Las Vegas, Nevada: Happily, a little sleep-in this morning before starting another day of basketball games. Four games today: Colorado v Arizona and Stanford v UCLA in the morning, followed by Oregon State v USC and Oregon v Utah in the evening session. That's a lotta hoops, people!
The Arizona coach, Sean Miller (center, kneeling), is in a bit of hot water and maybe or maybe not paid a player or offered to pay a player to attend the University of Arizona. Goodness, I am hoping this is all a bunch of rumors and lies. I just love this coach and we have been following him since he was at Xavier back-in-the-day when The Lovely Lisa was a student at The George Washington University and both schools were in the Atlantic-10 conference. The X-Men beat My Colonials all the stinkin' time. Miller is a great coach and I hope it is proved he is also a great person.
The half-time show featured acrobats from Absinthe, at Caesar's Palace. This show is described as raunchy acrobatics. Tickets to the show were given away to a few lucky basketball fans.Arizona won. UCLA won. They will face each other tomorrow evening.
We took a lunch break between games and enjoyed tacos at Javier's, an upscale Mexican restaurant in the Aria Hotel.
We ate in the bar and had tacos from the bar menu. We never eat crunchy tacos in Palm Springs, so it was nice to go old-school. That is an $18 margarita in the background.
After a nice long nap and more walking, we met Mary and Steve for a quick bite and headed back to T-Mobile arena for the evening session.
Look at us - all Ducked Out for the game. I'm sorry this photo does not include the full view of my amazing Oregon handbag. It is very cute, but I don't get to use it often enough. Dooney & Bourke produce handbags, satchels, wallets, etc., in many college and professional team prints. Maybe you need a purse emblazoned with your favorite team logo? The Oregon State Beavers lost to USC in the first game, but the Oregon Ducks - again after trailing the entire game - beat Utah. Whew.
A young Utah fan, seated in front of us, procured Bill Walton's autograph on his GO UTAH sign. Walton was announcing the game on television. If you look to the right of the sign... the balding man in the blue shirt is Bill Walton. Bill was very entertaining this evening - leading the band while they played a Grateful Dead song.There were many sports celebrities spotted at the game today, including Arizona alum/Philadelphia Eagle quarterback and Super Bowl ring wearer, Nick Foles. We also saw Magic Johnson, NIKE founder Phil Knight, Vlade Divac, Olympic 800m sensation Andy Wheating (also ridiculously tall) and many ex-Duck football players who are now in the NFL.
Bol Bol walking in front of the Shake Shack with friends
We also saw Bol Bol, the 7'-3" son of the NBA player, Manute Bol. Bol, who attends high school in Las Vegas, has signed to play at Oregon next year. He walked next to me and I did not come to his rib cage. Dude is tall. Actually, there are a ridiculous number of super tall men in town attending the tournament. I feel shorter than usual.
The half-time entertainment during our game was awful. Apparently the sound system was not functioning properly, but the Bee Gee tribute band sounded bad. Or maybe the Bee Gees always sounded bad. I forgot about the high pitched voices.
I've photographed this gorgeous metal sculpture before.At night, she lights up and changes colors every few minutes.
Dwayne, Dave and Steve pose with Oregon band members outside the stadium after the victory
After the game, we met more old friends and enjoyed maybe a few too many cocktails before calling it a night.
The Arizona v UCLA game is tomorrow at 6p pacific on the Pac-12 Network, followed by the Oregon v USC game at 8:30p pacific on Fox Sports 1.
Until my next update, I remain, your height-impaired correspondent.
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