Who's Going to UCONN 12/23???

Are you going to follow the Cardinal to Hartford for the 23 December game? If so, two notes: One, the game location, which until recently was on the campus in Storrs, has now been announced for the larger XL Center in Hartford. This makes your travel logistics a bit easier, as described on our Travel Page. Second, we have a note from Greg Louden, who is the chair of the Stanford Band Alumni Board, and says he...

happens to have family in central Connecticut. I'll be visiting them this holiday season, and naturally wanted to go to the UConn game. Being the chair of the Alum Board and knowing of the enthusiasm of band alumni for the women's b-ball team, I'm trying to put together, if not a band, at least a small cheering section to support the team in Hartford.

If you are going on this trip, contact Greg right away to see if you can meet up or coordinate with him in some way.

Help transition Mac to Matt

By our special correspondent in Eugene, H. Benson

This year the Cardinal play in the Beaver's orange-and-black arena in Corvallis on Thursday, Jan. 21st. Then, Saturday Jan 23rd, we play for the last time ever in the historic Mac Court.

If you haven’t attended a game at Mac Court (also known as The Pit) at the University of Oregon, you really should do so this season. It is this arena’s last year, to be replaced by the resplendent Matthew Knight Arena next season. As nice as Matt will be, Mac Court has a uniqueness that should be experienced. It is a true home court advantage for the Ducks.

Then, when you learn your way around Eugene this season, you’ll want to plan for the next season as well. While I’ve been in Eugene this month, Matt reached a construction milestone. The bulk of the concrete work is ending, and the workers are turning to raising the structural steel. Here is a picture of the general scene with large tower cranes... And here is the arena in the rough. The really good news about Matt is the large attached parking garage, which will eliminate the haphazard street parking that was a less-pleasant part of the Mac Court experience.

For trip-planning advice, see the Travel Page.

Eighth Trip: Duel in the Desert

Continuing our preview of the 2009-10 road trips...

Thanks to the desire of FOX/CSN to televise the Stanford-ASU game, we play first in Tempe on the evening of Thursday, 2/25. For you non-retired fans, that pretty much means taking Thursday and Friday off. As described on the Travel page, it may be possible to work half a day and fly to Phoenix Sky Harbor Thursday afternoon. But it's tight.

However you work it, ASU is always the tougher opponent with a high-energy, sold-out arena. That's the don't-miss game. Afterward, you might just grab a motel in Phoenix and fly home next morning.

If not, you now have all Friday and Saturday morning to do things around Phoenix and/or Tucson; see the Travel page for links to some of the many interesting destinations.

The Arizona game is in Tucson at 3pm MST on the Saturday. That leaves adequate time to return to Sky Harbor (love that airport name) and get home Saturday night.

For fans with time to travel, a whole 'nother approach to this trip would be to make it Tucson-centric. Fly (or drive) to Tucson arriving on the Thursday morning. Get a good nap, then drive 2.5 hours to Tempe for the game. Drive back to Tucson that night. Spend a nice weekend in Tucson or use Tucson as a base for driving southeast to places like Tombstone and Bisbee.

Seventh Trip: Washington

We continue our logistics planning for the 2009-2010 away games.
Check the archive list on the right for prior trips.

The schedule for this trip is brutal for anyone with a nine-to-five job. It just isn't is just barely possible to see the WSU game and get home for work Monday.

Friday in Seattle

The weekend starts well with a 7 PM Friday evening game (we presume; game time is still TBS) at the UW. You can expect heavy street traffic and possibly bad weather, so, one, tell your hotel you'll be checking in late, and two, allow three hours from touchdown to reach Hec Edmundsen Pavilion (click the venue in the Schedule page for a map).

You have Saturday at large in Seattle (see the Travel page for things to do).

Then, probably, you'll grab a leisurely flight home, because...

Sunday in Pullman

The WSU game is at 2pm NOON on the Sunday.

It's easy to get from Seattle to Pullman. You drive down to SeaTac and catch a one-hour flight to Spokane, which with clear weather, will be spectacularly scenic. In the pleasantly low-key Spokane airport you grab a rental car and drive 90 minutes to the WSU campus in Pullman. Since game time is 2pm, you have all morning to do this.Game time is noon but Alaska has 7am and 8am departures from SEA that will do.

