[jacket3ree]

I was a freshman the year Bobby Cremins and Coach K took over at Tech and Duke, respectively.  He came to our fraternity house that first fall to drum up student support and actually ate dinner with us, which deserved hazard pay honestly. I mean he spent a full hour eating dinner and chatting us up. One of my fellow pledges was from Brooklyn so they were going to town. Anyway this was off a 4-23 campaign and something like two years of winless ACC play. I told him I would go to games and I did. By my senior year (his fourth) we weren't exactly camping out in front of AMC, but you needed to be in line 6 hours early for the primo games, like Duke. Tech finished a few points away from the Final Four and was #1 going into my graduate year at Stanford. 

My favorite (non-prodigy) game of all time came in a loss to #1 UVA and Ralph Sampson that freshman year. Tech was up double digits at the half in front of a packed house and as the team went to the locker room, I thought the coliseum might collapse, it was so loud and people were jumping up and down. They lost by a couple of points at the end (ON A BOGUS CHARGE!!! - the ACC has always protected the top team, get used to it) and a bunch of the players were over at Grumpy's afterward with us. We bought them pitchers and thankfully Tech wasn't put on triple secret probation and stripped of our ten wins. Now I am regularly updated via text and call by my son in his second year at Darden, who has latched onto JPJ. Did you know that the Hoos comfortable beat Stanford the other day? I got the blow by blow without even watching the game.

The cool thing about Cremins: I went to the Cable Car Classic at the Shark Tank when Steve Nash was at SCU and they had a pre-game meet and greet near the Santa Clara Convention Center where the team was staying. (I now see that hotel looking out my office window.) I had my then young daughter in tow wearing a GT cheerleading outfit including bee antennae. Coach Cremins greeted me warmly with 'Hey, you're the guy from Colorado! Wow is this your daughter? I guess time is moving along, huh? You know that dinner at your house almost killed me.' I mean that was at least 15 years prior. How on earth do you remember some skinny kid from Colorado from an hour at a cheap table with awful food?  Great human being and he knew how to win. Started to run out of steam with the one and done era, but he is a Tech fan for life and I'm glad the court is named for him.

[jacket3ree]

I was a freshman the year Bobby Cremins and Coach K took over at Tech and Duke, respectively.  He came to our fraternity house that first fall to drum up student support and actually ate dinner with us, which deserved hazard pay honestly. I mean he spent a full hour eating dinner and chatting us up. One of my fellow pledges was from Brooklyn so they were going to town. Anyway this was off a 4-23 campaign and something like two years of winless ACC play. I told him I would go to games and I did. By my senior year (his fourth) we weren't exactly camping out in front of AMC, but you needed to be in line 6 hours early for the primo games, like Duke. Tech finished a few points away from the Final Four and was #1 going into my graduate year at Stanford. 

My favorite (non-prodigy) game of all time came in a loss to #1 UVA and Ralph Sampson that freshman year. Tech was up double digits at the half in front of a packed house and as the team went to the locker room, I thought the coliseum might collapse, it was so loud and people were jumping up and down. They lost by a couple of points at the end (ON A BOGUS CHARGE!!! - the ACC has always protected the top team, get used to it) and a bunch of the players were over at Grumpy's afterward with us. We bought them pitchers and thankfully Tech wasn't put on triple secret probation and stripped of our ten wins. Now I am regularly updated via text and call by my son in his second year at Darden, who has latched onto JPJ. Did you know that the Hoos comfortable beat Stanford the other day? I got the blow by blow without even watching the game.

The cool thing about Cremins: I went to the Cable Car Classic at the Shark Tank when Steve Nash was at SCU and they had a pre-game meet and greet near the Santa Clara Convention Center where the team was staying. (I now see that hotel looking out my office window.) I had my then young daughter in tow wearing a GT cheerleading outfit including bee antennae. Coach Cremins greeted me warmly with 'Hey, you're the guy from Colorado! Wow is this your daughter? I guess time is moving along, huh? You know that dinner at your house almost killed me.' I mean that was at least 15 years prior. How on earth do you remember some skinny kid from Colorado from an hour at a cheap table with awful food?  Great human being and he knew how to win. Started to run out of steam with the one and done era, but he is a Tech fan for life and I'm glad the court is named for him.