RICHMOND, Va. — The River City showed up as one of the nine great college basketball towns, in a NCAA.com story.
The story mentions how both Virginia Commonwealth University and University of Richmond have left their mark on the NCAA tournament for years. The article couldn’t come at a better time as the Battle for the Capital is underway, culiminating with the last of two match-ups on Friday, Feb. 19.
Richmond is on a list that included Philadelphia, Penns.; Lexington, Kentucky; Lawrence, Kansas; Durham and Chapel Hill North Carolina; and Bloomington, Indiana.
College basketball is the No. 1 game in this town of 210,000 that lacks FBS football and major league professional sports. Also, VCU and Richmond have left their mark on the NCAA tournament for years. The Rams upset Duke in 2007, reached the Final Four in 2011 and have sold out every home game in the Stuart C. Siegel Center since Jan. 29, 2011 — a streak of 81 games. They’ve won 86 percent of their games in the Stu, which opened in 1999, and is beyond compare as one of the nation’s most electric college basketball arenas. Richmond reached the NCAAs five times in seven years under coach Dick Tarrant in the late 80s and early 90s, and advanced to the 2011 Sweet 16 under current coach Chris Mooney.
And they don’t even mention how in 2011 both VCU and Richmond were both dancing in the Sweet Sixteen.
The video the author included is ” A Day in the Life of the Siegel Center,” seen below.
The VCU Rams face the Richmond Spiders at the Siegel Center, at 7 p.m. The game will be broadcast on ESPN.
