Yesterday was not my first visit to Pitt's Petersen Events Center, but it was the first time I had been there for a Big East Conference game, and what a fun and terrific experience it was.
The place was sold out, and the atmosphere was nothing short of electric. The Oakland Zoo student section was amazing. They never sat down, never stopped cheering, and, in a real departure from current day crowd behaviour, they kept it clean and tasteful. Not sure if that is the case at every game, but it was refreshing yesterday. They were almost as much fun to watch as the game itself - a great 72-60 wire-to-wire Pitt win over ninth ranked Georgetown.
While I do not want to diminish the Big East, I can only imagine what that place will be like in a few years when schools like North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, and Maryland start paying regular visits.
One more comment on the crowd. I was surprised at how much of the crowd joined the Pitt band in singing the National Anthem, and I was most pleasantly surprised to see that the crowd waited until the Anthem was actually completed before that began to clap and cheer, rather than about 2/3 of the way through it, as seems to have become the custom at sporting events in recent years.
