Finally, the 'Press Credentials' tag

It's not every day I get to use the "press credentials" tag, even though there is probably something every day that merits its use.

Today its use is to paint the picture of a road trip to Terre Haute, Ind.

Here's a hint. It wasn't pretty.

Slowest. Subway. Ever.

I'm sure they're still making the other half of my sandwich.

Like Indianapolis, I felt as if the land of the Sycamores was a gloomy town (not city) with its redeeming quality being a pretty nice basketball facility. It's too bad Indiana State is 4-15 (2-5 in MVC play). It's hard to believe Larry Bird starred for this university a long, long, long time ago.

It's a nice stadium that doesn't look to have a bad seat in the house, which is easy for me to say seeing that I was courtside in press row behind SIU head coach Chris Lowery. If you watched closely enough, you might have seen me on TV.

The folks that work there, pretty cool too. Their sports information director (Mike Williams, because he deserves a shout out) was once again helpful to my cause. When he visited Carbondale for the SIU/ISU (blue) football game, he spent a lot of the game swatting bees in the press box and in the process, saving my life.

In the end, SIU left with a victory and after a late Denny's dinner (which also got screwed up) I left Indiana with a smile on my face.

Mostly because I was happy I was out of Indiana.

P.S. I'm still trying to figure out how or when I referred to SIU senior forward Tony Boyle as a future NBA all star. I don't think I've ever used "Tony Boyle" and "future NBA all star" in the same sentence, paragraph, story, blog post until these last few sentences.

Maybe I'm missing something.

TB. Good player. Solid player. Hard worker. Will never be confused with a NBA lottery pick.