The New Marshall Plan

Previously on Pun City.....

So this blog ended up selecting trip #1 from last time, only to have it yanked out from under this site's grasp. Surprisingly enough, WCC tickets proved almost as difficult to come by as ACC tickets. This set off quite a scramble to come up with an acceptable replacement. None of the previous 6 captured this blog's imagination, so it got to work and came up with this:

Trip #7: Missouri Valley Conference, Mid-Continent Conference, and Conference USA.

3/2 MVC, 3/3 MVC, 3/4 MVC, 3/5 MVC, 3/6 Mid-Con, 3/7 Mid-Con, 3/8 C-USA, 3/9 C-USA, 3/10 C-USA, 3/11 C-USA.

23 Games. All 3 conferences new. Ticket cost about $290. 10 hotel nights, need rental car, 7 days off work. Haw, man. A fantastic amount of games. That's especially awesome given the ticket cost. Hotel costs are probably going to be rough, but it's just once a year, man. Total of 16 hours driving, broken up into 4 drives. Games would be in St. Louis, Tulsa, and Memphis. Tentative plan to stop in Russellville, AR to break up the 6-hour Tulsa-to-Memphis swing. (This blog doesn't mind driving 6 hours, but the drive would be starting at 8:00 PM, and since Anaheim-to-Reno, the rule is a 4 hour cap on night driving). Pretty good basketball here, Mid-Con is a low major, but it would be seeing their best games, and MVC and C-USA should be about even and very good as mid-majors. Getting to see Southern Illinois, Northern Iowa, Creighton, Valpo, Memphis, UAB, UTEP, and, coolest of all, UCF in person will be x-treme.

On a note to those trying to get Conference USA tickets: Do not go through Marshall University. The following is a transcript of Pun City's conversation with a Marshall U. ticket office employee:

Pun City: Hi, (this blog is) calling for information on the Conference USA Men's Basketball Tournament. (The site) was wondering when tickets would go on sale.

Rep: Yeah, those tickets aren't going to go on sale until March.

Pun City: Well....the tournament's in March.

Rep: Oh, I mean late February. We need to find out if we qualify for the tournament first.

Pun City: Doesn't the entire conference qualify for the tournament?

Rep. Um...It's our first year in Conference USA. We haven't gotten a lot of information on it yet.

And for any uninformed readers, per the Memphis ticket office, tickets will go on sale in November, and yes, every team in the conference qualifies for the tournament. Ridiculously enough, even the MAC, where Marshall played until this year, has every team qualify for the conference tournament.

However, remember that Pun City broke the story that Marshall basketball is planning to be postseason-ineligible this year (like it makes a difference).