BARRY’S BLOG

Arriving Wednesday to cover Vanguard University in the NAIA Division I women’s basketball tournament included an hour drive east from the Memphis Airport.

Jackson, a town of about 60,000 located midway between Memphis and Nashville, in what the Jackson website says is “the center of West Tennessee,” features, according to the Chamber of Commerce, “bit-town amenities and small-town hospitality.”

But any illusion of a sleepy down-home community were marred by newspaper headlines detailing a recent murder, as well as the story of a man from a neighboring county indicted for killing and dismembering his mother.

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Living up to its reputation as the Bible belt, the bible in my motel room was not hidden away in any drawer. Instead, it was plopped visibly in the center of an otherwise barren desktop. Not only that, it was opened, suggestively I surmised, to a specific page.

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Still, walking into 5,600-seat Oman Arena downtown is a step backward in time. The facility, built in 1968 appears a bit older, and features a parquet floor.

Most of the seats are located in the upper bowl of the circular layout and the catacombs that wind beneath the floor include a media room, as well as a recreational facility that includes a shuffle board scoring outline and also plays host to martial arts classes.

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Daily tickets are $7 and $8 and a tournament pass, good for all 31 games, is $50.

Just fewer than 3,500 attended Wednesday night’s session, a figure Big West Conference officials would envy for one of their early rounds at the Anaheim Convention Center (about 4,200 attended Saturday’s Big West men’s title game that included Orange County squads UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton).

Attendance would have been better, tournament officials said, but students at most of the six colleges in town are on Spring Break.

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Sitting across from me at my motel’s complimentary breakfast was a couple wearing Oklahoma Baptist sweatshirts. Fighting the urge to ask how their team did, a glance at the paper revealed the Bison (29-5), seeded second in their eight-team quadrant, were upset, 78-74, by upstart Lindsey Wilson of Kentucky (22-11). Ouch.

Like the NCAA Tournament that began Thursday, one loss ends these team’s season, no doubt, rendering the taste of those free doughnuts a little less sweet.

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Sportswriters’ breakfast of champions Thursday included corn flakes, two glazed doughnuts with chocolate frosting, and a – hey, when in Rome – biscuit swimming in gravy.