 3 turnovers in the first 20 minutes). Come to think about it, this has been happening during my entire 9 years of watching CU basketball.
  
  
  
• Booker Woodfox is nothing short of amazing. Someone sent me a reference to him that was posted on a Dayton blog that ought to be repeated here: “[Woodfox] was sent from the future to do two things: shoot bombs and steal your woman. Looks like he just got done shooting threes. Gentleman, lock the door and hide your lady in the closet. Sleep well and heed my advice: if you hear a knockin’ at your door, it’s probably just Mr. Woodfox with some Magnums. Don’t fight it, just excuse yourself, kiss your girlfriend on the forehead, and sleep on the couch.”
  
  After seeing him sink 7 of 9 three-point shots and pour in a career-high 29 points, I think this assessment is pretty spot-on.
  

• Kaleb Korver is fun to watch, if for nothing else nostalgia for my undergrad years that coincided with Kyle’s. He’s got his brother’s shot, but boy is he a rail of a kid. With some extra time in the weight room, he could have a great couple of years ahead.
  
  
  
• We’ve got an amazingly deep bench, and the sophomore class is going to be great. Stinnett, Korver, Lawson, Walker, and Harriman all showed flashes of talent and their potential against the Hawks. The more they play together, the better these guys are going to get.
  

Returning to D.C., I’ve been kicking myself all week for not going to Las Vegas (free hotel rooms!). But I’ve already booked my plane ticket to St. Louis, which will prove to be yet another memorable (or maybe not) weekend of Jays hoops and drunken debauchery. I love this basketball team, and even if Philadelphia didn’t exactly endear itself to me this past weekend, my Bluejays certainly reminded me why I love watching them play.