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Mar. 22—Basketball is king in Indiana.
Turned on the television to catch some NCAA tournament action on Sunday and a local channel was broadcasting the Bloomington South vs. Lawrence North boys’ basketball game.
There isn’t a hoop in every driveway and on the side of every barn as the movie “Hoosiers” might make you believe. But life here pretty much revolves around the sport.
It’s a perfect place to hold the entire NCAA tournament for the first time. The event is spread out around venues in Indianapolis, West Lafayette and Bloomington.
All the teams stay in downtown Indianapolis. There is a cool giant NCAA tournament bracket on the side of the Marriott hotel there. Not even Paul Bunyan would be tall enough to fill it out.
UConn rode buses roughly 70-miles to its game at Purdue’s Mackey Arena in West Lafayette.
Too bad the pandemic has watered down the March Madness atmosphere here. Without the usual crowds of fans walking the streets, packing bars and restaurants and filling arenas, the big-time buzz is missing.
Take the scene outside of Mackey Arena late Saturday afternoon before UConn’s game against Maryland. You’d barely know there was an NCAA tournament being played.
Driving in, traffic was relatively light and reaching the media parking area was easy on the Purdue campus where the arena is located.
Only a small number of people stood outside near the entrance an hour and a half before game time. Tickets were limited to 1,350 fans in the approximately 14,240-seat building.
When we — Dave Borges of Hearst Connecticut Media, Dom Amore of the Hartford Courant and I — attempted to cross the street and walk between the parked team buses to the media entrance, an NCAA employee stopped us, politely asking that we wait until she waves us in. She wanted to make sure we didn’t go anywhere near the players.
Once Inside, we checked in at the desk and waited in a socially distanced work area for our seat assignments.
Once we got the go-ahead, we walked up the stairs in the upper section and found our seats, which were divided by plexiglass. From there, we had a decent view of the action.
It was good to hear some crowd noise but weird to see small pockets of fans scattered around the arena.
The game, well, that didn’t go so well for the Huskies. A disappointing ending to a terrific season.
Covering my 20th NCAA tournament was still enjoyable but challenging as well. I’m already looking forward to covering next season when life will hopefully return to normal.
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