NCAA 2nd Round at The Palace of Auburn Hills

Last year when we attended the 2nd and 3rd Rounds of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament in Pittsburgh, I recapped our NCAA history; however, the cliff notes version is we're on a every other year streak in attendance at the tournament now since 2008; however, we broke that streak by attending this year's festivities at The Palace of Auburn Hills just north of Birmingham!

Naturally, we landed the first game of the 2nd Rounds at The Palace with Michigan St. against Valparaiso.  Since The Palace is out in the suburbs right off one of the major highways, we decided to take the back roads; however, that strategy backfired as we idled for a good half hour trying to get into the parking lot.  All the idling was mostly because Michigan drivers (there didn't seem to be a whole lot of our out-of-state plates) after all these years still don't quite understand that there are two entrances to the The Palace and they don't have to necessarily enter the first one they see.  It was the most frustrating part of the day, yes, even more frustrating that not having a tasty adult beverage in our hands.  After we made it to our seats, luckily, we didn't miss too much in the first half as we saw a 17-6 Spartans run to close the half with a commanding 35-18.  The second half was a little more balanced but Valparaiso just couldn't outscore Michigan St.  One Michigan team survives (and the crowd in green pretty much cleared out).

During the half, Scottie and I located a bar that was sadly not serving but had enough televisions to cover the other games.  It became our regular spot for watching the games and drinking some fancy Pellegrino water.  Might as well class it up if we couldn't drink beer.

Our second game was St. Mary's versus Memphis.  The Gaels survived the First Round (The First Four) to make it here, and I was certainly pulling for them to pull another upset like they did back in 2010 in Providence.  After getting outscored by 10 in the first half, they came within 2 points of closing the door on Memphis in the second half.  The Tigers with their Tony the Tiger-esqe mascot had all kinds of athleticism; however, they didn't have much more than that.  They seemed to thrive on the fast breaks.  On the other hand, the Gaels already had a strike against them because they played former Northwestern center, Kyle Rowley.  Let's just say we didn't miss this guy.

For the intermission, we had no trouble getting out of The Palace since most of the fans left after the Michigan St. game (who are these people?).  We headed to the Clubhouse BFD for some dinner and drinks before the evening session.  Thanks to Jason for pulling up some chairs at the bar for us as we didn't want to miss any of the 2nd Round action!

On our way back up to The Palace, we decided to brave I-75, but get off on the next exit to backtrack.  This was actually the recommendation on all the signage off the highway too, so not sure why everybody was waiting in the long queue off the highway.  We were certainly fine with the easy back entry access.

The third game of the day was Michigan versus South Dakota St.  The Jackrabbits kept it close in the first half and even shut down Michigan star, Trey Burke; however, the Wolverines went on a terror in the second half with Hardaway Jr. and Robinson finishing with 21 points a piece and even McGary came alive snatching up 9 rebounds.

The last game of the day was VCU versus Akron although this could have been VCU versus some high school team as they outscored them 50-25 in the first half.  The crowd had already thinned out once the Michigan concluded, but now it was starting to look like a Pistons game.  Once the second half started, VCU picked up where they left off so we booked it out of there when the score hit 60-30.

Good day of basketball.  Too bad we couldn't have gotten that Marquette versus Davidson game!  More photos from the 2nd Rounds here.