While Tampa was a bit of a snooze when it came to NCAA excitement, Charlotte, the home base of the East Regional, was brimming with enthusiasm. The streets of Uptown were packed with basketball revelers, bars and restaurants were packed and overflowing onto the streets. Outside, stages were set up for live bands and other venues for games of skill and outdoor basketball. Of course the weather was perfect, mid 70s and sunny. And best of all, we were here to soak it all in, probably the marquee event of the trip as four schools - North Carolina, Washington State, Louisville and Tennessee would battle it out over two days, with one team earning a berth to the Final Four in San Antonio.

We got the chance to ride Charlotte’s LYNX light rail line, which just opened a few months back and connects Uptown with the south part of Charlotte. Clean, fast, efficient and on time and fare round trip was only $2.60. Best of all the line runs almost completely at grade and integrates local streetscapes into its stations, and plenty of free park and ride lots adjacent to most stations. How awesome would it be to build an identical setup to connect Buffalo’s Canalside out to the Airport. The rail right of ways sit in place, unused and abandoned, just waiting for the will and the funding!

Back to the events of the day… we got to the will call window at Charlotte Bobcats Arena to pick up our tickets… and… no tickets! So a bit of concern and consternation set in. What if our contact doesn’t make it here? What if something went wrong?

We called the cell phone number given to us by Ron Bertovich, and got a voice mail recording. We headed back outside into the Charlotte evening, only to see oceans of people holding fingers up or pleading for tickets, with scant few to be found.

But our connection did arrive with time to spare, called us on the cell and was still at the will call area when we scampered inside to get our precious cargo, so we got to meet our benefactors in person. And Holy Crap! “Founders Level” seats in the premium club area, complete with captains chairs and countertop seating with TV monitors. Are you freakin kidding!!! And to quote Bob Uecker, we were in the front row! Unbelieveable!

In plenty of ways, the differences between the events in Tampa and Charlotte were like night and day. The atmosphere in Tampa was filled with plenty of basketball fans wearing apparel from dozens of schools across America, and by and large these fans were neutral in their rooting interest. But the close proximity of Charlotte to the North Carolina campus combined with the ‘Heels popularity in these parts completely eliminated the neutral court atmosphere that was in Tampa and generally the norm elsewhere. Quite simply, roughly 80-90 percent of fans not sitting in the designated fan sections of the four schools were rooting for Carolina and proudly wearing the sky blue colors.

This regional also lacked the presence of a true underdog as the East region was the only one to have all four of its top seeds advance to Charlotte. How nice would it have been for a Butler to beat Tennessee in round two. Think of it, a school from a mid major conference that plays its home games in the same venue that was used in the iconic underdog basketball movie “Hoosiers”. But we had what we had and hoped for some good games pitting four ranked clubs.

Game one was Washington State/ North Carolina. The ‘Heels had been the most impressive club in the field in hitting the triple digit mark on the scoreboard in its first two games. And in the Cougars they would find the anthesis of themselves as Wazzu attempt to play their deliberate and defensive style to keep themselves within striking distance. It worked for most of a half until Carolina went on a run and expanded the lead to double digits by halftime and from there they rolled to a 68-47 win in front of over nineteen thou(fifteen k in Carolina blue).

Couple of notes about Wazzu: the numbers on the back of the jersey are way oversized, so no it’s not your tv if you thought the same. And MAJOR props to the large amount of fans to make the journey all the way form eastern Washington. While still bringing the smallest contingent of the four schools they held themselves up well to the other schools who were all within(UNC-141m, UT- 244m, UL- 489m) driving distance of Bobcats Arena. To add to that, the Washington State tees sold at souvenir stands in the arena were the first(and only) to sell out!

I had higher expectations for game two with a former #1 in Tennessee and a Louisville team that had come out of the first two rounds playing some of their best ball in rolling over Boise State and crushing Oklahoma in round two. But once again we’d be rewarded with another dull game as Louisville raced out to an early sixteen point lead and held off the occasional Tennessee run to cruise to a 79-60 and a date with the ‘Heels on Saturday night.

A note about the crowd in general during game two. We wondered if the UNC fans would stick around after the ‘Heels win to watch the UT/UL game and we were pleasantly surprised to see that while there was some people headed to exits, the solid majority stuck around for most of the second game until UL took command about midway through the second half. Unfortunately, the concept of staying for the second game was too much for the bandwagon hoppers sitting next to us.:(

We took the light rail back to the hotel and rolled in at about 1AM. Another long drive awaits as we head out to Norfolk for a night of AHL hockey at The Scope before returning to Charlotte for the grand finale of the East Regional Final.

We took Charlotte’s newly opened light rail to the game - deposited us right outside the arena

Plenty of music, games and entertainment outside before and after the game

A packed house of over 19,000 in the arena, and boy was this one tough ticket to score!

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