Everyone has an opinion of the Opening Round game played between the two worst conference champions. How did we find this year's game between Niagara and Florida A&M? Inspiring? Anticlimactic? Actually, it was confusing.
Wooden. Check. Chaney. Check. Carnesecca. Check. Andrews. Check.
At one point, the Dayton band, dressed in Niagara purple and white, played the Niagara fight song, for a crowd of mostly Dayton fans.
Niagara, NY is an eight-hour drive from Dayton, and on such short notice, the band couldn't make it. So the Dayton pep band gladly subbed in. Neither the Niagara nor the FAMU fans could make it, either, so the Dayton Flyers fans gladly filled in for them, too.
Who the fans were rooting for, though, I couldn't tell you. Niagara went on a run early and the place cheered. FAMU stormed back and the place cheered. Red was probably the fan's color of choice, though the apparel was split between Dayton and Ohio State. I spied orange Tennessee shirts and blue Kentucky jerseys. One guy wore a green and orange football jersey -- FAMU's colors -- but when I asked him about it, he said it was a Miami Hurricanes jersey. "I'm rooting for the purple team?" Ashley Zugelder, 10, said enthusiastically. Niagara? "I'm not sure but purple is my favorite color."
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Ryan Hillary, who -- follow the bouncing ball -- attended Florida as an undergrad, and currently goes to grad school at Dayton, wore a Gators tee but rooted for FAMU because of the Sunshine State connection. "Honestly," admitted Hillary, "I just wanted to see a tournament game." That seemed to be the prevailing notion of the 8,257 spectators that came out for a game between two teams they knew nothing about.
In 2001, Dayton hosted the inaugural Opening Round game. The NCAA deemed that day such a success that it assigned the game to the city every year through 2010. Some cities might interpret this as a sentence. The people of Dayton, instead, embraced the day as a defining celebration a la The Running of the Bulls in Pamplona or Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney.
St. Joseph's Phil Martelli, who coaches one contest at Dayton every year as an A-10 foe, explained the essence of this place. "I hit the door today and said to my wife that I've always appreciated the venue and the atmosphere here. But when you boil it down, it comes down to the people. They're knowledgeable fans that understand and appreciate good basketball. I think it's clear" -- Martellii gestured around the almost-full arena -- "why the NCAA selects Dayton."
I'm 85% sure these weren't Dayton supporters dressed as Niagara fans
About 100 Niagara students did actually make the long bus ride from New York. And a clan of maybe a dozen fans, decked out in orange and green Rattlers gear, congregated behind the FAMU bench -- though they seemed to all share facial features with head coach Mike Gillespie.
The largest single contingent of fans, however, was a two-section wide swatch of fans waving green or yellow signs that read, "Dayton Fans Say Go #64 seed" or "Dayton Fans Say Go #65 seed." Bill Daniels, a local pizza owner who printed the placards, lead a group of his nearest and dearest – this year 433 people -- to the game, as he's done every year since its inception.
"These guys are playing their hearts out for the right to be thrown to the lions," said Daniels of the two teams, scrapping for the privilege of getting whack-a-moled by Kansas on Thursday. "The tickets are a great bargain; the games are always competitive; and we get to be a part of March Madness." Plus," said Daniels with a smile, "we get to use the same signs every year."
