Final Four!

This post is long overdue, but it must be done.  Sure, the Final Four might have been almost two months ago, but I still get pumped up about it when I think about how awesome it was.  It would've been a fun time anyway, but the fact that Duke won the national championship made it all the more memorable. 

It all started when Kari (my sister) got two tickets to the Final Four in Indianapolis via the NCAA lottery.  The deal was that I would get to accompany her if Duke made it, and otherwise she would go with her fiance, Mark.  Once Duke beat Baylor in the Elite Eight, it was time to get ready for a roadtrip!  On that Friday, Courtney and I drove up to PA with the boys, where they'd spend the weekend.  Kari then picked me up the next morning and we drove to Indy.  That night was game night!  Duke vs. West Virginia.  And now for some pictures...

Here I am outside the stadium before the game:

And here's the view from our seats.  We were up in the nosebleeds, but the view was still pretty good:

One really cool thing about the trip is that we were able to meet up with some good friends of mine from college, whom I hadn't seen since 2003, when I left for my mission.  We went out to dinner Sunday night and celebrated together at the team hotel after Duke won the national championship:

Obviously, the Final Four game against West Virginia went quite well, and so it was on to the national championship game on Monday night!  Kari and I had a pretty quiet day Sunday and then on Monday, we went to the Bracket Town expo and hung out downtown before the game.  We stumbled upon the Duke hotel and spent some time there before the game.  It was awesome.

Here I am posing in front of the team bus:

We saw Johnny Dawkins in the hotel lobby! 

The best part about chilling at the team hotel before the game, though, was that we got to see all the coaches and players walk right by us as they got onto the bus to go to the game.  We didn't get any pictures of that, but Kari did get some video of it on her camera. 

But anyway, after all that, we headed over to the stadium.  On the way, we ran into Crazy Towel Guy!

Here we are right before tip-off:

To say it was a good game would be an understatement.  It was a classic!  I couldn't belive it when Hayward missed that last shot, I was sure it was in.  But we won!  What a great experience it was to be there!

As I mentioned, after the game, we made our way over to the team hotel to celebrate!  We had to wait quite a while for the team to show up, but it was worth it!  It was crazy there, tons of fans were waiting along with us!  We were on the first row of the rope line, though, and got to high five all the players and coaches as they walked into the hotel.  We also saw some former players, including Gerald Henderson:

And we got our picture taken with Sean Dockery:

All in all, a great, great, night and a great weekend.  Thanks for inviting me, Kari!