A look behind the curtain at the 2019 NCAA Tournament

The first thing we did was look at where we were in the seat assignments.

Actually, no. Step back. The first thing we did was apply for the credentials. This year was my fifth NCAA Tournament as a media member.

I never take the credential thing for granted.

The approval is always celebrated.

It’s amazing to me, still, that anybody cares what I have to say about basketball.

Specifically, I’ve written about UVA basketball since the late 1990s, and followed it closely, religiously, since I was in second grade, 1979-1980, Ralph Sampson’s first year on Grounds.

I assumed then that I would grow up to play power forward for Terry Holland.

Then, genetics: Mom was 5’0”, Dad about 5’5”.

It’s a miracle that I’m 6’1”.

I don’t have the skills to play more than YMCA ball at 6’1”, and so, I write.

I cover the ‘Hoos, and I’ve also co-authored a book on the history of University Hall, which, fine.

There was a long stretch where there weren’t many NCAA Tournaments, and my postseasons were spent at NIT and CBI games, or getting ready for baseball season.

Of late, the ‘Hoos have been top seeds, tourney favorites – and the great team that everybody expects to lose early, because.

We won’t talk any more about that.

This year, the Cavaliers were assigned to the Columbia, S.C., regional site.

Scott German, my long-time partner in basketball-writing crime, and I left Waynesboro on Thursday, in the middle of a freak spring snowstorm.

Big, big flakes falling all over. Accumulating snow.

We get to Columbia six hours later, and it’s 70 degrees. A guy is outside the hotel mowing the damn grass.

UVA’s first game is Friday.

I’ve sat on the floor for the ACC Tournament and a couple of NCAA Tournament games, but Friday, I’m club level, which, again, fine.

We’d gotten an email on Wednesday warning us that there wouldn’t be nearly enough seats for all the media folks who had been credentialed.

Columbia not only had UVA, but also Duke, the Zion Williamson Circus this year.

Everybody from Sports Illustrated to HGTV was going to be there to see Zion dunk, and UVA lose to Gardner-Webb.

I’m only half-joking about HGTV.

(I don’t know if they were there or not. They should have been.)

A quick recap of UVA vs. Gardner-Webb: I was thisclose to tears at halftime. Scott and I sit together, and keep up a running commentary during games.

When Gardner-Webb got up 14 in the first half, it was UMBC happening again.

I spent the entirety of the first half talking Scott off various ledges. Then he left media row to find his son, Andrew, who had made the road trip with us, and was sitting in the lower bowl.

Emotionally exhausted from having tried to help Scott cope with the first half, alone, it was all I could do to not just burst into damn tears, which is, yes, ridiculous, because I’m 46, I’m a man!

But, I saw my UVA basketball life flashing before my eyes, and I wasn’t liking thinking it was coming to an end.

Thankfully, it wasn’t about to, and Virginia won going away.

Several Angry Orchards were about to be consumed that night. All by me.

But first: media credentials dangling from our necks, we were in the locker room, and the scene was … euphoric.

The quotes were along the lines of, no, this wasn’t bigger because of what had happened with UMBC last year, but … that was about as raucous as I imagine a locker room of a 1 seed ever being after beating a 16.

We go back the next day, for Saturday media availability, and ask the guys a lot of the same questions as we had the night before, but with the guys having had some time to reflect.

A group of us get together down the street from the arena after filing stories for dinner and more drinks at a place called Twin Peaks, which, if you’re into that kind of thing, is a very nice experience, and in addition to the scenery, there were TVs everywhere with more basketball games on.

We’d gotten word late Friday that the game on Sunday was a 7:45 p.m. tip.

Meaning: a long day Sunday passing the time.

I went for long runs on both Saturday and Sunday, and we headed over to the arena around 2:30, absurdly early, but we were going to have a Duke-UCF game before ours, UVA-Oklahoma.

First thing upon getting to the arena, again, was: checking the seating chart.

Good news, bad news: Scott had a seat in the first row of the upper media section for both games.

