THE DAILY DIVERSION

Well, day two of the Sun Belt tournament is over with. The Toppers survived to fight another round and, hopefully, revenge a loss from earlier this season this season.

The only problem I have with any of this is that they won't hear me screaming for them. I was having a little problem with the pipes after yesterday's debacle, but I never thought this would happen. At the 11:12 mark in the first half I stood up to yell something at the refs, but all that came out was a gasp. My voice is absolutely shot. I've got nothing to give the team vocally now, but I'll definitely be clapping hard, stomping my feet, and waving my towel.

Now, on to the game, since anyone that's reading this problems only cares about that (unless you're my wife whose worrying about me now)...

Wow! That's all I can really say. I have to give Coach Walters a ton of credit. He's put together a nice squad down in Boca Raton, and I have a feeling this won't be the last we hear out of them (unless he's not there very long). They are graduating Mr. Money, Deandre (I hope I spelled that right, because I haven't looked it up) Rice. This guy was unconscious tonight, and, basically, unguardable. Western, for the most part, shut down FAU's best interior player (if you call giving up 19 that) by throwing man after man at him. This is what I thought we'd need to do in order to have an impact against him, and, for the most part, we did. That, in and of itself, is a success.

I haven't had the chance to look at the stats yet, but I will say this... Our boys brought their hard hats and lunch pails and went to work this game. We looked relaxed the entire way through, and this game just had that feeling that it was never really in doubt, no matter how close it was. The Toppers hustled, non-stop, for forty minutes and left it all out on the floor. That's really all you can ask, and just hope you get a win out of their effort. We got that tonight.

Now, onto other things...

Paul and I made a new friend today. A guy came down and sat by us during the first game of the early session and was just watching some hoops. I noticed he was carrying a laptop with him, but didn't think much of. Well, we ended up chatting a little bit, and, come to find out, he's the writer for FAU's school's newspaper and a fellow blogger. Well, he kicked it with us for the better parts of the first session, then accompanied us to a nice dinner at Don's Seafood.

Dinner was wonderful, as we are getting accustomed to. I had a half and half platter of Crawfish Ettouffe and fried Crawfish tails. Really, I love some crawfish, or, as I call them, crawdad's. I've tried to have them as often as possible since we've been down here. We were informed that the crawfish aren't big yet (or, in Kentucky terms, "in season"), so they aren't as good as they could be, but... They are FREAKIN' AMAZING!

Paul had some grilled catfish, which he said were excellent (those aren't his words, but mine, because I like using more syllables than what "great" and "good" have). He actually said "Their the shit".

We had to have subway for lunch, because we were running late (mostly my fault for sleeping in and messing around on the internet), and that was okay. We stopped by Charlie G's, but they weren't open yet. We probably won't make it there, since their cheapest entre was $25. Now, we enjoy some good food, but we're just not that interested in having a $50 check to pay.

So, there you have it for tonight. I'm sure I've missed several things and I'll think about them whilst I sleep (like I did last night). Whoops! I just thought of one!

We had a fan in the stands stop by and ask us about betting on the Toppers tonight. The spread was at 7.5 when he talked to us, and we told him not to take it. We haven't done that well against the spread this year, so I told him not to bet it. Fortunately for this guy, we were right. So, hopefully we saved this gambling addict a few bucks, so he can bet on something else tomorrow or lose some money and the mobile home casinos down here. We only saw five or so once we got past Hammond, on our way to Lafayette.

Alright, it's bed time!