It wasn’t suppose to be this cold.Bloomington, Indiana was suppose to be a southern climate for someone from the Northern Plains, they weren’t suppose to have the ice, snow and bitter cold temperatures that we were facing as we attempted to get tickets to see the storied rivalry between the University of Indiana Hoosiers and my University of Illinois Fighting Illini basketball men’s basketball teams.

I had flown into Chicago the Thursday night before the Saturday matchup at Assembly Hall in Bloomington.  From Chicago, I proceeded to Champaign, where I had gone to school only a couple of years earlier, to visit friends and professors.

Then it was on to Paris, Illinois to visit my friend Pat and his girlfriend at that time.  The three of us crossed from the friendly territory of Illinois and into the enemy territory of Indiana several hours before game time, me the only one brave enough (or stupid enough) to be wearing my Illini colors.

While we didn’t have tickets, we thought, how hard could it be to scalp tickets into one of the biggest basketball arena’s in the country?

Very difficult as it turned out.

Pat is an expert in the game of getting tickets for events at the last minute.  He cruises online to find deals, he uses connections, he knows all of the psychological tricks that the scalpers use to up the ante on a deal.  I have never known Pat to fail in his attempt to get the tickets that he wanted, and most of the time for much less then I ever anticipated.  He knew how to play the market.

This was the first time that I saw Pat strike out.  As the three of us watched thousands of people enter the basketball arena, we couldn’t find reasonable tickets.  It seemed like every seat in the house was spoken for.  Something I guess we should have counted on going into the heart of Hoosier country.  They like their basketball.

As we stood outside the doors to Assembly Hall, ready to give up, we watched a girl arguing with her boyfriend.  She turned from him, walked up to us and said, “Here, you need a ticket?” and she threw the ticket at us as she stomped off.

Well, one of us was going to go to the game.

In the end, Pat and his girlfriend went to watch the game at a neighboring bar, I went into the heart of enemy territory, with my orange shirt, and sitting next to an angry boyfriend.

How did it turn out?  The ticket was good - it had a good view of the game.  But the fans were rabid.  I feared for my life throughout much of the game and wasn’t even brave enough to take my jacket off to reveal my bright orange Illini shirt in the massive sea of Hoosier Red, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb (and like a sheep in a wolf’s den).

But it was fun to be at Assembly Hall in the heart of Hoosier country, where national championships teams had been formed.  Where some of the greats of the game had played.

But most importantly, on that February day in 2001, the Hoosiers were beat by my Fighting Illini.  I was almost brave enough to take off my jacket.