GW was the 3 seed and earned a first round bye, then beat St. Joe's and Saint Louis, then 4 seed Rhode Island who upset 1 seed Xavier (back when Xavier was in the league.) Maureece Rice was named most outstanding player of the tournament. GW was 23-8 that year behind junior Rice, seniors Carl Elliott, Regis Koundjia and Dokun Akingbade and sophomore Rob Diggs. Karl Hobbs was the coach, in his 6th year.
GW, at the time known as the Colonials, went on to get an 11 seed in the NCAA tourney but sadly got smoked by Vanderbilt in the first round, 77-44 in Sacramento. Here's the full team stats for the season. This was the third and final NCAA tourney for Hobbs at GW, who was fired after the 2010-11 season.
Florida ended up winning the championship that year, their second year in a row, beating Greg Oden and the Ohio State Buckeyes. Some consider that Florida team one of the best ever college basketball teams.
The video features foam tricorner hats and the old creepy GW mascot giving some high fives. It also includes Kangy the Kangaroo, a fan favorite from those days -- an inflatable kangaroo who did various hijinx. Here's more about him, before we knew he was called Kangy.
It's not my best camera work, probably recorded on a Flip Video recorder (remember those) or a digital camera, with lots of jostling, but hey, pretty fun.
I was there for I think all the games, it was a really fun run. And we had a blast in Atlantic City, which is kind of a weird, grimy place. I remember we spent a lot of time at Irish Pub. Which is actually the name. Pretty solid bar though. There was a Trump Plaza Casino in AC next to Boardwalk Hall, which later went out of business and was demolished. Who bankrupts a casino? (I wonder what happened to that guy.)
Anyone else make it to Atlantic City that year?
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