It took until my sixth year of college (the journalism department redshirted me for two years while I honed my incredible raw talent) but I finally made it to a Sacramento State basketball game.

Sac State wins season opener.

It’s not like I didn’t have the opportunities before. I lived in the dorms during my freshman year. And I was a basketball fan. Yet for some reason I never mozied on over to Colberg Court to catch a game. 

It’s not like I missed much. But still, you’d think that I would have caught at least one 44-29 barnstormer against a school I’d have to Google later that night.

That certainly was the case last night when the Hornets opened the regular season against Menlo (a business school from the Silicon Valley that offers less majors than it has basketball players).

The game was entertaining despite the smaller scale of the schools, the gym, and most of the players.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist sharing some of my observations from the game.

One: Head coach Brian Katz needs a voice coach. 

Even though he is constantly screaming he remains practically inaudible. It’s like his voice is of a frequency that can’t carry sound farther than six feet. I was sitting in the second row near Sac State’s bench and the only command I could ever make out clearly was, “Execute the play! Execute! Execute the play!” It’s unfortunate the only thing you could hear him say was hilariously cliche.

Oh, and I could hear the F-word. Lots of F-word.

Two: The Hornets have some very athletic players (Walter Jackson, John Dickson) but no one was able to create their own shot last night. Maybe it was the stingy Menlo defense (it wasn’t) but the Hornets will need to improve on shot-creation if they want to compete in the Big Sky.

Hopefully in time they will develop that go-to guy.

Three: The “Nest” is way too small.

I know this isn’t news, but I got a new perspective on the matter thanks to Sac State’s archives.

The past few days The State Hornet newsroom has been littered with old collections of every issue of the Hornet from the past 60 years.

One book we found, called the Statesmen, is a yearbook of sorts that chronicled the fun white students didn’t have back in the ’50s. On the inside cover there is a map of Sac State’s campus. Nothing is as it is now, except of course, for the gym.

Shocking.

I know the sorry state of the gym isn’t news, but I think I have a problem with its size for a wholly new reason – the dance team. Don’t get me wrong, Sac State’s dance team is great. The problem is that I felt endlessly uncomfortable watching the dancers perform.

They were just way too close. Not to each other, but to me. I couldn’t watch them knowing they could see me see them dancing provocatively.

I felt like I do when I order wings at Hooters (medium and breaded). I know the waitress is just doing her job, but I always choose to stare at the menu and be overly polite.

Can we please get a new gym and some bigger stands? Fans need to be able to objectify the awkward dance routines properly – anonymously and from afar.

But like I said, I enjoyed myself, and I look forward to attending more decently-attended home games and writing more immature, snarky blogs.