Hot Hoops in Hot Springs: 2012 Edition

Every year since 2009, the Sun Belt Conference Basketball Tournament has been in Hot Springs, AK, and we have been at each of them.  John and I have been season ticket holders for North Texas basketball for a while now, and we love getting to cap off the season with a vacation/tournament.

The last 3 years, UNT has made it to the Championship game, which no other school in the Sun Belt can claim, and we've watched a lot of exciting games to get there.  Unfortunately, the team lost in the Championship game this year, but other than that last 10 minutes of basketball, it was a great trip.

We've done most of the touristy stops in Hot Springs over the last four years, but we could still enjoy ourselves.  On day, the guys went to the horse races (something that never quite worked out in our previous trips).  One of the other wives and I took a stroll down Bath-House row (that was a repeat activity) and had a mini-spa-day.  I think the guys like that Kim and I are both there so we can go do "girly" stuff and let them obsess about sports (and the UNT message board).

Here's a few pictures from the trip:

John with a friend prior to the Championship Game

John with a friend prior to the Championship Game (For anyone not obsessed with North Texas Basketball, Johnny Jones is the men's team coach and his nick name when he played at LSU was "Bullet")

This is an image from the semi-final game.  Play "Where's Marleta?" (Click on the picture to make it bigger) - I look like a Goof-Ball, but I was very excited at that moment.

Another shot from the semi-final game: Johnny Jones, looking all snazzy with my husband in the background (I'm there too, but half my head is blocked)

This might have been the last year for the tournament to be in Hot Springs, and at most, I think there's only going to be one more year.  After 4 trips, we still enjoy the city and always love the "HOT HOOPS in HOT SPRIIIINNNGGS"

Hot Hoops in Hollywood

Okay, so maybe not actually in Hollywood, but we were in LA at Loyola Marymount University... LA doesn't start with an 'H' though, so you'll have to pardon my stretch to "Hot Hoops in Hollywood".  (If you're confused, see my Hot Hoops in Hot Springs post for the origins of that phrase.)

This past weekend, John and I went to LA to watch North Texas in a basketball tournament at LMU.  Other than the trip out to LA and losing 1 of the 3 games, we had a fabulous time.

To start... our experience traveling to LA was a bit less than ideal.  We boarded the plane on time (10 PM), but about 10 minutes before we should have been in the air, one of the flight crew came on the speakers to tells us that the first officer had been injured in a car accident on his way to the airport for our flight.  (Why they boarded the plane is beyond us... unless they were just trying to make the flight count as an "on-time" boarding) They had to bring in a replacement first officer.  Some noted that given the car accident, we probably didn't want the original first officer anyway. 

They allowed people to get off the plane, but we didn't want to lug our stuff back off, so we just slept on the plane (most people got off, and we were able to stretch out).  Before we stretched out though, we chatted with an odd fellow who was a bit pompous (He always flies Delta and never flies in the economy section, but he Needed to be back in LA that morning).  He's a dermatologist, who very obviously wanted to imply that he has famous patients. It was strange conversation that I won't go into in detail, but I will share the advice he gave to me and John after discovering that we are newly weds - To Me: "Stay Sexy"; To John: "Keep Performing". 

The plane didn't actually leave until about 1 AM (2.5 hours late).  When we finally got to the airport, we went out to meet the rental car bus, since all the rental car places are offsite at LAX.  We waited for 45 minutes, watching several rental buses come by multiple times, but never a Thrifty bus, which is what we were waiting for.  John tried calling Thrifty, but all we could get through to was the national number, and we (both John and the national Thrifty office) couldn't get anyone at the local office to answer the phone. Finally, a Hertz driver who had seen us on multiple passes to pick people up for Hertz stopped and asked who we were waiting for.  He was kind enough to give us a lift because he felt sorry us and didn't have any Hertz passengers at the time.  (He got a nice tip for his generosity.)

When we got to Thrifty, there was indeed someone behind the counter... why he wasn't answering the phone, we don't know, but we did ask why the bus that was idling outside never came to get us when we were waiting for almost an hour.  His response: "The bus is running to the airport every 15 minutes... [pregnant pause] but the drive is on lunch break right now".  It took longer than it should, given that he had no other customers, to get our car and get on our way, but the bus still didn't move the whole time we were there.  Why was the bus driver on "lunch" break for at least 1.25 hours (and that's just what we can confirm)?  Why did the driver take a lunch break when late flight customers who've already paid hadn't been picked up yet (we booked through a deal with American, so they knew which flight we were on)?  Why didn't they even apologize or ask how we got there without the bus?  No Clue.

