Atmosphere in Nashville

[AlumPecker]

For those of you where were not lucky enough to make it down to Nashville for the Tournament I wanted to give you a feel for the atmosphere & respect the Cajuns got after pushing Louisville almost out of the tournament. The first thing you notice when you turned the corner and were able to see the Gaylord Entertainment Center for the first time was the electricity in the air from the thousands waiting for the doors to open... There was a sea of Red but it was Red, not Vermillion unfortunately.

Once inside of the arena it was easy to see that the Cajun fans were extremely outnumbered! If there were 15K total fans there, 10K were for the CARDS, 2K for us, & 3K there for another team or just to watch basketball. As the game progressed there were 10K nervous CARDS fans who could not muster up enough strength to get louder than the Cajun faithful until the last few seconds when they knew the game was wrapped up.

The group I went with planned to stay until Sunday, assuming/hoping we were going to watch another Cajuns game, so we did. I can't express in words the amount of respect the Cajuns received form the other fans that were in Nashville. We proudly wore our UL garb for the rest of the weekend and easily had three-dozen plus people come to us with praise. Most of the compliments we received were from Louisville fans. Typical comments were: 'I was so nervous I couldn't even watch the 2nd half', 'you guys got robbed', 'if you were a 13 seed we were a 12', how do you fans have so much energy? we had 5-times the fans and the Cajuns chant was drowning out our C.A.R.D.S. yell, & yall stood the whole time too; that was cool, I wish our fans were like that', 'you guys are by far the fastest team we played all year', & many 'you guys scared the hell out of me'.

Many unbiased fans approached us too as there were a lot of people in the city who just love NCAA basketball & were there to watch games. Most of them really felt that if the officiating would have been a little more down the middle we would have pulled the upset. I always hesitate to blame officiating for a loss b/c I know I have a biased view point but it was somewhat of a relief to hear it from multiple people who couldn't care less if we won or loss. Many other comments we heard were: 'definitely the best game in the city yet', 'you guys got the toughest draw in the tourney; you would have beaten anyone else in this city' & a whole lot more of 'you got robbed' comments. We'd walk down the street and people, many drunk, would just start yellin' Ragin Cajuns, whoo-who! just to show support & respect.

It was one hell of a weekend in a very inviting & fun city. Well worth the drive & I'm already looking forward to when we go to The Dance next year, with hopefully a little more respect though. Don't miss the atmosphere again and help us yell for our Cajuns even louder!!!!!!!!!

A very proud Ragin Cajun fan,
-pec

[OldBullDog]

Sounds great wish I were there.

GEAUX Cajuns

[NewsCopy]

Originally posted on Delphi by CDeb

Since everyone here now has been beating Friday's basektball game to death, i.e. Green playing out of control (huh?), refs (certainly didn't help) and Spencer Ford (came back from an atrocious first half to have a big-time game), I wanted to give a few tidbits from the stands as part of the Z/Z-JR/FISH/CDEB road crew.

It was quite an oh-_____ moment to round the corner to the main entrance of the Gaylord Center and see an ocean of fans dressed in red and knowing that they weren't rooting for the Cajuns.

Z-JR was an adept grease-man, getting us up to the front of the throng of fans waiting for the gates to open. (ONE FREAKING ENTRANCE?? C'MON!!!)

We entered the GEC ready to rumble 50 minutes before the start of the game. A "Card-nal Gum-bo" chant started shortly thereafter. My voice was well on its way to being lost about a half-hour before the game started.

16,000 Cardinal fans were put to shame by 600 Cajun fans. They were sitting on their hands the whole game in stunned silence. I guess they expected to blow us out of the gym. They didn't wake up until the game was in hand during the last minute.

It was a virtual Mardi Gras in the UL section the entire game. I remember one timeout where the Card fans (who are REALLY good spellers, by the way) in the section next to us looked at us like we were insane as we were dancing to the band.

Ragin' Brass: WOW! WAY TO REPRESENT! They definitely made the game a fun experience. The Card fans were puzzled with the "CAAAA-JUUUNNNN BAAAA-AAAAALLLL!" chant.

Just about all the Louisville fans we ran into were first class people.

The rest of the story

[oddtbone]

I am a member of the ragin brass and I just wanted to say that we were extremely proud to see the section of Louisiana fans standing for the entire game. We were forced to sit all game and were only allowed to stand during big plays, etc. This was quite difficult due to the nature of that ballgame, but we tried to make do with what we had. I personally could not talk after the 15 minute mark in the first half, but managed to yell for the rest of the game. (my vocal cords have hated me for it since then) In closing, I just want to say that I am very proud of our guys, I just wish a few more things would have fallen our way.

Also, even though we had to leave nashville early, we did have time to pick up some souvenirs.