The Badgers in the NIT

 

Yesterday after Adoration, Travalon met me downtown and we had dinner at the Chinese restaurant on State Street with the salt and pepper shrimp that we like so much. We walked to the Kohl Center to see the Badgers play the Bradley Braves in the NIT, or National Invitational Tournament. Everything said "Where college basketball began" because the tournament is a year older than the NCAA Tournament, otherwise known as March Madness. It used to be more prestigious because it is invitation-only while the NCAA is based on rankings, but sometime in the middle of the last century it became the also-ran tournament. Some people were very upset that we only made it into the NIT and not the NCAA, but a lot of big names, like Michigan and Florida and Oregon, were also in the NIT this year. 

The game was a lot of fun because there wasn't as much noise and rigamarole as during a regular season game, and less people were in the crowd, but all the people on the far side of the stadium seemed to be Bradley fans. I liked that, because it reminded me of old cartoons of basketball games, where one side of the stadium cheered for one team and the other side cheered for the other team. Of course, both teams have red as their color, so it was hard to tell who was a fan of which team unless they cheered. One of our players, a tall, rangy kid named Steven Crowl, was on fire. He kept hitting threes, and he got so many rebounds that he almost had a double-double. He had nine rebounds, and we were watching for his tenth, but then the coach pulled him and put the bench warmers in because the Badgers were up by nineteen points. They won, and they will play in their next tournament game on Sunday. Of course, we can't go because we have to go to a funeral, and if we didn't, I'd have to do Irish class and band practice. 

We saw this beautifully lit building on the walk back to our cars.

I am not sure why, but this photo of that weird rosary is rotated. You can see how it's brown and yellow, but the starting beads are jewel toned. What an odd color scheme.

The Mister Magoo doll that Travalon got at the antiques shop in Florida also got rotated.

I got this Swarovski crystal prism at a different antiques shop in Florida.

Here is Merlin Bear with his dragons, his Irish wife, and his French daughter.

Everyone thinks the bright green stuffed lion I got at the Mardi Gras parade in Mobile is something for St. Patrick's Day, so I decided to name him Hannibal O'Leary. I had already named him Hannibal after the town we visited in Missouri, and O'Leary just seems to go with that.

Famous Hat