Bruce Pearl became the all-time winningest coach in Auburn basketball history last week and has taken the program to unprecedented heights now being ranked No. 1 in the nation by the Associated Press.
While I am elated with the success, it’s actually become rather difficult and expensive to get a ticket in Neville Arena for an SEC game. With that in mind, I try to plan a road trip every year to watch the Tigers and experience some of the culture of the other programs in the SEC.
The last two years I bought tickets and reserved a hotel room, but got sick and was unable to make the trip. This year, I decided to try once again and chose Columbia, South Carolina as the destination. My health has been really good lately, so I called a meeting of the AAA Club (Allen, Ardie and Andy). We bought some tickets and found a nice hotel right downtown. Everything seemed to fall into place without a hitch.
The temperature was supposed to drop significantly, but that wouldn’t be a problem, right?
Then, the forecast called for a chance of precipitation. All of a sudden, another Snowpocalypse was a possibility on the exact day we were set to hit the road.
Do you ever feel like mysterious forces are mounting up against you? The inevitable questions began to arise. Should we cancel? Should we go? We went. What’s life without a little adventure?
We altered our course a little south to evade Atlanta, but made pretty good time just the same. That is, until we reached Augusta. The temperature dropped and the roads got pretty icy.
However, we got back on the well-traveled interstate and everything was smooth sailing. Columbia is an old-fashioned, blue-collar town with a lot of character and charm, but as the capital, has some modern sophistication as well.
We stayed at the Cambria Hotel which is one of those geographic oddities, five or 10 minutes from everywhere. Obviously, one of the biggest factors to a good road trip is the food. Here are a few of the highlights for all the foodies out there.
Saturday began at Lizard’s Thicket for a traditional country breakfast. This is no flash, no frills quintessential diner food. They accidentally put spinach in my omelet and guess what? It was great and I loved it.
That night, we ventured over to the entertainment and dining district for a little more upscale cuisine at the Blue Marlin. They specialize in steak and seafood boasting an award-winning shrimp and grits, but I decided to go with the Mahi Orleans. It’s a sizable cut of blackened mahi-mahi sautéed in butter with mashed potatoes and green beans. It was rather succulent, but I think the crème brûlée cheesecake was the highlight. We stopped by the Vicious Biscuit Sunday morning on the way out of town and it was tremendous as well.
As for the game, it turned out to be a thriller. We ran into a number of Gamecock fans that said things like “please take it easy on us today” or “you guys are going to beat us by 30.” It was a little too much “poor mouthing” and I had a bad feeling Auburn might be in trouble.
USC played very physical and inspired basketball, taking it to the Tigers for the first thirty minutes. Auburn was able to turn around in the second half and found a way to win, but the loss of Johni Broome to an ankle injury will be difficult to overcome.
Hopefully, he’s a quick healer. Colonial Life Arena is over two decades old, but you would never know it. It’s really nice and very clean. It holds 18,000 people, but many were disguised as empty seats. In fact, nearly half the crowd were Auburn fans and made their voices heard.
Overall, it was another fantastic trip with some great friends and a lot of memories not soon forgotten.
Andy Graham is a co-host of Auburn Blitz and his column appears here weekly.
