Big Ten Men's Basketball Tourney
It's madness! Well, not quite yet, but it was madness shooting it! I just finished covering my second Big Ten Basketball Tournament, which was at the United Center in Chicago. The first time I covered the Big Ten Tourney was two years ago. However, I had it easy that season, as I was only covering Northwestern, so I only had to shoot two games. This year, I was covering the entire tournament, which meant shooting ten games in four days. Like I said, it's madness!
Although it's a lot of basketball, and you all know how I feel about basketball, tournaments like this are actually kind of enjoyable. Because it is the end of the season, and because there's quite a bit riding on the outcome of these games (NCAA tourney bid, conference championship, etc.), you can really get some pretty nice emotion out of these games: both jubilation and dejection.
The first two days of coverage were the most difficult, for the simple fact that those days say the most games piggybacked on top of each other. There were three games on that opening Thursday, and then four games on Friday (and only two on Saturday, and of course, the one championship game on Sunday). The difficulty of having so many games in one day is not the actual act of shooting it (although it did get a bit tiring), but it was having to try to edit and transmit my images in between each game. Normally, we want to edit and transmit quickly anyways, but with only about 25 minutes in between games, we really had to push it because if you get backed up, you're screwed. Why? Not only are other organizations getting images out ahead of you, but now you're backed up into the later games and maybe miss something important in the following game because you're stuck in the media room transmitting!
Anyways, as for the actual games, other than the Illinois-Indiana game on Friday, they weren't that exciting. None of the games were really that close, and the favorites won just about every game. As a result, there wasn't a whole lot of intensity of action on the court as teams may have eased up a bit. But hey, you shoot ten basketball games, you're gonna get some cool out of it!
Although it's a lot of basketball, and you all know how I feel about basketball, tournaments like this are actually kind of enjoyable. Because it is the end of the season, and because there's quite a bit riding on the outcome of these games (NCAA tourney bid, conference championship, etc.), you can really get some pretty nice emotion out of these games: both jubilation and dejection.
The first two days of coverage were the most difficult, for the simple fact that those days say the most games piggybacked on top of each other. There were three games on that opening Thursday, and then four games on Friday (and only two on Saturday, and of course, the one championship game on Sunday). The difficulty of having so many games in one day is not the actual act of shooting it (although it did get a bit tiring), but it was having to try to edit and transmit my images in between each game. Normally, we want to edit and transmit quickly anyways, but with only about 25 minutes in between games, we really had to push it because if you get backed up, you're screwed. Why? Not only are other organizations getting images out ahead of you, but now you're backed up into the later games and maybe miss something important in the following game because you're stuck in the media room transmitting!
Anyways, as for the actual games, other than the Illinois-Indiana game on Friday, they weren't that exciting. None of the games were really that close, and the favorites won just about every game. As a result, there wasn't a whole lot of intensity of action on the court as teams may have eased up a bit. But hey, you shoot ten basketball games, you're gonna get some cool out of it!
posted by Jerry at 11:33 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home