You gotta believe
While I didn't excel at basketball (okay, I hardly ever played except to shoot hoops occasionally in the driveway in my teens), I grew up as the younger sister of the high school basketball team captain, and I watched enough of my brother's games, and then my nephew's and neice's games (a niece who, at barely 26, mopped up the floor in an unexpected pick-up game of PIG with famed, hulking New York Yankee "A-Rod" at a Boston health club last summer!) over the years, to have a little bit of a clue about how the game is played.
So, until the past year or two, when the State University of New York at Albany moved up to Division 1 of the NCAA, the SUNY Albany team hardly created much of a ripple on the local sporting landscape - they usually took a backseat to another, much smaller, local college (Siena), which was more accomplished within its smaller division, and to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in nearby Troy, which has always had a strong hockey team.
But now that SUNY Albany's Great Danes (don't ask me why Danes - Albany was originally a Dutch settlement in the 1600s...) has made it (as the 16th seed) to the playoffs of the NCAA championships (are we at the "Sweet 16"? I guess...) and is holding its own again quite admirably against 1st seed UConn through the first half and well into the third quarter tonight, everyone here in town is, regardless of their roots, both native Irish and a SUNY Albany fan.
I live literally a stone's throw from the SUNY uptown (suburban) campus - it's literally in my back yard and I watched this "new" campus being built 30 years ago. So, although I don't follow college basketball closely, I do feel a slight twinge of hometown pride for this amazing upstart team.
I have no idea what the outcome of this match-up will be, and the pundits everywhere have all said it's a long-shot, but it's St. Patrick's Day in a town with a strong Irish heritage, and there's a solid tradition of sporting "miracles" that have emerged here in upstate New York...in situations like this, you gotta believe...and I do.
Why not us? indeed.
So, until the past year or two, when the State University of New York at Albany moved up to Division 1 of the NCAA, the SUNY Albany team hardly created much of a ripple on the local sporting landscape - they usually took a backseat to another, much smaller, local college (Siena), which was more accomplished within its smaller division, and to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in nearby Troy, which has always had a strong hockey team.
But now that SUNY Albany's Great Danes (don't ask me why Danes - Albany was originally a Dutch settlement in the 1600s...) has made it (as the 16th seed) to the playoffs of the NCAA championships (are we at the "Sweet 16"? I guess...) and is holding its own again quite admirably against 1st seed UConn through the first half and well into the third quarter tonight, everyone here in town is, regardless of their roots, both native Irish and a SUNY Albany fan.
I live literally a stone's throw from the SUNY uptown (suburban) campus - it's literally in my back yard and I watched this "new" campus being built 30 years ago. So, although I don't follow college basketball closely, I do feel a slight twinge of hometown pride for this amazing upstart team.
I have no idea what the outcome of this match-up will be, and the pundits everywhere have all said it's a long-shot, but it's St. Patrick's Day in a town with a strong Irish heritage, and there's a solid tradition of sporting "miracles" that have emerged here in upstate New York...in situations like this, you gotta believe...and I do.
Why not us? indeed.
posted by Leslie | 5:53 PM
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