(12-21-2019 10:13 PM)Timer Wrote:  

(12-21-2019 02:24 PM)J.B. Wrote:  Attendance was listed on the boxscore for both games last night at 500. Let's say that the idea of having 4 mid-major teams from fairly far away playing in Atlantic City on the Friday and Saturday before Christmas is an epic fail. They would have drawn more fans if the tournament were at the DAC. I think that family members and diehard fans from the other teams, if there are any, would rather be in Philadelphia than Atlantic City.

That attendance figure to me was very generous. BG did have a lot of fans since they have a local guy as a major player. They had the most fans over the two days. An "interestingly" run tournament and venue. Today's game had NO event staff. The officials had to move the warm up ball cart of the floor when we pointed out that it was still sideline midcourt. No one to mop wetness on the floor, etc.

Was also glad that I showed up yesterday just before 2:00 for the 4:30 game to check the table set up. Daktronics unit very similar to the DAC with one MAJOR flaw....the shot clock reset handheld only had one button that reset the shot clock to 30 seconds, no way to reset to 20 at all. Fortunately I had the venue event person's cell number. Had a little difficulty explaining that it was a rather large problem. The first suggestion was to just use the control panel to reset it. I laughed and said there was no way that would work. Eventually it was discovered that there was a package that hadn't been opened..The correct handheld was in place maybe 30 minutes prior to tip-off. No idea what would have happened if it hadn't been found......

Like I said, interesting tourney, but I did like the way the horn sounded in Boardwalk Hall....

Sounds to me like there are so many little nuances that go into preparation of an official college basketball game, and the Atlantic City people just thought that you could just set up a court, baskets, and scoreboards and be fine. I'm still not sure what the purpose of it was. I guess maybe they thought that they could sell a few extra hotel rooms? Also, with the MAAC Tournament is in Atlantic City in March, and I wonder if any of their staff was in attendance, using these games as a trial run?