UMES @ Nebraska - Starters

UMES - Maroon uniforms

3 White

5 Berry

11 Burns

24 Haley

32 Hines

Nebraska - White uniforms

3 Richardson

5 Henry

13 Ubel

34 Jeter

44 Anderson

Old-School Mountain Dew

Assistant coach Nick Robinson, who really hates it when I talk about him on the blog, has a routine of drinking a Mt. Dew before every game. He always leaves it with me during warmups and thinks it should be my only responsibility pre-game (little does he know what I really have to do.)

Today he finally found this throwback Mt. Dew. It really has "real" sugar in it. I tried some, and I don't like Mountain Dew anyways, but this stuff was gross. You can taste the enormous amount of sugar in it. Definitely should give this stuff to little kids around 7 p.m. at night...

GAME DAY! UMES @ Nebraska

Bret put up a great video a few hours ago to show what goes on during shootaround on game day. I also took a few still pictures....

Court

Head coach Frankie Allen, Nebraska head coach Doc Sadler and assistant coach Mike Blaine

Nebraska Football Stadium

Football Stadium

Football Practice Facility

Taryn Arvold, our athletic trainer, was making fun of Bret and I because we looked like "Japanese tourists" with our cameras on the bus taking pictures. "Hey, look...a parking garage! Take a picture of that!" So for Taryn's pleasure, I took a picture of a parking garage. Enjoy!

Shootaround in Nebraska

I put together a video that will hopefully give you a nice feel of Nebraska and a typical shootaround on the day of a game.

Coach Allen Interview in Nebraska

Just caught up with coach Allen at shootaround today. We discussed his new years resolutions, the last game against Ball State, the game today against Nebraska and the keys to victory!

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

Yesterday

I apologize for not blogging at all yesterday during our travel day....it was very unusual and hectic day...definitely not the norm for a travel day.

This first picture is from when I arrived on campus around 7 a.m. EST. We were suppose to leave the Hytche at 7:15 for the airport for an 11:30 flight. Key words here are "suppose to." Usually the bus is there already when we get there, so we can load up and go. It was definitely not there when Bret, Taryn (our athletic trainer) and I arrived. And it never showed up (our bus driver didn't wake up until 7:30...and he was two hours away in Baltimore). Our itinerary at that point went haywire.

Long story short, the guys had 'practice' from 8 until about 9:45ish and then we loaded up when our bus finally got to Princess Anne. Instead of flying from Baltimore to St. Louis to Omaha and arriving at our hotel by 5-6ish p.m. CST, our day went like this:

1 p.m. -- Arrive at BWI

2:15 p.m. -- Flight to Nashville

3 p.m. CST -- Arrival to Nashville, quick lunch/rest in the airport. Bret and I had a difficult time with this as we still had game notes to work on and previews to write and we were essentially limited to less than an hour to do as much as we could with Internet access.

4:15 p.m. -- Flight to Kansas City

A view from the flight from Nashville to KC. Not the best picture, but the sunset was awesome.

6 p.m. -- Arrival at Kansas City

The guys waiting for our luggage.

At this point everyone was ready for a bed. I'm only 5'4" and I was getting stiff and uncomfortable from the planes and busses, so I can only imagine what our 6+" guys felt like.

6:30 p.m. -- Dinner

7:30-10:30 -- Loooooong bus ride from Kansas City to Lincoln, Neb. Associate head coach Jamal Brown had a Mike Tyson documentary on, so a bunch of us watched that (I was in and out of napping) and man, that guy is CRAZY [Tyson, not JB :-)]. A few of the guys were watching Ball State film, gotta love it when they put their work in on the road instead of sleeping or watching other stuff. I know I was one of many restless and knowing we still had another movie to watch before the hotel. Once Tyson was done they put in Grand Torino. I had never seen this before and it was actually really good.

FINALLY we arrived at the hotel and never has one looked so good.

Props to assistant coach Nick Robinson (our travel coordinator) for being on top of things and getting us where we needed to go. I can't even imagine having his job and the stresses that go with it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

UMES Athletics would like to wish everyone a happy and SAFE New Year! The men's team is currently traveling from Md. to Nebraska, so we'll get some more about that up soon!

Go Hawks!