VCU fans send men’s basketball team on road to Sweet 16

By Tom Gresham

A giddy crowd of more than 1,000 black-and-gold-clad fans sent the VCU men’s basketball team off to San Antonio in raucous style this afternoon outside the Siegel Center, providing one last boost for the Rams before their Sweet 16 matchup Friday night with Florida State in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

The fans, decked out in their VCU gear, spent more than an hour in the parking lot alongside the Siegel Center engaging in impromptu cheers and enjoying the charged atmosphere that has permeated campus during the Rams’ joyous run to the university’s first-ever Sweet 16 appearance. The pep band played, and VCU's cheerleaders joined in the festivities. The cheers rose to a roar when the team emerged to slap hands with the fans and board their bus for their trip to the airport. The next time most of the fans see the team it will be tipping off with FSU in search of a fourth consecutive win in the NCAA Tournament and a berth in the Elite Eight.

Students in attendance at the rally said the campus has been a fun place this week with signs of the team’s success in abundant evidence everywhere they go, whether they are walking through the Compass or sitting in class, where professors have proved more likely to insert basketball analogies into their lessons. 

Kristine Hadeed, a senior, said the tournament run has been an ideal ingredient in her final semester at school.

“You can feel the energy all over campus,” Hadeed said. “Everybody’s excited. It’s spring, we’re winning, the sun is shining. It feels as though everything’s working in our favor here.”

Patricia Trotta, a freshman who attended VCU games growing up in Richmond, said basketball games serve to unite the VCU community, and this team’s unprecedented success has made that connection particularly strong. Freshman Jeremy Sanker agreed, noting that excitement about the basketball team crosses all disciplines and interests within the student body.

“There is so much diversity on this campus,” Sanker said. “The fact that we’re all getting together for this – that we’re all excited about it – is really great.”

VCU’s underdog role has shone a bright spotlight on the Rams and the university, and students said seeing the VCU name so prominently in the national media has been a matter of pride for them.

“I love hearing them talk about VCU and being able to say, ‘That’s my school,’” said Angelica Kennedy, a freshman. 

Part of the attention VCU has received in the wake of its victories is due to the hyperbolic scorn heaped on the team after it received its NCAA bid from some high-profile analysts, who preferred the tournament slot go to a team in a power conference.

The team and its fans, however, seem to revel in being underestimated, and the joy of the Rams’ tournament success has only been heightened by the team’s thoroughness in proving the skeptics wrong. Among the signs fans displayed at the sendoff rally were “Who Says We Don’t Belong?” and “How’s Mrs. Vitale’s Bracket Now?,” the latter a reference to ESPN commentator Dick Vitale’s negative take on the Rams at the tournament’s outset.

Alumni were plentiful in the rally crowd, including sisters Kim and Nora Lowder, who came from Newport News for the event. They said they have been cheering on the Rams’ march through the tournament field, saying the team has offered an outlet for their school pride.

“It was great to make it to the tournament but then to do so well in it – especially when the experts didn’t expect us to – has been really exciting,” Kim said.

Nora’s three young children were at the rally in strollers. Nora said it was important to her to bring them along because she knew it was a big moment for her alma mater.

“I wanted them to be a part of it,” Nora said. “I wanted them to be able to experience this, so when we’re a fixture in the Sweet 16 years from now they can say they were here for this – for the first time.”

Hadeed, for her part, was thinking about the future, too. The journalism major won one of the lottery spots offered by VCU to students for transportation and lodging to the games on Friday and Sunday in San Antonio. She plans to bring her camera and voice recorder so she can document as much of the experience as possible.

“It’s something I’m going to want to show my kids one day,” Hadeed said. “It’ll be a way of convincing them to come here, too.”