Two more days of welcoming the green and red of Michigan State and Louisville around the hills of Syracuse, Central New Yorkers. Wave goodbye as the fans of North Carolina State and Oklahoma sadly make there way back home. Of course, since they still have those tickets to Sunday's Elite Eight game at the Carrier Dome and they've seen how welcoming it can be around here ...
It sure was charged up the last couple of days on the court that doesn't have Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim's name on it while the NCAA Tournament is in town.
It started Thursday with a shoot-around for all four teams that made it to the men's basketball Sweet Sixteen free and open to the public. As I walked into the dome for the noon session reserved for the Wolfpack of North Carolina State, it was obvious that the NCAA people had de-personalized the home team's stamp, putting their own floor down, as they do at all of the Region venues and Final Four, as well tweaking some seating arrangements. Still, as a sign of what was to come Friday game night, too, I found a healthy mix of Central New Yorkers wearing Syracuse gear and followers of the East Region four wearing the colors of those teams.
Stephanie Janowick and Kayleigh Gratz wore Michigan State gear, students who'd traveled to Syracuse with the Spartan Brass that played for the contest against the Sooners Friday night. They said they'd been treated well since the bus had pulled into Syracuse Wednesday night.
"We'll have free time," Janowick said. They'd walked the campus already. "We like to see what we don't have at Michigan State. The Quad here is very nice. We went to the music building and walked around. It's huge and beautiful. Like a castle."
"A nice lady told us about the mural with the Italian setting, and we went to see that. It was nice," said Gratz, looking at her phone. "Passion of Sacco and Venzetti."
A half-dozen rows higher, Anthony Bennett sat with his wife Fungai and their sons Caleb, 10, and Noah, 7, all wearing North Carolina State shirts or jackets or hats of some sort. They'd driven up from their home in Raleigh to celebrate with the Wolfpack. Noah turns 8 Monday.
"Last week we decided to come up," Anthony said.
"Noah convinced us we should come up for his birthday," said Fungai.
"It seems to be a nice area," Anthony said. "It's cold."
They said they were going to check out Destiny USA, and added that they heard the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que was a good place to eat.
Both boys piped up that they wanted to get ice cream, and Fungai asked about other family restaurants they might like, including where to get good pizza. I told them about Angotti's family style Italian restaurant on Burnet Avenue, and how I loved their pizza, and advised that the wait might be shorter for lunch than dinner at the Dinosaur.
In the stands behind the basket, Tom Rigley sat with his 8-year-old daughter, Ava. They live in Liverpool, but Rigley wore the shirt of his alma mater, N.C. State. He moved to the Syracuse area 2 1/2 years ago from Greensboro, and was thrilled to see the Orange move to the ACC so he could see the Wolfpack come to the Dome to play basketball and football, at least in alternating years, he said.
"I enjoy it here," he said. "It's nice to see a change of seasons. The winter can be a little longer than you want it to be."
Class of '94, he has maintained his Wolfpack pride, but does find himself rooting for the Orange a bit, too, he admits. His neighbor is a big Syracuse fan who rarely misses a home game -- 11, ever, Rigley said.
"He tries to convert Ava to be an SU fan," Rigley says. "It's hard to raise her up a Wolfpack fan."
Friday night, it appeared there were more Wolfpack than Louisville fans in the house during the first contest, considering the volume of the cheers in the mostly packed Dome. The underdog Wolfpack kept the all-Atlantic-Coast-Conference game close and interesting for 35 minutes before Coach Rick Pitino's Cardinals pulled away for a 75-65 victory.
In the second game, it was the Michigan State fan contingent that was the loudest of any of them.
But that did not deter husband and wife Lief and Lindie Gilsdorf, who wore the red of Oklahoma, the highest-seeded team left in the Region proudly as they stood during player introductions high up in section 308. Lindie held up a handmade sign of love for the Sooners, the people back home who had battled the deadly tornado, and her mom.
"It's a good piece of home here," Lindie said of the game.
They moved to Syracuse in October when Lief left the Army after serving for eight years and got a job with Schindler Elevators. Lindie works for the Oneida Nation as a Gallery Guide at Turning Stone. She was a student at Oklahoma when she met Lief, fell in love, and left to go with him as he served around the country.
They like Syracuse so far.
"We hear summers here are amazing," Lief says. "We're looking forward to that."
The Sooners looked as if they'd make the Gilsdorf couple happy for a good part of the contest, but Coach Tom Izzo had his Spartans keep shooting the three, and they took control inside late for a 62-58 win, setting up Sunday's 2:20 p.m. game between the seventh-seeded Spartans in green and fourth-seeded Cardinals in red.
The bands will play and people will scream and a contingent of folks will go home very happy, indeed.