North Texas wins, and the Mean Green faithful celebrate with the team

Day one of our SBC Tournament experience is over, and we’ve had quite a day.

We saw all or part of all four Men’s games, and the on-court action has not disappointed. Obviously, we’re pleased with the outcome of North Texas/MTSU. South Alabama/Troy was our advance pick for best quarterfinal game, and it went down to the final seconds in exciting fashion. And the game we were dreading as a low scoring, trashketball beatdown, UALR/Denver, actually turned out to be a very tense battle right up to the final buzzer.

But if you want real basketball analysis, you need to convince TYMat to come out to Hot Springs next year to provide it. Because our specialty is wild-card chaos (Ty) and photo or travel oriented observational humor (me). We’ll leave the real basketball stuff to all the blogger-come-lately folks who are packing the Summit Arena to its lacquered wood rafters.

The first impression worth sharing is that Hot Springs is a great, great venue for this event.

Thank you, Embassy Suites skybridge! We’re delighted to be here!

Seriously… I love this neutral site concept. The Summit is a perfect fit for this event. Big enough to hold 6,000, but doesn’t feel deserted even when we were down to just Troy and South Alabama fans (neither traveled well) at 11:00 p.m. Big enough to handle us, small enough to avoid feeling cavernous and empty.

It feels like everywhere you turn here, you see a banner. Or a sign. Or a billboard.

Or a painted sidewalk.

The signage is almost oppressive. Good thing we’ve got Hot Hoops Fever.

I’ve been to two previous SBC Tournaments at conference member host sites, and I’m already convinced that the neutral site is the way to go. Hot Springs obviously wants this event, and the whole environment just feels like proper tournament basketball. It doesn’t just feel like we’re seeing a bunch of road games at some other team’s barn. UALR has the biggest crowd, of course, but MTSU, WKU, and even North Texas have managed to bring solid rooting sections.

Ignore the haters. SBC Tournament action in Hot Springs is a great fit.

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Inside the arena, we encountered the single greatest enemy (aside from Texas State A.D. Larry Teis) to North Texas Athletics:

Brett Vito, photographed shortly after throwing marbles onto the floor during NT warmups and shortly before spitting directly in the face of Shanice Stephens.

Vito quicky hypnotized me and almost had me convinced that he wasn’t typing an anti-North Texas manifesto on the laptop in the background. But I came to my senses, and warned him that if he used his devious black magic to destroy the Mean Green Men’s Tournament hopes, I’d drive a wooden stake through his heart.

My threat must have scared him, because he let the guys win.

In addition to Vito, we were also joined by a surprisingly robust collection of North Texas fans.

The Mean Green faithful, representing in Arkansas.

Including this lady and her comprehensive signage…

…and a couple of Net Heads.

But the most horrifying… THING… in attendance would have to be the mascot for Tournament sponsor Buffalo Wild Wings.

I thought we had it bad with the looming threat of the Pizza Inn Nazi, but the P.I.N. is a plotter… Buffalo Bill (seriously, that’s his name) is an unpredictable, malevolent force of nature.

It puts the sauces on its skin, or else it gets the hose again!

If you look closely at Buffalo Bill’s backside, you’ll notice that he appears to be doing “the tuck”.

When we last saw Buffalo Bill, he was escorting a plump young lady out of the arena, alone. Seriously.

I’m not saying he’s going to throw her down a well and carve up her corpse to make himself a new suit… I’m just saying that maybe the parallels are strong enough that we should keep an eye on him. This is a scary new era of suited mascot atrocities, and I just want to make sure we’re staying appropriately vigilant.

Tomorrow, we’ll be out and about enjoying the non-basketball sights of Hot Springs. Expect a revival of Travels with Tina. And at night, we’ll be taking in the Men’s Semifinals. Who will be playing for a guaranteed slot in the NCAA Tournament?

In 21 hours, we’ll know for sure.