From Wally World to New Jersey

First and foremost let me say that I'm not complaining but I have a few funny stories to share with you about our travels to the Sweet 16 in New Jersey.  The characters in the story are me, Jeff Gravley and Brad Simmons, our calmest and one of the most durable photographers there is. I never like to travel on a day that we have so much material to cover. One small delay can keep us from covering the story...in this case, Carolina's 21st trip to the Sweet 16. For the record, North Carolina's press conference in Jersey was 2:30 with a 3:10 practice....remember those times.

So Brad and I arrive at RDU around 9:30 for our 10:50 departure to New Jersey. When we get to our gate, sitting 20 feet from us is Duke's Josh McRoberts. He was chatting with a fan who asked Josh to pose for a cell phone picture. I had planned to speak to McRoberts but a phone call derailed the conversation. He soon vanished and it was only later in the day that we learned McRoberts had entered his name in the NBA draft. If we had only known.

Our flight leaves 10 minutes late and at the end of our trip, we end up spinning circles around Newark airport for 30 minutes. We finally hit the ground but the gate's not ready. Time's a ticking sitting on that plane and we are just 2 hours from Carolina's press conference. Our plane finally finds a docking point and then it's off to get our bags...which was the smoothest part of the day. Grabbing our bags we head to the rental car but to get there we have to take an elevator to wait for a monorail to take us to another terminal to get to an elevator to take us to a rental bus that will take us to an off-site rental area that was somewhere between Newark and North Carolina. We get out rental car and have an hour to get to the arena. All we need are directions to the Meadowlands from our rental car lot. "Head south on the turnpike, " says the rental agent who was named after a brand of stereo.

We'll we were supposed to head north on the turnpike and by the time we figured it out we had driven to Manhattan it seemed like. Getting back in the right direction was another challenge. If you get on a wrong road in New Jersey it'll take a while to correct the problem. We get back on the Turnpike north heading to exit 16W. We are now 20 minutes til the Carolina press conference begins....15 minutes...10 till open locker room. Finally we see the Meadowlands and go to pay our toll which as soon as we got locked into the slot, the booth closes. You can't back up so we are just stuck. The green light finally glows and we get through the toll...5 minutes till interview time. The final 1000 yards takes us 10 minutes as we wind our way through the spaghetti maze of roads. It's now 2:30 and we have gone to the wrong door of the arena..."you need to pick up credentials on the other side of the arena." By the time we get our credentials and into the arena, Carolina is 10 minutes deep into their interviews. Brad and I sprint into the locker room sweating as if we had just practiced but we got there in time to get what we needed. At 3pm, the session is over then the Heels take the floor for practice, which Brad needs to shoot.  Hopefully what you saw at home doesn't reflect how hectic it was behind the scenes. You can see our interviews on the sports page at WRAL-dot-com. I'm looking forward to game day on Friday!!!