Internet
access is very limited at the hotel I’m in, but I was able to get a few minutes
this morning. I did not attend the Thursday sessions, but I did see all
four games Friday, and here are some things I have noted so far.

• The crowd is decent, but not great. None of the sessions sold out,
  so the ACC is certainly not happy about that. On the local news Friday
  night, they made of note of the fact that tickets were still available
  at the box office for all sessions.
• Attendance on Friday was about 80% of capacity (20,500). The lower
  sections were full, but there were lots of empty seats in the upper sections
  on each end.
• The schools best represented here are UNC (no surprise), Maryland, Duke,
  and UVa. UVa has a good crowd here — probably twice the Hokie
  attendance. Maryland was the biggest surprise for me. Despite
  the early exit on Thursday, we saw a huge number of Maryland fans on
  Friday. The Hokies have a decent showing, as does NC State. BC
  is showing fairly well relative to their travel reputations. Wake had
  a pocket of fans that were noticeable in the stands. I didn’t see many
  GT fans. The biggest disappointment had to be FSU. They are the
  “local” school, but they were far outnumbered by UNC fans
  yesterday. There are very few Miami fans in town. In fact, the
  BC fans seemed to outnumber them for their game Friday.
• As you might expect, the UVa contingent was none too happy with the way
  their game turned in the second half. Lots of controversial calls went
  NC State’s way. Most UVa fans stayed around and cheered for Wake
  against the Hokies, but then headed for the exits when Tech opened up the
  big lead in the second half. The Tech and UVa fans are on the same end
  of the court, separated only by a small section of Wake fans, so it made for
  some fun banter on that end of the arena.
• Fan interaction among the schools is one of the unique things about the
  tournament. We’ve seen people wearing multiple colors. We’ve seen
  fans moving from one section to another (depending on who’s playing), and
  we’ve seen fans supporting another school against a common enemy. The
  Tech fans were particularly humorous pulling hard for NC State during their
  comeback in the second half last night. UVa fans returned the favor,
  pulling hard for Wake Forest.
• But in the middle of that “normal” behavior, we saw a few
  exceptions that were interesting. We saw a guy wearing a UVa shirt and
  a Tech hat. My wife correctly noted, “His heart’s in the wrong
  place, but at least his head’s in the right place!”. We saw two
  UVa fans standing and clapping to Tech Triumph. We saw a Tech couple
  joining in to the “U-V-A, Go Hoos Go!” cheer. We saw a guy
  wearing BC clothes for the first session, then he came back wearing UVa
  clothes for the night session. Both times, he was seated in the VT
  section. Lot’s of interesting stuff.
• The arena isn’t a great basketball environment, but I’ve been in much
  worse. Tampa seems to have done a very good job hosting the event and
  the ACC has added all the nice touches that identify with the
  tournament.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I’m sure I’ll have more after the semi’s
later today.

— Raleigh Hokie

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