Baylor Plays the Garden

It was really exciting to have the Baylor basketball team come play at Madison Square Garden in both the NIT Final 4 on Tuesday and the Championship Game on Thursday. I'm so glad I've found so many Baylor people up here who were also excited to see the Bears play at the Garden. For the Tuesday game, I was able to get 4 tickets in the NHL suite, so I took Rocio and Mindy from church and Rocio's friend Christina. Also, the other NHL/Baylor guy got 2 tickets in the suite and let Christina's friend, Lauren, have his extra one. At half-time we walked down to the closer seats and found some of the other NYC Baylor alums I know - mostly from the alumni group here, but also my friend, Erin, who is in my church community group. It was fun to see everyone! We sat with them for a while, but got booted out of those seats and back up to the suite. It was a really fun night and great to see the Bears win! We even walked up to the Team hotel in Times Square afterwards to the small rally they had for the team.

View from the NHL Suite Mindy, Rocio, and I Bears on the floor at The Garden!
A few of the cheerleaders and dancers flew out for both games
Mindy w/ one of the starters

On Thursday, I was able to get 7 tickets in the suite and then Matt had his 1. On Tuesday there had been 4 Penn State guys in our suite, so we figured they probably had the remaining 4 tickets for Thursday. But, whoever it was never showed up. We were just glad to have more Bears in the suite than Nittany Lions (by the way, anyone know what a Nittany Lion is??). The Penn State crowd really overwhelmed Baylor throughout the rest of MSG. They brought in 38 bus-loads of students!! Rocio, Christina, and Lauren joined us in the suite again as well as Shannon (the NYC BU alum pres) & her husband Travis, and Daniel, a guy from church. Poor Baylor lost, but it was a good, close game and we had a fun time. At half-time, Rocio and I moved down close to the floor and sat with some of the NYC Alum club people I know. Then, I went with a group of the alumns for dinner afterwards to Brother Jimmy's. It was good BBQ! It was a late night, but worth it to support our Bears up here in NYC.

The band did not come on Tuesday, but Rocio made some phone calls and a small portion came out on Thursday (maybe or maybe not due to Rocio's persistence)