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Fans celebrate during a sendoff rally for the Virginia Commonwealth University basketball players in Richmond. They play Florida State tonight.
A banner responds to broadcaster Dick Vitale's critical comments about VCU's inclusion in the tournament.
VCU players head to Texas as their fans hold two-sided signs that encourage both the Spiders and the Rams. |
By ADAM HIMMELSBACH
RICHMOND--Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Richmond share a city--but little else.
Richmond is a small private university with a sprawling campus that surrounds a glimmering lake. There are tall trees, grassy fields and stately buildings.
VCU, the second-largest public university in the state, is unmistakably a city school.
Classroom buildings sit along Broad Street near the city's center, amid bus stops and parking meters. With more than 23,000 students, its enrollment is about seven times the size of Richmond's.
But now these two universities are inextricably linked by basketball.
Tonight, the Spiders and the Rams will play in
Both the Rams and the Spiders arrived in Texas as underdogs, both are dreaming big, and both have their city going bananas.
"These teams, these schools have made us so proud," Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones told a crowd of more than 1,000 people during a pep rally Wednesday evening, "because we are making history."
SCHOOL COLORS
Spiders T-shirts were strewn about three large folding tables at the front of Richmond's bookstore on Wednesday.
A steady stream of people picked through the piles looking for Sweet 16 shirts--the Spiders have not reached this round since 1988--but they were mostly out of luck.
Store manager Roger Brooks said 1,000 shirts, at $19.95, sold out quickly on Tuesday, and then another 1,000 were gobbled up on Wednesday. He planned to keep ordering them as long as people kept buying them.
Outside the bookstore, the Pi Beta Phi sorority was looking to capitalize on the windfall by holding sign-ups for its annual charity basketball tournament.
Students strolled along campus and made plans to watch the game together, stunned by their school's sudden run.
"There's a lot of excitement right now," said Richard Muldrow, a junior offensive lineman on the Spiders football team. "It's good to see them do so well and bring a lot of attention to Richmond."
VCU's bookstore is much larger than Richmond's, and its apparel assortment more vast.
The school sells everything from foam fingers to fright wigs, but, much like at Richmond, everyone was looking for the commodity du jour: Sweet 16 shirts.
General manager Amy Randolph said the store had sold twice as much apparel in the past week as it had through the rest of the school year.
Six hundred Sweet 16 shirts--at $21.98--sold out in an hour on Tuesday, and another 1,200 went just as quickly on Wednesday.
Randolph said a good portion of the shirts had been ordered online in Florida, ostensibly for VCU fans in the Sunshine State who want to flaunt their school's colors in Seminoles territory.
"We've seen a lot of next-day air orders, too," Randolph said. "People just want their shirts in time to wear to work on Friday."
Schools often make shirts when their teams reach the NCAA tournament, the Sweet 16 and the Final Four, because there is a week between each of those rounds.
But the Rams are prepared to take it a step further, as their order for Elite 8 shirts is in, and they are ready to be flown in Saturday morning if VCU defeats Florida State.
Randolph said it has been a bit overwhelming, but she has received plenty of advice from her husband, who ran George Mason's bookstore during the Patriots' improbable 2006 Final Four run.
"They sold 36,000 shirts for that," Randolph said. "I don't even know what that looks like."
CITY BUZZ
Richmond and VCU face each other each season in the Black & Blue Classic. The game is named for the schools' respective colors, but it could also be an apt description for the marks that it leaves.
In this city, however, one team's success does not necessarily have to come at the expense of the other's.
The two programs come from different conferences, and a Duke-North Carolina animosity does not exist.
There is a sense that they have reached this point together, and now the city is embracing them as one.
On Wednesday, the city held a joint pep rally at the Canal Walk in Shockoe Slip. Although both teams had already left for Texas, the presidents of both schools spoke briefly, and students floated in on small boats, cheering and chanting as a pep band wailed.
"The really cool part about it is they're pulling for each other," said Wes McElroy, host of an afternoon talk show on Sports Radio 910 in Richmond. "This is a citywide thing; it's not pick your side."
Each day this week, McElroy has spent his entire three-hour show talking about these two basketball teams, and all five of his phone lines have been lit
On Cary Street, which is situated halfway between the two campuses, both schools are well represented.
Outside Carytown Dolls and Bears, lawn flags of both universities were stuck in the grass.
Jack's Bagels & Deli had a large poster-board out front with its March Madness special written in black marker.
The U. of R. Spider steak and cheese with chips and a drink goes for $5.99, and the VCU Ram ham & cheese bagel with coffee costs $4.29.
(Much like its tuition, even Richmond's sandwich is more expensive).
Kara Plasket, manager at Nacho Mama's, said there was so much interest in watching the Rams and the Spiders that the restaurant purchased a new 32-inch flatscreen television for its bar.
"We actually have customers that want us to save them a spot," Plasket said. "We had a tennis match on for a minute the other day instead of basketball, and the customers said, 'Absolutely not.'"
Plasket said she expects bars and restaurants here to be packed tonight, and there will be no debate about what to watch on television, or whom to root for.
Of course, if the Rams and the Spiders both win, they would play each other on Sunday with a spot in the Final Four on the line.
And at that point, fans here might be forced to choose a side.
"This is all good for the city," said Matthew Jonathan-Beals, a junior sociology major at VCU. "But if we played Richmond, we'd really like to beat them."
Adam Himmelsbach: 540/374-5442
Email: ahimmelsbach@freelancestar.com
