I attended both nights of the East Regionals at Albany.  We saw four
good games, featuring some great defensive play, but unfortunately
none of the four games was still a game late in the third.
 
A few comments about the weekend at the Knick:
 
- Attendance.  Not bad, with about 20,000 over the two nights.  The
Friday crowd was dominated by RPI fans (as expected).  Wisconsin had a
nice group in one corner, but I don't think I found a single WMU fan..
UNH had a good sized group as well.  Again, like in the playoff games
against Union, I was amazed at the number of RPI people who left with
5 or 6 minutes left in a close game, this time in the NCAA playoffs!
If my team made it that far, I'd stick around and watch to the end if
they were losing by 10 goals!  On Saturday, the RPI crowd was way down
with their team gone after Friday, but there were still quite a few
RPI shirts and hats floating around.  BU brought a loud and pretty
good sized group, but most of them left right after the first game.
Their bus wasn't going to wait around for the second game, which is
really too bad.  From where I was sitting, I couldn't see how big the
Harvard crowd was, but I think they were a decent sized group.
 
- Bands.  If you don't like to read about bands, skip this paragraph..
5 of the 6 teams brought their bands.  I really like the Wisconsin
band.  Very professional.  They make music, not just noise.  I was
impressed with them at the finals in '92, and I enjoyed listening to
them again this weekend.  My next favorite was probably the UNH band.
They were small, but good.  Nice wide selection, too.  I had a hard
time seeing and hearing the Harvard band from where I was, but when I
heard them, I liked them.  But how can you not like a Sousa march
after a goal?  The BU band was loud and enthusiastic.  They did a nice
job, and they were pretty creative with their chants directed at the
Wisconsin people.  The biggest and loudest band of the weekend was
RPI.  Having seen them 5 or 6 times this season, there wasn't much new
here, at least not for me.  I'm sure they would have been much more
enthusiastic late in the game if their team could have actually found
a way to score a goal..  By the way, what's the point of all the
people without instruments who were in the front row of the RPI band,
and to a lesser extent, the BU band?  Are there people part of the
band too?
 
- Mascot fight.  We were entertained by a battle of the mascots
between the 2nd and 3rd periods of the BU-Wisconsin game.  The BU
Terrier was skating around with a Wisconsin flag full of holes on a
goalie stick.  Wisconsin's Badger didn't like this, so he went out and
we had a little mascot fight.  The Badger was clearly the better
skater, and I'd have to say he won this battle..
 
- Local media coverage.  This tournament was buried behind news of the
Siena Saints' run through the NIT all along.  If it wasn't for RPI
being there, I doubt the local TV stations would have even noticed the
tournament.  The Saturday games got very poor coverage from what I
saw, and a lot of what was written and broadcasted was dominated by
how great it would have been if RPI was still alive...
 
Overall, I think it was a successful weekend at the Knick.  I hope the
NCAA and ECAC folks were impressed enough to get the ECAC's and more
NCAA games in here in the future.  I really enjoyed just walking
around and looking at all the schools represented by the hats and
sweatshirts.  I think just about every Eastern hockey-playing school
was represented, with the biggest numbers among schools not in the
tournament coming from Clarkson, Union, and Maine.
 
--
Jim Teresco, Department of Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
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Union College C.S. Department Graduate Assistant (retired), Union '92, '93
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