History was made today as the Oregon Ducks beat the Oregon State Beavers for the FIRST "Civil War" men's basketball game in the new Matthew Knight Arena, 82 to 63, to sweep the series.
The Ducks won earlier this season in Corvallis.
We left Medfrod for the 1 pm game about 8:15 am and made it to Eugene about 11 am. We had snow flurries from Medford to Canyonville. On the way up we listened to the sound track of the new True Grit movie. When we got to Eugene we parked behind Track Town Pizza for $10.00 and beat the crowd to Track Town Pizza and got the only window table looking across Franklin Blvd. to Matt Court. We could also see the window to my old dorm room. We figured it was 40+ years ago that Rich and I were roommates there. My wife made the mistake of asking me how Rich and I became roommates and that led to a lot of "funny" stories about our year as roommates. We were both from Coos Bay/ North Bend and were members of the Coos Bay chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF).Yes, I was a conservative even then. As usual the pizza was good ("best in Eugene"). While eating we watched the fans line up at the gates waiting to get in the game. It was cold outside so we were happy to linger over our pizza and then walked across Franklin Blvd. just as they were opening the doors. There were quite a few Beavers there and you could tell they were impressed with the new arena as they walked in and we heard a number of complementary comments. We went to our reserved seats and watched a good game. Some older Beavers were sitting next to us but were OK and only cheered when the Beavers did something good on the court which was not often.Some one made up a card board cut out of Justin Beiber wearing a orange "Beaver Nation" tee shirt. I don't know why but many of us Ducks thought it was hilarious. The Oregon State coach is Michelle Obama's brother and so a student made a poster of him similar to the famous Barack Obama poster with the words "No hope for OSU." They showed it on the 4 big screen TV's and I had a good laugh.So good my wife pinched my leg to quiet me down. Mixing sports with politics.
After the game we drove home in light rain and we made it back to Medford just as it was getting dark. A real special day. Go Ducks !
