I'm a little late on this mostly because I forgot the password for the YouTube Channel last night, but TMill came over to Hilltop during the Wisconsin game (yes, we both left early) and helped me get back on in. Now onto my quick recap.
I have to say, I'm rather glad that this Mackey Madness thing was free, and I'm also glad my friend in the Homecoming Court gave me his ticket to sit in the John Purdue Club seats at the event. I didn't really enjoy the event and I did not think it was that good. Perhaps it was the fact that I was sitting in those fancy Mackey Arena seats and it just caused me to be less interactive, but I doubt it.
Don't get me wrong, it started off well, with the exception of DJ Byrd's, aka Dirk Hunter, "musical performance". It was cool, but maybe dragged on a little too long. The introduction of the team was great along with the video that was also shown at the football game today. But after that, it started to go downhill.
The "skills competition" ended up making me worried, as each team had 3 players: 1 random fan and a member from the men's and women's team, as they had to make a lay up, free throw, three point shot, and half court shot and do it faster than the other team. You'd think the first three would be easy for the men's and women's players, but it took them some time. Most of these shots should come natural to Tacos, TJ, Bryd, Moses, and others, but they actually struggled a bit and almost made the fans look good. The half court shot took the longest and frankly bored me to the point where when I stopped paying attention, but then the shot would be made (as you can tell in the video). In the 2nd round, Dru Anthrop did get the shot to put an end to the misery.
In the dunk competition, Jacob Lawson and Anthony Johnson were really the only ones who did well. AJ had a great dunk in the first half (as seen in the video), but Jacob Lawson out shined him in the 2nd half travelling half the distance of the court before doing a tomahawk slam, getting him the win. He also had an even better dunk doing clean up duty for Beshears' dunk, but of course I missed it trying to figure out if the camera had run out of memory. For the ladies, Sam Osterello won for them on their lowered hoop, so she tried to dunk on the guys side but just didn't have the height nor jump to get a proper dunk.
And to be honest, that was it. There were a few dry periods of nothing that caused the crowd's enthusiasm to die down, and the crowd didn't seem to be all that excited about the upcoming year after the game. What I would have liked to see is some short scrimmage or even some "Battle of the Sexes". Nothing all that serious, but something like that would have pumped up the crowd, rather than these mundane "competitions."
Granted, this is the first time Purdue has done one of these in years, and the first time I have been to one. There's room for improvement and it can be really beneficially if done correctly and could be the big thing to attend each year.