The 93rd SoCon Basketball Tournament is just over a week away in Asheville, North Carolina. Regardless of how the your teams will do, it's awesome. Asheville is awesome. It's also big and complex. There's a lot to do and little time to do it in. So below is a helpful guide for anyone who goes.
T-Note: I took and/or created every single picture in this article. Every. One.
First off, Downtown Asheville is awesome. You can walk everywhere to a number of different restaurants/bars and see so many different character all within a few blocks.
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If Anyone Wants To Buy My Hotel Room This Year, http://www.twitter.com/tdogappst/b/captionCan't stress this enough. Try going to a different place every day. Use a Asheville Independent Restaurants so the money stays in Asheville.
If you don't know who to root for, this chart should be helpful.
If you're an App fan, Western's band will follow you to every game and heckle. Seriously.
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A Sylva County Foot Locker Is Missing Some Employees.[/caption]See those bunch of miscreants wearing referee shirts thinking they are clever? Those are members the Pride of the Mountains, Western Carolina's band. If you notice they aren't set up to play. That's because WCU isn't playing in that game. It was the App State/UNCG game. Western played in the game afterward and they hoodlums decided to show up, display their flag and heckle the App band. Why? Because Western hates everything App State. They can't help it.
For the Noon Friday games, Buncombe County Schools has their kids go on a field trip to the Civic Center.
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This Kid Later Copied Answers For #7 From The Girl Next To Him.[/caption]This picture was taken when a kid left their clipboard in front of his seat and went to the potty. I don't know if four exits for a 6,100-seat building is safe, but at least the kid got one of four right. And it's not just one kid or one class. It's several. So stay away from the upper deck for the these games.
Also, NO BEER IS SOLD DURING THIS GAME. Found that out the hard way last year.
Sometimes WCU's Chancellor and the missus get funky with it.
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One Of Them Was Sober. Guess Who?[/caption]Dr Belcher, a pianist from Furman, has been embraced as WCU Chancellor by the students in the same vein that Dr Peacock was. Last year he saw my "I Heart Boobs" shirt and said "Yeah, save second base!" All criticism of Western aside, Dr Belcher is awesome.
If you watch a women's game at Kimmel, they will show a crappy internet feed of the game at the Civic Center duyring some of the timeouts. Not all of them, but some of them.
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That's Not Camera Effect. That's What It Looks Like.[/caption]Yes, Kimmel Arena has LED screens while the Civic Center does not. So of course these screens are used not to promote the game you are at, but rather another game. Makes perfect sense.
Halftime entertainment is on a tight budget. So we get kids jumping rope.
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Ike Butts' Mother Is In This Picture.[/caption]And it's not just a different show for every halftime. They get the same 3-4 acts every day. Western's band played halftime at every Western game. Those kids jumped rope at least three times. So if you see all the halftime shows on Friday, you've seen them all.
Women's Games Are General Admission Seating. Even I Can Get Good Seats.
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If You Think Darcie Is Mad At Post-Game Interviews, Try Sitting 10 Feet Away During A Game[/caption]For the semifinals and finals at the Civic Center, the upper deck is locked. Of course there is a way from the lower deck to the upper deck once inside the arena, so once people start doing that, the gates from the outside are rendered useless.
You can't walk to the Civic Center on Sunday without hearing about the good word.
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These Things Can Be Tear-Jerkers. Trust Me.[/caption]What better way to spread the word of God than to hand out pamphlets to somewhat drunken people heading to a basketball game? In my experience, all they do is pass out the pamphlets and don't try to convert you right on the spot.
Observe "TV" Teddy Valentine call a blocking foul the way Naismith intended blocking fouls to be called.
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His Palming Motion Is Also Amazing.[/caption]Teddy Valentine in the greatest official ever. He reffed the Duke/Butler National Championship game and is a fixture on the East Coast and works a lot. He generally is a good official, but he does have a habit of feeding a comeback, like in the Davidson/WCU final last year. When calling a blocking foul, Teddy tries to use every muscle in his body to explain to everyone on earth what just happened.
Asheville homeless people either have laptops, saxophones or are UNCA students doing a project.
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He's Not There Everyday Thought[/caption]If you want to see some of th richest homeless people ever, go to the block on Haywood between College and Patton three blocks from the arena. You will actually see a homeless person with a laptop, at least two people with saxophones and a couple who look suspiciously like students. Yes, some UNCA students "experience" homelessness as part of a project.
The UTC Sugar Mocs and CofC's Cougarettes are are worth watching every UTC and CofC game for unless your girlfriend/fiance/wife is there.
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Only Bad Part About Beating CofC Last Year Was No More Cougarettes[/caption][caption id="attachment_3592" align="aligncenter" width="717"]
Something Something Sugar Pun Something[/caption]Self-explanatory here.
Dear Western, if you wonder what happened to your banner for the title game last year, I have it.
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Surprisingly Not A Single Anti-App Message[/caption]So after Davidson beat Western in the title game, the sobered-up WCU students went back to their busses to head to Cullowhee. n the ground next to me was the above sign, just laying there, so I grabbed it. Speaking of last year's SoCon Championship....
How To Almost Get Trampeled By Thousands Of Students Wearing Purple
So after dealing with the App women's loss to Samford in the finals, I went back to the Civic Center with my Davidson friends. They set up shop in the front row. Then the Western student busses arrived. Apparently they weren't monitored as they were lively. VERY lively. So I was there with five Davidson fans and they told me to act as a buffer from the Western students next to them. Remember, Davidson fans only follow basketball so they've never seen so many Western students. As an App fan, they figured I knew how to handle them. So that was my part. Also, I still had my app shirt on so I kept my jacket on because if they saw the writing on the back of the shirt, I don't know how many of them it would take to kill me, but I knew how many they would use.
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Hi Everyone![/caption]The game went on and Davidson started pulling away, but then at the end Western hit some big threes and pulled it back. At that point, realization hit that if Western won, these fans would have no qualms about running over everyone in front of them to storm the court. With two kids next to me, I tried telling the security guard the situation, but they laughed and did nothing. Somewhat thankfully, Davidson won the game is double-overtime although it was close.
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That Close.[/caption]As a gift for helping out I got to crash the Davidson victory party.
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McKillop's Hair Was Still Perfect At 2 AM.[/caption]Despite all the highly-competative aspects of the tournament, keep the partisan emotion in the arenas. There's too many good brews, meals and fun times to be a debbie-downer. If you walk around town, you will probably stumble upon one SoCon school's pregame festivities. Enjoy everything while we can as this might be one of the last SoCon Tournaments some schools are ever at.