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Syracuse students in their tent outside the Carrier Dome on Tuesday: From left: Sam Hauser, left, from East Rochester; Mark Norman, back, from Norfolk, Mass.; and Chris Michienzie, Foxboro, Mass.

(Dick Blume | dblume@syracuse.com)

Danielle Matfess had tights beneath her jeans. She wore a T-shirt beneath her sweater beneath her sweatshirt. She napped in a winter hat and slept in a sleeping bag wrapped up in another sleeping bag.

On a day when temperatures dipped below zero, Otto's Army bundled up against the cold but elected not to budge from their campsite outside the Carrier Dome.

"I'm all cozied up," said Matfess, a graduate student studying accounting "It's cold. It's actually not that bad once you get into your sleeping bags. The one thing was that I thought was that I'd have all this free time, I'd bring some work with me. All I want to do is huddle.

Boeheimburg? More like Boeheimbrrrrr. At around 11 a.m, Ben Glidden, the president of Otto's Army broke one of his rules of camping out at the behest of a reporter. He checked the weather.

His cell phone told him it was minus-2 degrees.

"I've learned not to look," he said. "I've had people tweeting at me what the temperature is going to be, telling me that I'm crazy. We're not just out here on a whim. We understand it's cold out. We're not going to lay around in our shorts and T-shirts. Common sense can prevail."

While cold weather has been the bane of armies throughout history, Glidden insists it won't be the scourge of his and Otto's Army will remain outside for the long haul.

Despite the sub-zero temperatures and an invitation from Carrier Dome managing director Pete Sala to come inside, Glidden intends to stay the course and maintain the campsite until the game against Duke on Feb. 1.

Eight different groups are in place outside the Dome, securing seats in the first few rows for what may be the most highly-anticipated regular-season game in Syracuse history.

Syracuse students are camping in tents outside the Carrier Dome so then can get the best seats for the Duke basketball game on Feb. 1.

Idiots, they may be, but disloyal they are not.

Glidden repeatedly mentioned that the choice to stay outside belonged to him and his organization, and that Sala had offered them the opportunity to come in out of the cold.

Most of the students mingled outside their tents, bundled in winter hats and scarves, their breath visible as it poured from their mouths like steam from a train.

Out of the wind and below ground-level, it felt slightly warmer than the listed temperature, but not by much.

Glidden, a veteran of an estimated 15 campouts, wore just sweatpants and a couple of shirts. He'd begun to second-guess his choice to wear only one pair of socks.

"I'm kind of regretting that at this point," Glidden said. "I need to do laundry. I came at 9 this morning and I'm here until 3 or 3:30, so it's not that bad of a shift."