Early Season Grind

The fans from Dayton would get one last chance to see their Flyers play in Charleston. The multi-team event allows for their crazy fans to see their team play three teams in one weekend. And if you are even crazier like me, you can see even more teams and more games during one big weekend! There is one off day in the tournament, a Saturday which allowed me to get to two games in the
Charlotte area as well. This game between Dayton and Auburn would be the 12th game out of 14 Division I men's basketball games I would see this weekend. I am certainly not the only one doing this. Matt Cayuela would be at his 6th game in three days at this game as well, and Raymond Curren has done a whole slew of games so far this year in Connecticut including a tournament at Mohegan Sun Casino/Arena. And of course our website's founder Kyle Whelliston went to an average of a hundred games every year for seven seasons. But as Matt has mentioned, telling others about what you are doing makes everyone think you are crazy.

And maybe we are. This season and at the end of last, I have been frequently worn out by what I have done. Not at the part of going to the games themselves, as that just takes a routine of driving and sitting at a basketball game while occasionally taking pictures and statistical notes. But I know when I come back from a basketball game, there will be a recap to write, there will be pictures to process and upload, and my database of games will need to be updated. Going to basketball games can be fun when you are young and still trying to find full-time employment. But when you are this committed to all these games going on, it feels like you are working and working a lot. That can be true of anything that is supposed to be fun. If you go on vacation and get serious about it, it can feel like work. When I commit myself to doing something, I become dedicated to making it happen. So that is why I keep going to the games. The only problem with multi-team events like the Charleston Classic is that you have an endless amount of recaps to write. From this weekend, I had nine recaps to write from the Charleston Classic as well as the two games on Saturday for a total of 11 recaps. And I often do not try to just slip past the 400 word minimum either. I have a lot of thoughts that can be tied into a basketball game, and I have spent the last several years in college or grad school where I took subjects that mostly required a lot of writing. It is always good to stay fresh at being able to write. But it takes time to be able to do so, and then I also have other stuff going on. The time I got a break from going to the games was over Thanksgiving, when I attended family events that also limited my writing. After I finish this recap, I still have six recaps left to write, which will likely be added on to. For me, that is a lot of writing still left. I am glad that the dropdown menu has expanded to showing the last 700 games rather than just those from the last eight days. But this much writing always keeps me busy and being busy is a good thing.

Once I catch all my recaps up, I will have done 22 games TMM eligible so far as of this writing. Kyle had only gotten to nine games in November during his original 100 Games Project. But Kyle also got to 31 games that March, and there is no way I will be able to get to that many postseason games. It would take too much travel and money to be able to do what Kyle did as far as his number of Division I men's basketball games attended. But there are lessons to be learned from Kyle as well. After the 100 Games Project, Kyle did not write on every game he went to. There were times in Season 5 where both Kyle and I were at several of the same games, and I wanted to read what he had to say on attending those games. But he never did directly, likely for the same reason I have run into here: writing that much takes a lot of work. Much of his recaps in the Last 100 Games in Season 7 were mostly re-posts of his in-game tweets. Most of the daily summaries posted to the website came from robots as well, and Kyle briefly had Damon Lewis of the Horizon League Network write on the website in Season 6. And all of our readers know the toll that the road took on Kyle. To avoid making that mistake, I have decided that I will not do as much for this upcoming baseball season, and all future seasons. I still hope that I can find employment if job prospects in the public sector improve this winter. If that happens, then I can focus on that and I won't do as much late this season. But regardless, I am going to make sure after I am done with TMM9 that I will take at least three off-days a week and I also limit my driving miles as well. But for now, this is how I remain busy and active, which is better than doing nothing all the time.

The Dayton fans also seem to be dedicated as well to traveling and seeing lots of basketball games. On the shirt of the Dayton fan in front of me, there was an advertisement for a Dayton basketball-oriented traveling agency. So now we know how the Flyers fly!



After the previous game, I went to talk to my Hopping Cats teammate Joe Wright, and looked to see if I could locate Matt so he could meet Joe as well. But Matt had moved to the upper deck, which at times I considered doing as well. In the first game, I had two obese women in each seat next to mine, so I definitely felt crowded in that game. But the C of C fan to my left spent most of the game on the concourse while her family did watch the rest of the tournament, and the Dayton fans to my right re-arranged their seats between games so I had a little more space this game. Now the focus was on seeing if Dayton could pull another Red Line Upset. We had seen four RLUs in the tournament so far, a Dayton win would clinch a winning record by mids over majors for the Charleston Classic.

Early on, the game seemed fairly even. It was for the most part a pretty ugly physical contest, with neither team shooting particularly well with lots of fouls as well. This seemed to have the potential to end up like Auburn's last game, another physical contest against College of Charleston where they were able to narrowly avoid a RLU. But Kevin Dillard showed why Southern Illinois misses him, and sparked the Flyers in key moments like with a 9-0 run at the end of the first half to put Dayton up ten at halftime. Dayton led by double digits then most of the second half. There were times that it seemed that it could slip away. Frankie Sullivan was still playing well for Auburn, and Dillard had to go to the locker room with an injury. But Dillard came back with a few minutes left to seal the win by a final score of 73-63. Dillard finished 20 points; three points short of Sullivan's 23. I was slightly disappointed by that, as it denied Dillard from becoming the first player I have seen to lead all scorers in a college basketball game for two different teams. But what was most important is that Dayton had gotten the fifth Red Line Upset of the tournament! Even if Murray State lost the final game, the RLU percentage for the Charleston Classic would be 55.6%, a big boost to the typical RLU% you see displayed on this website.



Dayton after losing its first game to Colorado would finish the tournament with a 2-1 record at the Charleston Classic. After its multi-team event with lots of traveling supporters, Dayton would head home to the normal world of getting ready for Atlantic 10 play. And all fans that enjoy these multi-team events would soon enough return to the reality of not being able to attend more than one game in a day.

That however would not be until the next session ended.