When the 16th-seeded Coastal Carolina Chanticleers traveled to Omaha for its opening-round matchup in the 2015 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament against the top-seeded Wisconsin Badgers, Joe Oestreich and Scott Pleasant tagged along on the team's charter plane and watched the game with the university's pep band and cheerleaders. Here are the challenges, assumptions, biases, and quirks they experienced while on their (sadly very brief) journey. Disclaimer: Not only do Oestreich and Pleasant both draw paychecks from Coastal Carolina University, but they wrote the words to the school's fight song. So they make no claim to journalistic objectivity, and also stand by the message they had for Wisconsin going into the weekend: Watch your back, Badgers.



1. History says we can't win. Not the championship. Not the region. Not one game. Since the NCAA expanded the men's tournament field to 64 teams (and then to 68), no 16 seed has upset a #1. So, for Coastal Carolina and this year's other 16 seeds (Hampton, Lafayette, and Robert Morris), what does that make this trip? A reward? A ticket aboard the Titanic?

2. But we've already won. Heading into the match-up with the Badgers, the Chanticleers—by virtue of winning the Big South Conference Tournament—have already advanced through three straight win-or-go-home games. Sixteen seeds are inevitably schools from small conferences that have no chance of getting more than one team into the big dance, so no matter how many wins you notch between November and February, you don't get your name on the brackets based on your regular season. For a 16 seed, the conference tournament is the NCAA Tournament.

3. Playing a 1 seed is an opportunity, not an obstacle. On Selection Sunday, when CBS reveals that Coastal will be meeting Big Ten regular season and tournament champ Wisconsin, nobody watching the bracket announcement show on the big screens in CCU's HTC Center slumps their heads Charlie Brown-style. Instead, the players, cheer squad, and fans leap to their feet as if to say, "Bring it." This will be one of the highest-profile games in school history (CCU has made three previous NCAA appearances: 1991, 1993, and last year, when we put a scare into Virginia). But more than that, it's a chance to make history. Minutes after the brackets are announced, the arena buzzes with something like a mantra: One year, a 16 seed is going to win. Why not this year? Why not us?

One year, a 16 seed is going to win. Why not this year? Why not us?

4. The road may not lead to the Final Four, but it's a posh ride. Three days later, the university entourage—administrators, coaches and their families, players, cheerleaders, the dance team, the pep band, and the two of us—are standing on the sun-washed tarmac at Myrtle Beach International, getting hand-wanded before boarding the charter flight: a Sun Country Airlines Boeing 737 with a friendly flight crew and a pilot who wishes Coastal good luck over the PA system. The cheerleaders and band members take selfies to prove to their followers on Facebook and Instagram that they have received the NCAA's warm embrace. Two and a half hours later, we land in Omaha, where we're met by three Van Hool motor coaches and a police escort. Schools like Wisconsin might be accustomed to this VIP treatment, but for CCU, this is the equivalent of a neighborhood garage band getting the full-on, Beatles-land-at-JFK reception. As the buses aim toward the Omaha skyline and the CenturyLink Center—the arena where the games will be played—tucked within it, the trip unquestionably feels like a reward. And it is. It is.

5. Until it isn't. Just as we're about to get into downtown Omaha, our motorcade takes a sharp right turn. We leave behind the Old Market district and its stretch of hip bars and restaurants. As the office buildings and the shiny new hotels disappear from the rear window, a cheerleader says, "Where the heck are they taking us?" A band member says, "I bet Wisconsin is staying in the Hyatt right next to the arena." We don't even know if there is a Hyatt downtown, but either way, everyone's now worried we've been given the economy package. Maybe it's an inferiority complex, but when you're a 16 seed, you just have a feeling that people are treating you as an afterthought, like someone in the NCAA office is right now doing a facepalm and saying "Oh, crap, we forgot to book a hotel for Coastal. Guess they'll have to crash on couches."

6. The inferiority complex is easily fed. Seven miles west of downtown, the buses finally pull into the hotel, which seems to be an old DoubleTree Suites—except that all the DoubleTree signage is now covered by temporary re-branding banners that read Aksarben Suites. The immediate impression is that the building must have been auctioned for pennies on the dollar. Before we've even gotten our bags out from under the bus, the band kids who grew up on Harry Potter are calling the hotel Azkaban Prison. They're imagining Dementors who will patrol the halls at night and suck the souls out of anyone who dares to escape after the 11:30 p.m. lights-out.

7. And paranoia easily spreads. Bags in hand, we notice that the only restaurant within visible walking distance of Azkaban Prison is Crystal Jade, a sad-looking place with Pan-Asian Cuisine and $1.88 Beers SU-TH painted on the roof in three-foot high letters. "Oh hell no," one of the band members says. "I'd rather starve." A Miller Genuine Draft sign hangs in the window, and somebody else says with a smirk, "This joint doesn't just have draft, they got genuine draft."

