From: fehr@ms.uky.edu (Jeff Davis)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.basketball.college
Subject: UK-Miami
Date: 23 Dec 92 19:46:05 GMT
Organization: Austerlitz, Gershovitz, and Carmichael


 Kentucky beat Miami of Ohio last night at Rupp...by something like
16 in a low scoring game....say 65-49...As the score indicates,
defense dominated. Miami has a fine, short team, and likes to set
2 across picks to free up players. At time the offense looked like 
football in short pants. Even Mashburn got stood up a couple of
times...they may be small, but they're feisty.

 It's been awhile since Miami came to town and I can only hope that
the ADs could manage some kind of 2fer-1 arrangement to send UK up
to Oxford every now and again. The Miami program, as you well know,
is the non-pareil program were civilized accoutremnts the yard
stick. Their arena is w/o peer as a basketball venue: all the seats 
are theater style, pitched slightly higher than is currently the
fashion, but with an emphasis on intimacy and clean lines of sight.
There literally isn't a bad seat in the place. Perhaps this can
be explained by the fact that the team shares the facility with the
music faculty...it is a small school, after all...so the designers took
acoustics and lighting into particular consideration: for example,
the last time I was there they hadn't retracted the acoustic baffles
from the concert the night before, and although the PA system was
on the fritz there was no difficulty in making out player introductions,
substitution announcements, or even (at times) the rather strident
instructions from the bench. The seats for the band are at floor
level, but are at the skinny end of the parabola, so that the standard
brassy pep band instrumentation can be varied. The school takes
its feeder status to schools like Julliard seriously so the 
band's repertoire tends to be a little recherche: to celebrate the
wedding of one of the assistant coaches, the band did a very fine
rendition of Dargomyshky's "In Church We Were Not Wed." And following
the rather heartbreaking loss to UK, they struck up the somber 
opening bars of Ives "From Hanover Square North at the End of a Tragic
Day (1915) the Voice of the People again Arose."           

 And did I mention food? amazing fare. I've seen piroggis and falafels
in the stalls, and the last time we were up there was rare brisket with
an amazing horseradish sauce, Chicago style hot dogs, and a vegetarian
curry dish that could have melted glass. They have apparently abandoned
their attempt to corner the market on exotic suds...although all of the
beer is draft and one, a private label idiosynchratic concoction, comes from 
the micro-brewery which produces Oldenburg (a northern Ky facility which is 
the finest in the country). In a pun on it's presence at a basketball 
facility it's a little "hoppier" than most American brews, so that it 
resembles a porter almost. (Critics call it "Knight Sweat" -- the team 
nickname is the Scarlet Knights -- but I found that when coupled with the 
brisket it was a fine compliment to the food.)

 One feature which is unique at Miami games is the synchronized hush
which falls on the crowd when it spots a bad call by a referee. As one,
the crowd shushes and looks away, miming a speechless shock, which
is funny, dramatic, and far more effective than the omnipresent
booing at most athletic events. And speaking of mime, the team
has a couple of Mummenschanz style mimes who provide a surprisingly
accurate running commentary on the games. After good plays, by either
team, they squeeze into droll exclamation points. After breeches in
sportsmanship, they roll up into Os.  The pair's entrance to the
festivity marks the actual buildup to the game as they tumble,
domino style, down the ramps to courtside. The only mimes who do not
tempt the viewer to felonious assault.
-- 
Jeff Davis <davis@keats.ca.uky.edu> One never knows, do one?