#BIAHRoadTrip The Diary Part VI: A disastrous pickup game, more chili and a Cincinnati practice

5:15 pm Day 7
Hampton Inn
Cincinnati, OH
Total Miles: 956

Road Trip Part-I
Road Trip Part-II
Road Trip Part-III
Road Trip Part-IV
Road Trip Part-V

This post is sponsored by the Hampton Inn & Suites Cincinnati Uptown/University.

So the last time we saw you, we were on our way to try and play some basketball. It didn't go quite as well as we had planned:



I'm blaming my performance on the fact that I had three days worth of chili, BBQ and beer in my belly and tried to play in three year old air force ones that were curl-toed with the soles pulling apart. Troy's performance was strictly due to the fact that he was more worried about performing for the camera than he was about getting the win.

For the record, my team went 5-1.

(Troy's Interjection)
I completely underestimated just how rusty my game was. I've been under the impression that all the natural talent I had from ages 9-21 was supposed to stay with me forever. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case, and it showed during the pick-up game. None of my back-to-the-basket moves worked and my ball-handling has decreased significantly.

Luckily, I wasn't the only one who was out-of-shape or lacking proper technique.




Again, a big thank you goes out to Jeremy Martin, Paul Dehner and the rest of the UC folks that showed us a great time here in Cincinnati. We had a great time.

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I don't know if it means that we are incredibly old or what, but after playing pickup, neither of us had the energy to do anything more than come home, record a podcast and lounge around while we watched Baylor outlast Kansas State and Brandon Paul go crazy against Ohio State.

Honestly, it was kind of nice to kick back and relax and watch some hoops on a hotel TV sitting in a hotel bed. We won't be doing that anytime soon. Starting in about two hours, we will be hitting six games in four states in the next six days. One of those nights we'll be leaving directly from Hinkle and heading to Milwaukee. That's a four hour drive. That we will be doing overnight. We have an early tip at Marquette to get too.

Buzz Williams better appreciate the effort we made to come see him boys play Pitt.

Anyone else hoping Pitt decides Saturday is the day they will turn their season around? When we built our schedule, this looked like one of the best games of the trip. Now? Its looking like it could end up being a blowout.

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Cincinnati is the city of chili, and as such we had to check out another chili joint for lunch today.

We ended up at Camp Washington Chili, which is not as well-known as places like Skyline and Gold Star. It was recommended to us by a couple of folks on twitter and, frankly, I liked it more. Mostly because they had chili cheese fries, also known as my kryptonite:

And you wonder why both Troy and I are too fat to be any good at sports.

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After we inhaled -- quite literally, it took us about eight minutes to eat all of that -- every ounce of that food, we headed over to Fifth Third Arena to take in some of Cincinnati's practice. We were only there for about an hour, but we did have a chance to chat with Mick Cronin about life in general. He had a couple of great stories about the Murray State-Austin Peay rivalry. For those that don't know, Cronin's first head coaching job came with the Racers.

One thing I noticed about the practice is that all of those guys seemed to be having fun. they legitimately enjoyed getting out on the court and getting better. Cronin is a demanding head coach -- he wouldn't let anyone get out of a drill until they got the drill right -- but his players seemed to respond to it.

Being a perfectionist is far from a bad thing on a basketball court.

One other thing: can someone get Cashmere Wright a bigger pair of shorts?:

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Thanks, UCPD:

(Troy's Interjection)
I hate campus police.

That is all.

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We are off to the Cintas Center to check out Xavier and Duquesne. Are the Musketeers going to turn this thing around?