Drake Basketball Team VS Minnesota

First thing that shocked me was, there are so many people (6021 people) in the Knapp Center for only a basketball tournament between A UNIVERSITY and the other. But the opponent of Drake is from Minnesota (another state). There are Cheer leaders, opening ceremony etc. It is really a huge event for Drake University.

Drake even encourage its students to support its team by giving out free shirts for first 500 students. In the event itself, it gives another don't know how many free gifts and shirts. Also, only Drake students can receive tickets for free, each student is eligible for only 1 ticket. And usually sometimes they ought to sell the tickets last minute at the gate for those who did not manage to get the limited free ticket from Drake; they sell it for like around 20 - 30 bucks @@.

I started queueing at 5.15, the match starts at 7 sharp (well, U.S. always punctual, when they say 7 means 7). The queue was so long. All queueing outside the Knapp Center and the door only opens at 6 pm sharp. Drake students really like this kind of event much. If other students that came like around 7 pm, there will be no more nice seats.

During the game, everyone was like so excited and intense. Basically they only cheer for their Drake team (because all of them are audience from Iowa). They "buu" opponent team throughout the whole match. I think this is unfair because this action will give tremendous stress to the foreign team, I guess they are used to it because of their culture. Despite competing in this pressuring situation, Minnesota team won by 10 points for this tournament.

Drake is losing by a few points in the first half. Also note that there are 3 referees for a match.

When Drake team was doing free throw, the audience will do some hand sign to calm the crowd down, asking them not to make any noise so that the player concentrate in his throw. When his throw entered the basket, the crowd will give an applause. If he did not enter, nothing happened.

When opponent team was doing it, the audience will remain quiet as well, until when he was going to shoot, they suddenly made some noise to distract his concentration. When he did not get it entered the basket, the crowd will give an applause. If it did entered, "buu" from the audience.

Those cheer leaders are well trained.

This Drake VS other state tournament is so huge. Others (like me) might think that it state or national tournament.

Drake basketball team was quite good and always win tournaments. But somehow it lost this match. It might be due to my presence as this is my first time watching it? Debatable...