I didn’t have a seat in the arena for the first game. I was on the first row on the floor for the second game.

I’ll take that, I said, and I sat in the back watching TV for the game of the tournament to date.

Weird thing about watching a basketball game on TV in the back: the TVs are on the seven-second delay, and the back is maybe 50 feet from the floor, so you hear everything before you can see it happen on the TV monitor in front of you.

I couldn’t gauge how the final seconds played out based on crowd noise – it was just loud.

I could feel it, the noise, coming up from the floor to the pit of my stomach.

I trudged out to my seat, passing the UCF cheerleaders, who looked like you’d expect them to look: like a group of people who’d all had their puppies stolen from them at the same time.

To get to my seat, on the very last seat of the front row, I had to walk out on the floor as the UVA and OU teams were going through the layup line.

The advantage to sitting on the floor: the playing floor is beneath your feet. The game is so much faster than it looks from any other angle, and certainly on a TV screen.

It looks like the UVA Pack Line has seven guys on defense. You can hear the point guard call the play, guys talking through switches on defense, the referees talking to players about calls.

The one disadvantage to my seat: I was maybe 12 inches from the OU band.

I will dream “Boomer Sooner” for at least the next week.

There was also the one OU fan in the arena sitting about 10 feet back behind press row, and he loudly theorized the various ways the NCAA was throwing the game to the ‘Hoos, most of them involving letting that 0 Kid, Kihei Clark, get away with murder on defense.

Kihei Clark. All 5’Whatever” and 120 pounds of him. Getting away with murder.

The guy shut up midway through the second half, when it had become apparent that Oklahoma was too worn out from having to defend the Mover Blocker and to try to score points against the Pack Line to muster any kind of comeback.

The end was anticlimactic, especially after the conclusion to the Duke-UCF game a couple of hours earlier, which, to me, a UVA diehard from way back, was perfectly acceptable.

The mood in the locker room postgame was almost subdued, especially in light of how festive it had been two days earlier, after the 1-16 game.

The telling thing to me was how loose the guys were.

Particularly De’Andre Hunter, maybe the best player to wear a UVA uniform since Ralph Sampson, who is widely expected to be headed for the NBA, as high as the #4 pick in the June draft.

That’s a ways off. Sunday night, Hunter, done being interviewed himself, decided to get in on the business of asking questions of his teammates alongside the ink-stained wretches.

I was interviewing Braxton Key to ask about the defensive effort on Brady Manek in the second half. Manek had scored 13 points on 5-of-9 shooting in the first half, but with Key and Hunter alternating on him in the second half, he went scoreless on 0-of-4 shooting.

Before I could get a question out, though, Hunter held out his mobile phone – reporters these days don’t use tape recorders, but the voice memo apps on their mobiles, or the video function, to be able to post those later to Facebook, for clicks – and asked a question of his own, trying to get Key on the record about his thoughts on De’Andre Hunter.

Hunter later did something similar when reporters were talking with Ty Jerome, having fun in the moment.

You realize in moments like that, that they’re big-time basketball players, playing big-time basketball, trying to win a national championship, but they’re also still college kids, doing things that college kids do, like, goofing off.

Our work there done, such as it’s work to watch a basketball game, and talk to players after the game, it was time to head back to the hotel to file stories and post videos, which kept me busy into the wee hours.

Scott and I had decided to stay an extra night, but we’d found out in the afternoon that most of the reporters were planning to file and then drive home after the game.

We’re talking five hours from Columbia back to Central Virginia, no stops, and a game ending at 10ish, and interviews ending around 11.

I wasn’t done with my work until around 2 a.m. Driving back then to save a few bucks seemed dangerous to me, but I don’t have a bean-counter fretting over my expense account, so I could make that choice.

We still disembarked early, and as I’m writing this, around 7 p.m., I’m utterly exhausted.

And I wouldn’t do anything differently.

I actually get paid to do this. I’m among the more lucky people that you could know.

Column by Chris Graham