BIG BLUE MADNESS

Every year since the early 90’s I have made a tradition out of standing in line and attending “Midnight” or “Big Blue Madness”. It is an event that marks the start of the College Hoops season and more importantly gives the fans a chance to see their beloved Wildcats for the first time. This year we arrived around 5:30 p.m. and set up camp directly across the road from Wildcat Lodge, where the players live. We hadn’t been there an hour before the players started bringing fresh pizza from Papa John’s out to the fans standing in line. Josh Harrelson came over and handed our group a pizza which was nice because I hadn’t had anything for supper and was starting to get a little hungry. Shortly after that we got to meet and take a couple pictures with the superstars of this year’s team, Patrick Patterson and Jodie Meeks, two sure-fire NBA prospects.

Below from Left to Right: Deandre Liggins, Matney, Josh Harrelson, Kevin Galloway, Some guy that is related to Antoine Walker that may be walking on, and myself.So I brought my Cornhole boards that I built and painted with the idea that I would get some of the players to sign one of them and I was lucky enough to get almost all of their signatures except for Meeks, Harris, and Porter. As you can see in the picture below I got Patterson’s picture signing my board. Pretty cool.

Below you can see Me standing beside a towering Matt Pilgrim. He is a beast and every bit as big as Patterson. On the other side was my partner Kevin Galloway and Pilgrim's partner was Jason Stevens from our group.

It was neat that so many of the players came out to hang out with us. Galloway and Pilgrim probably played Corn hole with us for an hour or so. It was pretty cool. Below is a picture of Me with KG after we beat Jason and Pilgrim in a game.

We all had a great time. I had never seen the players out in full force like they were this year. All, or most of the players were very approachable and out-going. They all seemed fired up about the season, as are we to watch them! GO CATS!!