GW will kick off the opening of its first college basketball season of the new millennium Friday. GW’s version of Midnight Madness will mark this occasion with fast-paced entertainment and special guest performers and the evening will culminate in the first informal practices of the year for the men’s and women’s basketball teams. A near-capacity crowd of about 4,500 to 5,000 people are expected to attend the event at the Smith Center Friday night.
I’m just real pumped up about it and ready for the season to start, sophomore guard SirValiant Brown said.
The Colonial teams enter the season with great promise and reasonably high expectations given the amount of returning players on both sides. The night will feature Brown, the nation’s second-leading scorer from a year ago, Mike King, Chris Monroe and the return of senior forward Patrick Ngongba. The men’s team, which has been picked by some magazines to finish atop the Atlantic 10, returns all five of last year’s starters and will begin formal team practice Saturday at 4 p.m.
Main attractions of the night will be the appearances of Petra Dubovcova, Kristeena Alexander, Erica Lawrence and the rest of the Colonial women team that reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament last season.
The Smith Center will open its doors at 10:45 p.m. for the 11 p.m. extravaganza. A variety of activities will take place around the gymnasium, such as tattooing and face painting, while students, alumni and fans take their seats.
The night will feature a variety of carnival-style performances, a sound and light show, pyrotechnics, giveaways and many other surprises, event planners said.
The entertainment will last about an hour and will end shortly before midnight, when head coaches Tom Penders and Joe McKeown address the crowd and introduce the players. Once the clock strikes midnight, basketball season will officially begin, and the teams will warm up for about five minutes doing lay-up drills and a small slam-dunk contest. The teams will play their first scrimmages of the season for about seven to 10 minutes, Brown said. The basketball tip-offs end GW’s week of spirit activities.
We have some really cool things at the end, event planner Nicole Macchione said. A lot of fire and ice and sound effects. It will definitely be high impact in the last five minutes.
Friday’s activities will begin in the afternoon with a men’s soccer match against Rhode Island at 2 p.m. at South Riding Field. A bus will leave the Smith Center at 12:30 p.m. for fans who want to cheer on the red-hot soccer team that is a perfect 4-0 in A-10 play.
The Storm Chasers Parade will kick off the night portion of the event at 10:15 p.m. GW cheerleaders, the dance team and the GW band will lead a the spirit procession to the Smith Center from Kogan Plaza.
The theme of Midnight Madness is Surviving the Storm, a spin-off of the popular Survivor television program. The Student Activities Center, Program Board, Student Association and Department of Athletics are all pitching in to sponsor the huge event.
I think that with all the planning that went into it, the show will definitely be better than last year, Macchione said. There was a big push for it to be bigger and better this year. A lot of people are going to be very, very impressed.
-Zach Leibowitz contributed to this report.