After the game you can still get home. Say you fire up the rental car at 2:15pm. You are back to Spokane airport at 4pm so a 5pm departure is makeable. And hey, looka here: United has a nonstop GEG-SFO departing at 6:18! Book it, baby! Or, call Alaska Air and let the friendly operator work out a return to SJC or OAK via either Seattle or Portland.

Sixth Trip: Oregon

We continue previewing the road trips of 2009-10. For the earlier trips, see the archive list at the right.

The Oregon trip is one of the most popular with FBC members. It's not too far; Oregon is scenic; the arenas are historic; the towns, especially Eugene, are pleasant. On the Travel page we delve into the fly/drive tradeoff and itineraries.

Thursday, Corvallis and OSU

This year the first game is at Corvallis at 7pm Thursday January 21st. Corvallis is the more northerly town, an hour nearer to Portland and an hour farther from the Bay Area. If you drive up from the Bay Area, you can stop off in Eugene, check into a hotel, drive on to Corvallis, and drive back to Eugene after the game—but that makes for a long day. If you fly to PDX and drive down, it makes sense to plan to stay that night in Corvallis and move on to Eugene next day, or even Saturday.

Saturday, Oregon and Eugene

The Saturday game at Mac Court is at 11am, so you can get a good start on a southward drive.

There's lots to do and shop and eat in Eugene. The Travel page has a list.

The Valley River Inn has always been popular with FBC travellers. This year we can also recommend the Hilton Eugene, which is easier to get to and in easy walking distance of downtown shops and even the Oregon campus.

Fifth trip: Los Angeles

This season the Cardinal plays USC at the Galen Center on Friday, January 8th. Game time is (sigh) TBS, but supposing it will be 7pm as would be typical, you can sneak out of work early on the Friday afternoon, catch a 2pm AA flight or a 4:10 Southwest flight at SJC, grab a rental car and be at the Galen Center door in plenty of time. Well, enough time.

Once there you can see what kind of team the troubled USC Athletics administration has managed to scrape together (read Bob Kinder's analysis for the juicy details).

You get all day Saturday and Sunday morning to live it up in the greater L.A. Basin. What will you do with the time? Share with us in the comments, please?

The UCLA game will be on Sunday at (you guessed it) TBS o'clock 2 PM. Supposing it will be the typical 1pm, you can catch a 5:25 Southwest or You should be able to make the 6:45 AA return flight—but don't book this flight until the game time is announced. If there was a late decision to put the game on TV, the start time might be later.

If you would rather drive (the Travel page talks about the fly-drive trade-offs), you can schedule a leisurely start Friday, go down 101 with a lunch stop at Pea Soup Anderson's in Buellton, or someplace in Santa Barbara. With two drivers trading off the return trip up I5 can be completed on the Sunday night.

Local Trips: Davis and Fresno State

UC Davis

In our haste to write about the UConn trip we skipped over a local road-trip, Sunday November 22 to UC Davis. The route to Davis is 114 miles, and Google's estimate of 2 hours is conservative for a Sunday afternoon. Here's the route:

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The game time isn't set. If it's midday (1pm would be typical for a Sunday game) is 2pm, so it should be feasible to make the round-trip in a day. If it's later, see our Travel Page for a motel recommendation.

Fresno State

On Wednesday 12/30, at the ever-popular TBS 7 o'clock, the Cardinal plays the Fresno State Bulldogs in Fresno. It's a 3.5-hour drive over Pacheco Pass; here is a route-map:

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It's a bit hard to plan for this trip without knowing the game time. If the game starts in the middle of the day, it would be possible to make it a day-trip and be home that night. If Since the game starts after 6pm, you may want to think about a motel. Expedia lists a number of motels in Fresno at $40/night and up.

Possible Booster Buses

The FBC board have very tentatively discussed the possibility of running booster bus for either of these trips. If you would be interested in taking a bus to Davis, or to Fresno, instead of driving yourself, please send email saying so to travel@stanfordfbc.org. No bus will happen unless the board is pretty sure of enough riders to pay for it!

Second Trip: UConn

We continue our previews of the road trips of 2009-10. See the "Archive" menu on the right for the preceding ones.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 will be the historic date on which Stanford initiates a home-and-home series with the UConn Huskies. In coming years we will always be at away to UConn and at home to Tennessee, or vice versa!

