Planes, Games, and Pains

As I continue to try to make blog subjects lamer with each post (I believe I succeeded!) I wanted to give a quick update/recap of our road trip in Reno against the Bighorns.

On Monday our team had a nightmare road trip. They arrived at the Fort Wayne Airport around 7:30am and arrived in Reno after 1:00 am (eastern standard time). This was caused by a missed connecting flight due to weather issues in Fort Wayne Monday morning causing the plane needing to deice before take off.

This is not an excuse but it could not help our cause in a 116 - 103 loss to Reno last night. The game started off very ugly (and continued to be ugly!) with the Mad Ants being down 75-50 during the 3rd quarter. The team then went on a huge run led by Cameron Jones & Ron Howard who cut the lead to six at one point in the 4th quarter. It was not to be and the gap widened towards the end of the fourth.

One bright spot was Ramone Harris who despite the Ants being down big most of the game had a +/- of +12! He was a big part of the run, primarily because of his great defense. I know what your thinking, "Garrett, we know you don't know anything about good defense." True, but I was watching the game with some people who do, including Sebastian Pruiti & Chad Clarke (volunteer assistant coaches with the Mad Ants) and Kyle Thoms (Director of Ticket Sales & Assistant (to the) GM). If you do not know who Sebastian Pruiti is, check out his basketball posts over at Grantland.com . This is Bill Simmons sports website and it has some great content for all things sports.

Bad/Good News depending on who you ask with Darington Hobson being recalled to the Milwaukee Bucks roster today. The Bucks have 5 guys out due to injury so Darington's stay was a little shorter than we expected it would be. It was nice having him on the roster and he certainly was an asset, especially with making the game winner vs LA and being an all around stand up guy while he was in Fort Wayne. There is a chance we could see him again this season.

Chris Hunter is out for the game tonight with an undisclosed (to me) injury. I will try to find out how many games he will miss and let you know in the next post.

Make sure to check out the big return match-up with Reno tonight at 10pm EST. You can watch it live and FREE on NBA Futurecast or via the D-League Center Court App via your smart phone/tablet.

Make sure to head to be at the Coliseum on Saturday as the Mad Ants will be welcoming Canton back to town. This is another back to back game with our guys playing in Canton Friday night, and then bringing the rematch 3.5 hours west to do it all over again on Saturday.

Tip off is at 7:30pm on Saturday with one of my favorite mascots BANGO coming to be the entertainment for the game. Bango is probably one of the best mascots in the world and I encourage you to check it out. Here is a sample of one of his amazing stunts from a Bucks game.
Also, this is one of my favorite NBA ESPN commercials featuring Bango... "You should see his half-time show". It's a shame Darington Hobson was recalled before Bucks night but hey it happens.

I will check in with my thoughts on tonight's game tomorrow and any more news I can dig up for the coming weekends game. I am still working on coming up with a good tag line...SAME ANT TIME SAME ANT BLOG (work in progress)