Nov. 29, 2008
OSC DAY 2: FOOTBALL…FUTBOL…BASKETBALL?
"What in the world is going on here?" Kenny Hasbrouck's mother asks me as we walk together through the Wide World of Sports entranceway.
Mrs. Hasbrouck's son is the 2008-2009 MAAC Preseason Player of the Year; his player page on his team websitedescribes him as a "smooth, mature, creative guard." A few hundred yards up the hill, Kenny is leading the Siena Saints against the Wichita State Shockers in the first game of Day 2 of the Old Spice Classic.
And his mother is running late.
I ran into Mrs. Hansbrouck somewhere in the vicinity of Lot 4 at the Wide World of Sports complex, which might as well have been in Daytona Beach. She had already made an extra stop at the entrance to unload her husband, who uses a wheelchair, as there is exactly zero handicapped parking available at the moment.
If you thought an eight-team, four day college basketball tournament featuring four Top 20 teams was enough for Disney World to have on its plate at one time…think again.
In addition to Day 2 of the Old Spice Classic, today marked Day 1 of the Disney Junior Soccer Showcase presented by Chelsea Football Club. I saw not a single Michigan State fan bus nor pickup truck flying the orange UT logo…but boy were there minivans. A few lone Old Spice Classic banners hung from the lonely faux streetscape outside the Milk House, but on the field below life-sized visages of Michael Ballack and Petr Cechdirected scores of pre-teens to their next match location.
On the plus side, Mrs. Hansbrouck is a great conversation, and an honorary Hoyas fan to boot. Kenny hails from Capital Heights, MD and once had designs on attending Georgetown. He still works out with the Hoyas each summer and he and his mom have a very high opinion of the school.
"I was rooting hard for you yesterday," she says.
We go our separate ways and I head inside to watch Kenny and the Saints for a while…which just isn't doing it for me. The crowd isn't quite as into the game as yesterday, and I'm too nervous about this afternoon's game with Tennessee to pay much attention. I need a break to relax.
So naturally I head outside to watch soccer.
It's at this point I realize the two most popular locations at the Wide World of Sports today (other than the line for orange slices after a soccer game) are the magically appearing beer cart outside Georgetown's section of the Milk House, and the patio behind the arena where half of Orange County is currently smoking a cigarette.
I walk around the fields for a while. An angry coach screams instructions at a group of 10-year old girls, who promptly concede a goal. I push my way through a travel squad from Texas so I can take a picture of the enormous Michael Ballack. And it occurs to me at this moment…
…two Top 20 teams are going to play in the building up the hill from me in half an hour.
This doesn't feel right at all.
Back in the Milk House, Kenny Hasbrouck misses a driving layup at the buzzer and Siena loses by 2.
That's going to be a long walk back to the car.
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If there was one positive aspect to the Disney basketball experience today, it was that the soccer atmosphere seemed to rub off on the Georgetown and Tennessee fans in attendance. It seemed less the semifinal of a preseason tournament than the full nationalistic hullaballoo of a World Cup qualifier (I wonder what the lyrics to "Rocky Top" are in Spanish).
Give full credit to Georgetown's fans in Orlando today. I've always been somewhat bummed that, given a random selection of four teams at a tournament venue, Hoya fans far too often come up fourth in the crowd intensity standings. But a strange thing happened on the way to Omar Wattad's breakout performance-Hoya Saxa absolutely demolished Rocky Top for 38 minutes of the game. Tennessee's fans seemed content to sit on their hands waiting for the next scoring run-it was so subdued at times in Orangeland you'd have thought we'd stumbled into a Volunteer football game.
But there would be runs…oh, there would be runs. It seemed like the entire game consisted of one momentum swing after another. "Heckuva a ball game ain't it?" said the Vol fan seated in front of me late in the second half. "Back and forth, back and forth…whooooo!"
We should have seen at least one run coming (okay, perhaps two-I even though to myself with GU up eight in the second half: "Well, Tennessee's got at least one more run left in them…").
With the Vols leading 30-23 with under six minutes to go in the first half, Georgetown called a timeout to calm things down. Yesterday I wrote about how at halftime Chris Daughtry accurately predictedthe Hoyas' struggles against Wichita State. Today, the sound engineers of Disney gave us another musical clue to the course of our contest…in the form of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes."
Yes, the moment I heard the strangely un-Disney song featuring the infamous almost-WAG shirt-slogan "No one on the corner have swagger like us," I knew we were right back in it. Under three minutes later, Omar Wattad capped off a 10-2 Hoya run with a three pointer to give Georgetown a 33-32 lead.
How about Omar Wattad? We may never know if he was simply jacked up to play against a team from his home state, but the sophomore from Johnson City, TN contributed 9 points on 3-3 shooting from outside and two of the gutsiest offensive rebounds we've seen in some time from a player in a Hoya uniform.
Ultimately, the Hoyas could have used about two dozen more rebounds where that came from. Between another rough day on the glass, Tennessee's pressure defense and the unconscious three point stylings of the Vols' Cameron Tatum, the Hoyas fell 90-78 in their first test against a ranked opponent in 2008-09.
But the swagger is hardly gone. With the loss came a renewed sense that, yes, this young team will take its lumps but is every bit capable of playing with the best teams in the country. Omar Wattad all of a sudden seems less like "that guy on the bench" and more like the model of how the Hoyas will achieve success this season-never backing down despite occasional size mismatches or a more athletic opponent, constantly putting in extra effort on the defensive end, and leaving everything possible on the court.
Not bad for a loss.
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Indeed, it was a long walk back to the car…I got lost in fact.
But sometimes in getting lost on a small excursion we realize what's most important on our larger journey.
Nowhere was this more evident than as I got into my car and heard behind me a jubilant Tennessee fan yelling across three rows to his friends:
"WE GOT A NEW FOOTBALL COACH!!!"
March Madness can't come soon enough.
Catch you later (hey, speaking of Capitol Heights, aren't we playing some school from Maryland on Sunday?)
John Hawkes (SFS '04)
Proud Member of Generation Burton