The game will be played on the UConn campus in Storrs, CT at a time to be specified. (The time was 5:30 ET in a preseason schedule but has gone back to "tba" on the official Stanford schedule.) Stay-at-homes will be able to watch it on ESPN. But if you want the full experience (and no nattering Debbie Antonelli) you will have to travel to the game.

We've got logistic and booking tips on the Travel page. Here we just want to comment on the thoroughly miserable scheduling of this game. It falls on the first day of a national five-day holiday orgy:

• Wednesday, National Get Your Shopping and Wrapping Done Now day
• Thursday, Christmas Eve
• Friday, Christmas
• Saturday, National No Available Parking Space at the Mall day
• Sunday, National Buyer's Remorse and Recriminations day

And they expect us to travel over the best part of that? It's asking quite a lot of the fans.

The First Trip: ODU and Rutgers

We are starting a series of posts to preview the road trips of the upcoming 2009-10 season. Use this info to help plan your winter travels, make early reservations, or just to daydream a bit!

If you plan to make one of these trips, or if you have any other thoughts about travel, please add a comment below. Other FBC members will be interested. (Yes, really they will!)

First Trip: ODU and Rutgers

There is no easy fall tournament this year, no Virgin Island or Hawaii fun time. We get right down to business on Friday evening, November 13, when the Cardinal play on the Old Dominion campus in Norfolk VA. In our travel notes we assume taking an overnight flight from SFO on the Thursday night, giving most of a day to check into a hotel and poke around Norfolk. (We'll post some links to attractions later.)

The next game is at Rutgers on Sunday, giving a day and a half to traverse some very interesting territory (google map). The possibilities for sight-seeing are wide: you could stop off in Washington DC, in Baltimore, in Philadelphia; you could even have a day and night in Manhattan, and go out to Rutgers on the train. Update:We've put details of DelMarva Peninsula highlights on the travel page.

Those of us who attended the last game at Rutgers—Kayla Pedersen's impressive debut, the game won by Candice with a free-throw after Epiphany Prince made a silly foul—remember very well how "The RAC" is full to the rafters with loud, friendly, red-clad fans.

The Sunday game time is still TBS but, assuming a typical 1pm start, it 2pm ET will be easy to fly home to the Bay Area that evening from nearby Newark Airport. there is a Continental departure for SFO at 5:45 and a United flight at 6:20. There are no nonstops to SJC but several 1-stops via Denver.

Up next— Connecticut for Christmas eve...

St. Louis 'Cues

St. Louis means barbeque! Sometime in your 3+ days under the Arch, you gotta chow down on dry-rub ribs, slow-cooked brisket, pulled pork, sweet-potato fries, spicy baked beans... Yum! Checking a variety of sources the following downtown locations look like good bets: Pappy's Smokehouse, 3106 Olive St. From Yelp: "...picnic tables, rolls of paper towels on each table, big squirt containers of sauce... Loud blues playing over the sound system... they serve til they run out of food, and then they lock the door. Go early or call ahead." The Shaved Duck, a new 'cue-oriented gastropub with "a terrific selection of beers... curated with great care." Order a side of mac&cheese, and apple cobbler with ice cream for dessert. Smoki O's at 1545 N Broadway, mainly take-out and located in an industrial area. If the weather turns fine, grab some takeout lunch and go to one of St. Louis' many parks.

Pep Rally and Send-off Sunday afternoon

All those going to St. Louis, plan to be at the team hotel on Sunday 4/5 from 3:30 to 5pm for a reception—complimentary nosh and no-host bar—followed by team send-off with the Band. If you hope to make this, you need to RSVP to Lisa Ortiz (Lortiz@stanford.edu). The location is the Palm Court Lobby of the Millennium Hotel St. Louis (200 South 4th st.). Here's a google map (gettin' to like this google inset thing)

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Cardinal Spot in St. Louis

As at Tampa, the NCAA has designated a specific lounge for the fans of each Regional to gather. We from the Berkeley Regional are invited to hang out at:

Skybox Sports Bar & Grill
800 North Third Street
St. Louis, MO 63102
(314-241-5100)

(Contrary to our usual practice, we are not linking to the bar's URL. The URL is www.skyboxstl.com but we do not recommend opening it; it is Flash-based, content-light, and has loud annoying music you cannot turn off.) Here's a google map showing the route from the bar (A) to the Scottrade center (B).

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