Ben Azar, a Daily Bruin assistant sports editor, is
currently in Indianapolis with the UCLA Marching Band and has been
keeping a diary of Final Four happenings:
Thursday
We got our first taste of downtown Indianapolis today. The
weather was absolutely gorgeous all day and night. The city has a
mall, tons of restaurants and plenty of attractions set up for
Final Four weekend, but not too many people have arrived yet
““ the place feels empty.
Friday
We left the hotel at 6 a.m. to be part of the nationally
broadcast CBS Early Show. Along with the other bands, we played
during the weather segments of the show, which were broadcast from
“Hoop City” at the Indiana Convention Center in
downtown Indianapolis. In between filming segments of the show we
played basketball on the extra courts set up at “Hoop
City,” which hosts interactive Final Four events for
fans.
Later in the afternoon, we played at the team practice session
in the RCA Dome. The entire RCA Dome, normally used for football,
is huge. To make it workable for a basketball game they kept all
the seats on one side of the arena while cutting off space to
surround the court on the other side.
Saturday
What a day. We left the hotel at 7 a.m. to play at an opening
ceremony at the University of Indianapolis. We left at about 9:15
a.m. to play on the set of SportsCenter, which was being broadcast
live from the ArtsGarden in downtown Indianapolis.
We ate lunch downtown amid the crowded, rowdy streets. The city
was filled with school colors, with fans screaming for their teams
and taunting other fans. The atmosphere that was lacking in the
city Thursday was ever-present today. Scalpers are all over the
city, trying to make last-second deals with fans.
We entered the arena at about 5 p.m. and watched George Mason
lose to Florida. Then, it was UCLA’s turn to face LSU. The
UCLA fans as well as LSU fans traveled very well to Indianapolis,
and the atmosphere was just awesome for the game, although it was
mostly the UCLA fans making noise after the first few minutes. UCLA
dominated the game from the outset and the energy from the UCLA
fans remained very high throughout the whole game. At the end of
the exhausting, yet extremely fun day, we headed back to our hotel,
thrilled we’d get to play at another game Monday.