A window view of Crystal Jade, a sad-looking eatery with low, low beer prices. Joe Oestreich

8. Hospitality matters. We open the doors to the hotel lobby and see balloons and banners and at least as much teal and bronze (the school colors) as we would on campus. Everybody who works in the hotel is wearing Coastal Carolina t-shirts. Everybody: Front desk staff, housekeepers, maintenance guys. Hotel management had the CCU swag overnighted as soon as they learned we'd be staying here. In the atrium—which is bright and airy and nowhere near soul-sucking—there's a spread of free food and drinks. Turns out the Aksarben in Aksarben Suites is Nebraska spelled backwards. Like a 16 seed over a 1 seed.

Joe Oestreich

9. Everybody loves the underdog. The next morning, when the band, cheerleaders, and dance team ask the hotel manager if there's a place to hold a rehearsal, the answer is: yes, right here in the atrium. The continental breakfast has barely been torn down and the whole hotel is jumping with cheerleader pyramids and the CCU fight song. The few guests not attached to our group will just have to deal with pre-noon drums and horns. But rather than merely dealing with it, everybody seems to be loving it. Guests stop and take pictures. They clap along with the band. A male front desk clerk grabs his female counterpart and gives her a spin. Omaha—or this section of Omaha, a $25 cab ride from the high-priced restaurants and bars downtown—is starting to feel like CCU West.

10. Go ahead, underestimate us. It turns out that those $1.88 beers at Crystal Jade aren't 12 oz. cups of Genuine Draft. Here's what we can get for under two bucks each: Leffe Blonde, Newcastle Brown, Sierra Nevada, Fat Tire. Plus, for the same price, the beer runs pan-Asia: Kirin, Chang, Tsingtao. And that's barely half of the selection. The food is good, too. Really good. Pad thai, Korean vegetables, Vietnamese noodles. Enjoy your $5.00 downtown pints, Badger fan. Coastal wins! And we owe Crystal Jade a big apology for underestimating it. The analogy here is obvious, so we'll abandon it now.

11. But we can't abandon the analogies, omens, and signs. They're what we can cling to, and they're everywhere. The hotel bar at the Aksarben Suites is called the Canterbury Pub. The CCU mascot is the Chanticleer, named for the clever rooster in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Coincidence? Bah.

Joe Oestreich

12. And we mean everywhere. Crack open a fortune cookie at Crystal Jade, and it predicts: The current year will bring you much happiness. On a morning jog along the Keystone Biking/Walking Trail, we see on one of the highway overpasses graffiti that reads: We Carry Each Other. And on another overpass: AIM FOR THE SKY.

13. Seriously. Everywhere. And especially in the sky. On the day CCU faces UW, three astronomical events will coincide: the vernal equinox, a supermoon, and a total solar eclipse. Back before Kepler explained how planetary orbits work, everyone believed eclipses were heavenly predictions of unusual earthly events. Sure, this particular eclipse is only going to be seen as total if you happen to be standing on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, but hey, a portent is a portent.

Joe Oestreich

14. Inside the arena, the seeding disappears. On the TV and in the office pools, so much of NCAA Tournament talk is about seeding. But here at the actual tournament, on the space station-sized scoreboard that hangs in the CenturyLink Center, there's no "1" next to Wisconsin, and there's no "16" next to Coastal Carolina. Ten-minutes before tipoff, as the two teams warm up in front of a packed house (UW fans outnumber CCU fans roughly 50 to 1), there's no numerical indication that one team has essentially zero chance of winning. The scene on the court looks like what it is: Two teams about to play a ball game. Then, in the opening minutes, 6'1" guard Josh Cameron—a native of Racine, WI—scores eight quick points over Wisconsin's much taller backcourt, and Coastal takes an 8-7 lead. It's clear to us, the pep band, the cheerleaders, and any of the 2,642 residents of Svalbard, Norway, who might be tuning on their long-range radios: Coastal Carolina can do this. By now, the three other 16 seeds have all lost, so if history is going to be made this year, Coastal will have to do it.

15. But when reality finally hits, it hits hard. The Chants put up a good fight for most of the first twenty minutes, but by halftime, Coastal is down 15. The size of the Wisconsin lineup—which is led by 7-foot Frank Kaminsky, a Naismith player of the year finalist—proves to be too much for the Chanticleers. Halfway through the second half, the arena is down to about a quarter of its capacity. CCU falls behind by as many as 24, but a late surge cuts the final deficit to a respectable 14 points. Chants lose 86-72. History will have to wait.

There's no such thing as a moral victory, but a loss isn't always a defeat.

16. There's no such thing as a moral victory, but a loss isn't always a defeat. The next morning, when the buses roll away from the Aksarben Suites, bound for the charter flight waiting at the airport, spirits are high. Of course everybody wanted to pull off the upset—no, check that: came to expect the upset. But there's no shame in losing by 14 to a team that twelve days earlier beat Ohio State by 24. No one needs to cry for Coastal, least of all ourselves. After all, today is the first full day of spring, the time when life begins anew. And the 2016 tournament is just 52 weeks away. One year a 16 seed is going to win. Could be next year. Could be us.

Joe Oestreich and Scott Pleasant are the authors of Lines of Scrimmage: A Story of Football, Race, and Redemption, forthcoming in September from the University Press of Mississippi.

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