02/02/08: NCAA Basketball – Cal Bears @ Washington Huskies (Pac-10)
Hotel - Bellevue, WA; Bank of America Arena - Seattle, WA
Cal isn't as loaded a team as some of the other Pac-10 schools I've seen in terms of star power, but it doesn't seem to matter, as they beat top-ten ranked Wazzu on Thursday. I had high hopes of knocking out the entire team at the hotel before the game. While I probably didn't have to do the hotel since the arena is easy, I was worried about rain hampering that opportunity (always a constant factor around here). The Bears stayed at a hotel in downtown Bellevue (same hotel used by WSU), and once again the hotel staff didn't care that I waited by the bus even though it was parked on their loop. This worked out almost perfectly - the players came out one at a time and each signed for me. However I still had a little cleanup to do after this - somehow Ben Braun got by me, probably while I was getting someone else. He was wearing a team-issued white/yellow polo shirt, instead of the suit/tie I usually see coaches wear, so that may have been a factor. Current Pac-10 scoring leader Ryan Anderson was the last one out, and signed one of my cards - at that point, a team staffer said "let's go, Ryan...". I let him go at that point, figuring I could knock out the rest after the game. Devon Hardin, who is on the cover of the Bay Area edition of the Athlon annual with Brook Lopez, was nowhere to be seen. During my downtime before the end of the game, I went home and checked the previous game box score, and saw the bad news: Hardin was ill and did not make the two-game swing up here.
Cal won the game against UW, making it the first time since 2004 that UW has lost a two-game Pac-10 weekend series. I got to the arena with about a minute left, and went into the arena as people filtered out. I first went to the Huskies' tunnel, and saw UW football coach Tyrone Willingham signing for some people there. Since I had nothing (not even index cards today), I settled on getting him on the gameday lineup card. Ben Braun was doing a postgame radio interview for the Cal broadcast, and when he came to the tunnel he said he'd be back. In the meantime some Cal players wandered out - including Ryan Anderson. I got him on the rest of my stuff - he was cool about signing for whoever asked. I ran into fellow SportsGraphing.com member luckydog, which was ironic because I was helping him get some custom 4x6s done today - nice to meet you, man!
UW players were also milling around on the court, and I snagged Ryan Appleby on my cards. Some older guy had a stack of five SI's, but Appleby had no problem signing them all. I also knocked out a few more Huskies on custom cards and Tim Morris on a couple more gameday inserts. Unfortunately I didn't see former NBA player Eldridge Recasner, a UW alumnus - he is at games sometimes and I was told he was at the Stanford game.
Overall this was a pretty solid day - although Devon Hardin wasn't on the trip for Cal, I got everyone else along with a good chunk of UW. Jon Brockman is the only Husky I need to complete the UW page of my custom card set!
Cal
Ryan Anderson 1/3 cards/photo, 2/2 card/photo
(BaadN10tionzz 1, luckydog 1)
Jamal Boykin 1/1 card
Patrick Christopher 2/2 card/photo, 1/1 photo
(luckydog 1)
Harper Kamp 1/1 card
Nikola Knezevic 1/1 card
Jerome Randle 2/2 cards
(BaadN10tionzz 1)
Eric Vierneisel 1/1 card
Jordan Wilkes 1/1 card
Ben Braun 1/1 coaches 8x10
Washington
Ryan Appleby 2/2 cards
(BaadN10tionzz 1)
Matthew Bryan-Amaning 2/2 cards
(BaadN10tionzz 1)
Tim Morris 2/2 gameday inserts
Venoy Overton 2/2 cards
(BaadN10tionzz 1)
Joel Smith 1/1 card
Joe Wolfinger 1/1 card
Miscellaneous
Tyrone Willingham 1/1 back of gameday roster
