Vegas Roundup

LRK and I hit Las Vegas over the Thanksgiving holiday. We convened with the H's (Mr. and Mrs., operative BAH and wife LDH) for some family time, walking around, eating, gambling and the Las Vegas Invitational basketball tournament (for the guys). The women saw Cirque du Soleil's "O" at the Bellagio.


We stayed at Palms two nights - with the Cincinnati hoops team - and Harrah's for one. The Palms was pretty cool, modern and clean. I saw some UC coaches and players, but did not see Michael Phelps or his lady friend, who works at one of Palms' bars. They were in Baltimore visiting his mom.


The first two days were basically walking around the strip, eating and gambling. A lot of walking.

Friday the tournament started and the men and women split up. Mr. H, BAH and me headed down to the Mandalay Bay Sports Book to kill some time. The LV sports books were magnificent institutions - walls of match-ups and odds and huge tv screens keep track of the games. I could have spent whole days in there. Surprisingly, I didn't bet on any games. Looking back, I wish I had. I couldn't have done worse than I did playing slots.


The LVI was fun - we had great seats both nights - but the officiating was downright worser than worst. K-State also lost both of its games (Kentucky and Iowa). Ugh.

One absolute highlight occurred in between games Friday night. TINWA coaching icon Bob Huggins and WVU just finished waxing Iowa. We were sitting in the first row of seats behind Press Row. Huggs made his way down courtside to sit and walked right by us. BAH and I - decked out in purple K-State shirts - said, "Good game tonight Huggs!" He looked down at us, winked and gave me a finger point. It was awesome. He sat about 5 feet in front of me for the first half of the Kentucky/K-State game. Before Huggs, former UNLV renegade coach Jerry Tarkanian also walked by and said "Hi".


Name dropper!

Overall, I lost about $40 or so. I believe LRK lost $60. It was very fun. I'd like to go back again sometime. Saturday night we caught the K-State/Iowa debacle, most of the Oklahoma/Oklahoma State game, then LRK and I headed back to the airport to catch our red-eye.

At the airport, Coastal Carolina big man Jon Pack chatted me up about basketball and Vegas hotels. CCU hoops was on our plane back to Charlotte. LRK sat beside head coach Cliff Ellis' (formerly at Auburn) wife. She was very nice. So look for good things from CCU this year. Last year, LRK and I saw the Austin Peay team in Denver and they ended up doing pretty well.