Since race announcing always seems to get in my way of seeing as many Texas college football stadiums as possible, another other goal - to pass time, in many cases - is to do the same with Texas college basketball arenas.
Thursday night, November 3, I made my west to Brenham to see the Lone Star College-Cy Fair Fighting Ducks take on the Blinn College Buccaneers.
It became the 19th Texas college basketball arenas or gymnasium that I've seen a college game in. One of those is no longer in use, G. Rollie White Coliseum at Texas A&M.
There are a couple of colleges where I've seen a game in, but not a collegiate contest.
They would include Baylor University's Ferrell Center, McLennan Community College's The Highlands and Southwestern University's Robertson Center.
In those facilities, I saw Texas private and parochial high school basketball during the time that I covered those schools from 1994-2001.
Since I always like to try and #eatlocal when possible, I found my way to the downtown square in Brenham and stopped in to a place called Yumm! Sweets & Eats.
There are two sections to the restaraunt - one to eat and the other, literally, for sweets.
I couldn't tell what the sizes of the many different types of pizzas they had or if the calzones that could be made from the same ingredients were cheaper.
Since neither was determinable, I settled on the Jalapeno Ranch Burger (minus the bacon) and it is really, really good.
Campus was no more than about 5-10 minutes away, but it took me awhile to pinpoint where the Physical Education Building was and where I could legally park without my vehicle ticketed and/or towed.
Once I found my way to the entrance, admission was only $5 and the floor appeared nearly brand-new. Multiple banners adorned the one wall indicating NJCAA dominance from the school's volleyball team with quite a few national championships.
Pretty good turnout from the student body for the second home game early in the season.
I wasn't so much surprised that the mascot and cheerleaders were in attendance, but it also seems that Blinn College has a thriving and nationally ranked Dance Team (and they performed multiple times on the evening).
Even more surprisingly is when LSC-Cy-Fair got out to an early lead, but it didn't take long for Blinn to grab a lead and run up a 48-24 halftime advantage.
The Fighting Ducks were their own worst enemy without any rebounding on the inside - on either end of the floor - and plenty of fouls. In fact, before they passed the 20-point mark, there might have been a time where they had more fouls than points.
The officiating crew had one of its three members that was not prepared for the action. On the entire evening, at least half of his foul calls were hard to fathom.
With 11:27 to play in the game, Blinn still had a 63-37 advantage.
More than seven minutes later at the 4:09 mark, LSC-Cy-Fair had taken 10 points off that advantage, down 75-59. And this is when I left to head back to Spring.
Eventually, the Fighting Ducks lost by only eight, 84-76. I've got to imagine that head coach and director of athletics Scott Schumacher lost his mind in those last four minutes.
The one player for Blinn that I was most impressed with was 6-2 guard LaKendric Hyson from Mumford HS. And this was for reasons other than the bright pink shoes.
He led the way with 21 points, including one slam that was definitely ESPN Sports Center material. Most importantly, though, he was completely unflappable in the face of the sloppiness of play in the second half between the two teams.
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