The Beast : It’s Party Time!

I don’t want to ruin your day, but you must click here now. Sorry, had to. If ‘Signing Day’ goes well on Wednesday, I might have to start blasting that on the speakers at The Titanic Brewery.

The Inaugural allCanes/ Inside The U Signing Day Party is shaping up to be a huge event. The buzz is off the chain and we’re ready to have a great time as Al Golden and his Canes are slated to reel in a solid class with little time on the job.

The doors of The Titanic will open at 8am and we’ll have free ‘breakfast foods’ the first two hours. The bar will be open and the recruiting news will be flying in to recruitnik central. All of the guys from InsideTheU.com will be stationed at all of the important signing press conferences around South Florida. They’ll be calling in to the event, updating us regarding who has officially inked their Letters Of Intent.

We’ll also be joined by several confirmed special guests and you never know who might decide to surprise us and drop in. There’s going to be raffles, contests and great prizes. This is our first – of hopefully many – official Signing Day parties, so we hope you come out to The Titanic from early morning until late afternoon to celebrate our Canes and to have a blast with us.

‘The U’ is having a great event at Monty’s in the Coconut Grove tomorrow night. The entire coaching staff will be there. It will be a great opportunity to meet Coach Golden and his assistants, celebrating the end of a great day.

I won’t be there as we’re doing our own recruiting recap on allCanes Radio tomorrow night (live from allCanes), but I urge you to go from the Titanic, to the Grove, making ‘Signing Day’ an all-day event – if for nothing more, than to congratulate this coaching staff and to thank them for the effort they made down the stretch on the recruiting front.

IN OTHER NEWS : Happy Sad … I have no idea why this song popped into my head. I was sitting here thinking about attacking this blog and some how drifted back in to my days being an FM disc jockey on WVUM. Suddenly Elastica’s “Connection,” Blur’s “Song 2” and one of my favorite bands of my college days, Pizzicato Five, all started blaring in my head. I was forced to pull up the following video on You Tube, I urge you to watch it now so you can get into my frame of mind.

I really have no idea what Pizzicato Five is singing, but the title of the song kind of sums up the last 48 hours. From the sad side of things, we had another close game fail for the Canes hoops squad but, from the happy side of things we had our first media meet up with Art Kehoe.

As I sat in the second row in the middle section of seats in the Edgerrin James Team Meeting Room this afternoon, I was buzzing. I didn’t know what Art was going to say, but I knew one thing, he’s a talker. When Coach Kehoe walked into the room, you could feel his energy. He shook hands with most of us, including me, and had a smile on his face, the size of Texas.

We’ve been doing things a bit differently as far as pressers with the new assistants. Instead of them standing behind the more formal lectern, they’ve been sitting in a chair in front of the UM back drop. When Art walked in, he was so ecstatic he had to be asked to sit in his chair for the press conference.

His opening statement lasted seven minutes and he answered less than a dozen questions, but the presser still lasted over a half hour and it was pure Art. He handled it perfectly and was in the present, without doing a lot of looking back.

One could imagine after being on the journey that he’s been on over the last five years, he’d have a lot of emotions to unload, but he didn’t. He looked forward, and made sure that everyone in that room, and everyone in Canes Nation, knew that him, Coach Golden, and this entire staff are on a mission to bring ‘The U’ back to glory. Art made it clear; “the only variable, is time.”

I sat there with a smile on my face. The moment was like David Lee Roth hooking back up with Van Halen or Alonzo Mourning coming back to The Heat. No matter what had happened in the past, it felt great, it felt right, and it’s going to feel amazing when Coach Kehoe slips on his sixth championship ring.

Now to the sad, or at least the frustrating. On Sunday we saw again, the University of Miami’s basketball team lose in the last possession of a ballgame. Garrius Adams took what would have been a game-tying three-pointer in the final seconds. He didn’t get a great shot off, and Miami lost their fourth straight game.

As I sat on my couch and took it in, I lost track of how many times the TV commentators were talking about Miami’s lack of execution on offense. Virginia Tech was playing tough defense, but it looked like from my amateur prospective that when the Canes drove to the basket, they were having success. It’s great that Miami has great three-point shooters, but you can only live by the three so much. Miami has a game Thursday night against Georgia Tech (10-10, 3-4) and Saturday against Virginia (11-10, 2-5). Not only are those games winnable for Miami, but they are again must-win games.

I was happy to see that there are only 400 tickets remaining for Miami’s match up against Duke at the BUC on February 14th. I just hope everyone that has a ticket attends the game. Why spend the money if you’re not going to go?

Props, once again, to Katie Meier and her squad. They beat Georgia Tech in overtime to move their record to 20-2 on the season, 6-1 in the conference. Junior guard Riquna Williams was named the ACC player of the week for the fourth time this season. Right now the ‘bracketology’ has Miami’s women’s team as a four seed in the NCAA Tournament. Can’t wait to see these girls get it done down the stretch!

Well, off to put the finishing touches on tomorrow’s party. Hope to see you there!!! Go Canes!

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