College basketball with a remote camera

I had looking forward to this game for a couple weeks. The student section at Fifth Third Arena is finally starting to get filled up on a regular basis and they announced last week that this game was actually a full-blown sell out– the first of the season.

I think it’s a pretty big bummer when the student section doesn’t get sold out for game (of any sport) at the University of Cincinnati. For such a big school with basketball and football teams on the national radar, it’s crazy to me when I think about how there are games that don’t sell out the student section. The tickets are free for anyone with a student ID, you’d think people would jump all over it. At least it seems like people are getting with the program, for basketball anyway.

I was sort of blown away to see how few people came out for the final football game of the season, despite the fact that they had a great season. Hopefully people come back around this fall.

Anyway, I had been looking forward to this Syracuse game for a while. Up until this week, they we the undefeated, No. 1 team in the country and in first place in the Big East. The game between them and this “just might shock you” Bearcats team was getting a lot of attention and we being broadcast nationally on ESPN. Both teams lost over the weekend, causing Syracuse to drop to No. 3/4 in the rankings. Both teams wanted to come back from their loses with a big win, and Cincinnati definitely didn’t want to lose in front of a sold out home arena.

I got to the game really early to set up my camera on a remote on the post again. I got there a lot earlier than I needed to, but it turned out to be the right thing to do. While setting up my brand new (took it out of the package just a couple days ago) Manfrotto Magic Arm, one of the brand new Super Clamps on it broke right in half. I’m not really sure what caused it to fail. It seems unusually tight to clamp down, but I just assumed it was hanging up on the bolt so I kept twisting the knob on it and all of the sudden it just split right in half. Pretty crazy, but that’s why you come early and com prepared. I had another clamp with me, so I just swapped it out and was back in business.

The remote was set up in a little bit different spot than I’ve done in the past. I keep trying to fine tune that location since you can’t really set up on the backboards the they have at Fifth Third Arena (and I’ve been told that the Big East officials won’t allow it anyway). The video board in the arena is hard to work around with a remote on the post. If you’re angled too high, it ruined the background of your show. If you set up higher on the post to avoid that angle, you don’t get the rim in your shot. I think this game was the best angle I’ve had so far, but I’m going to keep on working with it.

I got a couple shots I liked from this remote, and a few good shots from the game in general. I think I’ve gotten to a point with shooting this same team at this same arena so many times that I get more and more picky about what I keep. I disregard a lot of shots now that I wouldn’t have even gotten two years ago. I’m looking forward to shooting in some different locations, but it looks like the rest of UC’s away schedule isn’t really within driving distance. I’ve been tossing around the idea of traveling for the Big East Tournament in New York, so maybe that’ll happen.