Cinderella William and Mary

I was down at the Richmond Coliseum for the Colonial Athletic Association championship game between Old Dominion and William and Mary. Hoping this cinderella story was the making of something big, I was there in case William and Mary knocked off favored and regular season conference champions Old Dominion gaining an automatic bid into the NCAA men’s basketball tournament for the first time in the school’s history.

William and Mary has never made it into the “Big Dance” and the school is one of five original Division I teams that has never made the national field.

The Tribe has some pretty impressive alumni, guys named George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe but I guess none of them ever had much of a three-point shot.

In many ways, this conference championship game had the feeling of old time basketball. The Richmond Coliseum just feels like a true basketball barn and the fans are loud and up close to the action. The public address announcer before the start of the game “invited” the fans of the winning team to celebrate on the court following the game but please remember to be respectful and in control. The crazy thing was, the Old Dominion fans were respectful and in control following the 60-53 win over William and Mary. They celebrated their victory in style and class.

The fans of William and Mary knew their team was close to something big. A close game down to the final minutes kept the Tribe in reach. Old Dominion had just written their own ending to the cinderella story.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Blog, On Assignment and tagged with On Assignment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.