Moral of the Story: Thrifty = Bad; Hertz = Good.  Never rent from Thrifty.  I've never rented from Hertz before, but they're getting my business next chance I get.

We finally got to my brother's condo around 4 AM (without all the delays, we originally expected to get to his place at 1 AM).  Needless to say, we were exhausted.


The rest of the trip went much more smoothly.  We watched a 90-45 victory for North Texas in the first game on Friday.  On Saturday, we enjoyed the Baylor victory on TV before heading out to the only UNT loss of the weekend (Lost to Columbia, who I now hope wins the Ivy League Championship because we were not expecting that one).  Then, on Sunday, we watched a great game with the host school, Loyola Marymount.  UNT lead almost the whole game, but it was relatively close and a good game throughout.  LMU has beat ranked opponents this year, so they were a formidable opponent.  I also enjoyed spending time with my brother in the evenings in LA, and he even came to the Saturday game.

Shoot-Around at half time for the last game - I took this because I decided that I needed at least one picture from our trip. - Note the small crowd (Only Loyola's game on Friday had a decent turnout - though there were more people on our side so it wasn't quite as dismal as this photo looks), and note the odd small area with wood bleachers on top.

The other big excitement of our trip was in the final game when I got warned by a campus police officer - Yes, you read right: Me, not John. - Like many people do, I took advantage of the quiet to yell a loud, quick "AWoo" right as one of the LMU players was trying to shoot a free throw.  No words, so it wasn't profanity or taunting, which I could understand people getting upset over - I don't like that either.  But people do what I did all the time, particularly when your crowd is small because you can't make much of an impact to distract the shooter with a sustained yell if there's only a couple people.  Several other people did the same thing during that game both before and after me, and they weren't warned by the police.  For some reason, this police officer just decided that a fan making noise at a sporting event was inappropriate when I did it.  I was obviously confused, and no one around me understood it either.  I didn't press the matter with the officer though because I definitely didn't want to get kicked out.  I think John was proud.

To top off the end of trip, when we got to the airport on Sunday, we discovered that the team was on our flight back to Dallas.  We got to chat with several of the coaches and players, which was great fun.  Apparently, while I was in the ladies room, John felt the need to tell the head coach about my encounter with the campus police at the game.  The team was great - Fun to watch on the court and very nice in our interactions at the airport - a few players come up to us to thank us for making the trip.  (Though I did get a head shake from the head coach for wearing my Baylor hoodie when I got cold before we boarded the plane)

All in All, a fun time in LA. 

Hot Hoops, In Hot Springs

Two weeks ago, we were in Hot Springs, Arkansas for our third annual trip.  For the last 3 years, and the next few years at least, the Sun Belt Conference basketball tournament has been in Hot Springs.  Each year, John, his brother Jimmy, and I join other Mean Green faithfuls for a week of 2-6 basketball games a day.

We took lots of pictures the first year and a few the second.  The novelty of the city has worn off though, so the only picture I have to share from this year is a still from the championship game TV broadcast with only 22 seconds left.

North Texas had just secured a 4 point lead.  Heartbreaking events followed leading to a 1 point loss by the end, but in this shot, we're quite excited because it looks like we're going to the NCAA tournament for a second year in a row.

Watching the team win last year and lose in the last seconds this year made for two very different emotions.  However, last year North Texas was a 2 seed and didn't play a 1 seed until the final game, but this year they were a 4 seed, upsetting 1 and 3 seeds to even get to the Championship game.  We were very excited to even be in the Championship game, but that loss still stings.

An interesting note about this year's tournament: Along with North Texas's upsets in round 2 and 3, there were 6 other upsets in the tournament.  Only 3 games (2 in the first round and 1 in the second round) actually went according to seeding.

This year was a little different because our friends Matt and Kim came along (they are the two people that John and I are book-ending in the picture).  They have season tickets right next to us during the year, but they've not been able to come to the tournament before.  I enjoyed getting to do a few more "girly" things this year that I'd not done in the previous 2 years... Like actually go to a Hot Springs bath house.  The "hot bath" turned out to be what I'd call a over priced use of a normal whirlpool bathtub, but I'm glad to finally say I've done it, since that's what Hot Springs is famous for.

All in all, it was a good trip despite the loss in the end.  I guess we have to lose some years; otherwise, the wins would stop being as fun. - John would probably argue with me on that point.



PS There's a story behind the title of this post.  The first year the tournament was in Hot Springs, that was the tournament slogan, and the advertisement for the tournament had the voice over yell/singing "Hot Hoops, In Hot Spriiiinnngggs".  The boys I travel with latched on to the somewhat annoying phrase and say it close to 200 times each year while we're there (the first year may have been more like 500).