Dook 23 JAN 2016

Deep River Road

Fools that we are, Nuke and I never even thought of missing the Dook game. We figured that US 1 Freeway would be clear - IF we could get to the highway.

That's not snow - it's solid packed ice. The automatic 4WD kept engaging on and off. It's about 2 miles from the house to US 1 - Took a while to get there. But once on the freeway one lane was mostly clear except for the bridges and overpasses. And when we got past Apex, both lanes were mostly clear.

Parking Lot - Usually Full

The Dook and UNC games always sell out as soon as individual tickets go on sale. But, there's a lot of spaces available today.

Parking Lot - Rather Empty

And the parking lot is pretty much empty further away from the Arena.

Before The Game

Sparse crowd. However, the students have all showed up and filled their sections. The radio reported that most of the students walked from Campus to the PNC. That's a long walk - really long. There's a reason the kids get the court side seats - they bring all the energy to the games.

1st Half - More People Have Arrived

Exciting game.

More people arrived after the game started. It probably took them a while to get here. Usually we plan on about 45 minutes with slow traffic getting into the Arena lots. Today, we left 2 hours before tip off. Got into the Arena about 10 minutes before the game started.

2nd Half - Pretty Good Crowd

2nd Half - Upper Level Gets Mostly Full

By half time, everybody who was coming to the game had arrived. Not a bad crowd considering the weather.*

The Band didn't make it.

State played really well. This year we always seem to have a second half spell where we forget to play like a team. Happened again today and Dook went on a 10 - 0 run. We were never able to overcome that. Got close, but Dook really played a lot better in the 2nd half and we never got closer than about 4 points.

Also, Dook's defense kept State out of the paint all day. So that was a big difference right there. Dook's defense is always excellent. That's a trademark of The Great Satan Coach Krzyzewski.

Still, for a team with no bench, we had a balanced effort today. Shot well, rebounded well, 3 pointers went in. But Dook did the same, just better - and they get the win.

Back Home

Made it to the game and back without too much trouble. Although we did get a little slip and slide on Deep River Road on the way back. We were going real slow, but on ice, it doesn't really matter if you've got 4 wheel drive or not.

Back home and settled in to watch some basketball on TV.

Wish we had won. All in all, a pretty good day.

Note - About the game photos - iPhones do not take good photos - not like a real camera. The fireplace photo was taken with a Sony camera - you can see the difference.

* Update - from the WRAL website -

 RALEIGH, N.C. — More than 12,000 fans trekked out to PNC Arena to watch NC State and Duke play Saturday despite winter weather and icy road conditions.

The attendance number was roughly 7,000 fans shy of the sold-out 19,500 tickets purchased to the match up.