Musketeers Dodge The Snow

The men's basketball squad was scheduled to leave the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport on a 3 p.m. flight on Friday. But Thursday night the travel agent informed Director of Basketball Administration Mario Mercurio that our flight was going to be cancelled due to a big snow storm headed East. That began a couple hours of scrambling to find a flight with 35 open spots. Fortunately, an 8:30 a.m. flight was found and the process of contacting all the travel party members began. That process took until well after midnight.

The XU basketball travel party left Cintas Center at about 6:30 a.m. Long check-in lines and security lines for the holiday season almost put the good luck to an end. But the last of the travel party made it to the gate just minutes before the doors closed for the flight. The flight arrived at LaGuardia Airport about 10 a.m., a short time before the snow began to fall. It's been snowing pretty steady ever since.

XU caught another break with its scheduled practice. The Musketeers were scheduled to leave their hotel in East Rutherford to practice in The Bronx at the Gauchos Gym, former stomping ground for current XU assistant Book Richardson. Scheduled practice was slated for 2-4 but travel to and from the Bronx looked like a long and slippery commute. It turned out, though, that the NJ Nets cancelled a scheduled shoot and the Musketeers were able to practice on the Izod Center floor that will be the site of Saturday's game. That's about 10-15 minutes from the hotel even with teh bad weather. The CBS producer and announce team of Clark Kellogg and Verne Lundquist took in practice and got the usual prep, rundown and notes from Tom Eiser.

The team finished a lively practice at about 4:15 p.m. and made the 10-15 minute bus ride to the hotel.

The squad's now back in the hotel, awaiting team dinner and a film session later this evening. Considering the blast of bad weather that's hit this area, the Musketeers can consider themselves very lucky. Hopefully they still have some left to go with a top effort tomorrow.