College basketball fans in the St. Louis metro and Missouri and Illinois have 3 teams in the NCAA tournament this year, something which has not happened in years. St. Louis University a 4 seed, Missouri a 9 seed and Illinois a 7 seed. The Billikens are certainly the feel good story of the year around here and I can't think of anyone who isn't excited about their chances. But after SLU's conference championship game win yesterday afternoon they had to get a flight from New Jersey back to St. Louis. Whoa, how will they get to see the NCAA March Madness selection show? Here's a write up from the Post Dispatch's Tom Timmermann on how that all played out.
"Slowed by traffic on their bus ride to Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, where a chartered plane was waiting to fly them home, the team wasn’t going to be able to watch the announcement at the terminal before taking off. So they pulled off the road and went to a Best Buy in Secaucus, N.J., where they went into a room used to show off high-end home theater systems, sat down on couches and on the floor, and watched on two 60-inch TVs with top quality sound.
“I happened to be standing by the front door, and I see a gentleman in a suit and a gentleman in a warmup suit come in the door,” said Jen Hart, manager of the store. “They looked frantic and asked if I have a television they can watch CBS on. I asked, ‘What do you guys need it for?’ and the guy in the warmup suit points to the logo on his suit and said they needed to watch the selection show, that it was on in a few minutes.”
Hart took them to the home theater section and, “The next thing I know, 20 other people come in, players, staff, trainers. The next thing I know, they pull up the bracket (on TV), show SLU on the screen, everyone cheers, they celebrate for a minute or two, and just how quickly they came, they left.”
The viewing done, the players and staff helped put away the furniture and moved on to the airport. “It was really cool. They were really nice guys,” Hart said. “Good luck from Secaucus.”
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