NCAA Basketball Tip-Off Event

        Today, October 11, 2011 the Olympic Club(OC) held their 13th Annual NCAA Basketball Tip-Off Event at their club location in downtown San Francisco. This gives Division I Head Coaches around Northern California, and specifically the Bay Area a chance to get up in front of a crowd and talk about how they think their respective teams will do in this up and coming season. Schools that were represented by their Head Coach at this event included University of Pacific, Santa Clara, St. Mary's, UC Davis, University of San Francisco, San Jose St, Sacramento St, Fresno St, Stanford, and Cal Berkeley.
        The day started off when we arrived a little after 11 am. The meet and greet was taking place in the extravagant lobby of the San Francisco Olympic Club. The Stanford band was playing, the Cal mascot was running around, and the San Jose St cheerleaders were there to greet. Then was the coaches "club room." This was my first time ever meeting Stanford Head Coach Johnny Dawkins. The man is simply a professional in every aspect. The manner in which he carries himself is from head to toe the way you would come to expect of the man leading a team at such a prestigious school such as Standford. The mingling continued as we all made our way to the lower level gym where the actually Luncheon was taking place.
        It began with the smaller conference schools speaking leading up to the newly realigned Pac-12 head coaches last, Johnny Dawkins and Mike Montgomery. Each coach would come up and as they went further and further the coaches would try to throw out more and more jokes. Leading up to the Grand Finale of Mike Montgomery. Other coaches had mentioned when they were on the podium that they knew he would go last, and they were right. Mike came up with a paper with a pretty full list. And the list must have been full of cracks on other coaches because it was stand up comedy in the Olympic Club for the first 10 minutes he was up there. He finally got to his team after that, a team that he thinks has a chance to make a lot of noise in the Pac-12 this year.
        As was stated at the end of the Luncheon, this could be one of the best years for Bay Area college basketball in quite some time. If you are up in Northern California between November and March be sure to make a stop in Berkeley, Palo Alto, Fresno, or even right here in San Francisco as the Dons look forward to taking another step forward this season.

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