Man, some of the Marquette fans were pissed.

I can't say I blame them, but there was a lot of vitriol in the stands tonight.  I suppose they were all looking for the revenge game that we wanted to give to WVU tonight.  

I did meet a nice father-son Marquette fan tandem.  They were nice enough, and we had some good conversations about our teams.  That's really all there was to do during the Cincinatti/Notre Dame game.  That game was a complete waste of time in the second half.  I halfway hoped that Ben Hansborough would pick up the ball, travel, go out of bounds, and throw the ball in the air and have the officials call it a game early.  I like the thought that this is the up+down+up+down+left+right+left+right+A+B+A+B+select+start of college basketball.

But for as angry as the Marquette fans were at the end of the night (credit goes to them for coming from Wisconsin all the way to NYC to drink their weight in beer), they weren't nearly as angry as the Notre Dame fans I bumped into, which made no sense to me.

I should make it clear that I was an easy target.  I was wearing a Louisville hat, a red jacket, and a red tie.  I got a lot of sideways comments from fans of other teams.  But as one Fighting Irishman was leaving in the second half of the Louisville game, he looked at me, pointed, and said "I will see you tomorrow NIGHT you godd@mned mother f--ker!"

Even the drunk Marquette fans sitting behind me were kind of confused.

Another neat aspect of the MSG crowd is that just about every team has a fan base there, even if said team is out of the tournament already (USF, Providence, and DePaul are the exceptions).  But that being said, the crowd generally roots for the underdog in any game UNLESS the favorite is putting on a good show.  At the beginning of the Marquette game, a lot of people in my section were cheering against Louisville even if they were wearing apparel for another team.  But as soon as we started hitting sweet shots and making/attempting monster jams, the momentum shifted for the crowd.

I saw the same thing during the USF-Villanova game.  Not that Villanova was the underdog, but nobody really cared about that game until USF made it close.  Then the St. John's fans started in on the refs any time a call went Nova's way.  And the Syracuse fans started cheering for USF.  It's an oddity, and I don't imagine these people would openly cheer for any of these teams if they were watching at home.

Ah well.  It was pouring rain in NYC, and my heart goes out to anyone that walked home three miles because they got on the wrong bus (me).  If anyone else made a similar mistake, I hope you're warming up and drying off.  The flask of W.L.Weller's I snuck in to the game and proceeded to mix with Cokes kept the shivers away.