AndysPictures.com: basketball

Hoops/NFL Double Dip – Mizzou & the Nati

By Andy Lopusnak, AndysPictures.com

December 5-8, 2013

For me, a tradition like no other is the college basketball/NFL double dip weekend the first weekend of December. This is my third straight year (fourth overall) doing the CBS opening tip game and then doing a football game the next day. My previous three opening tip/NFL double dips started out at Kentucky; and the last two both ended in Miami. Here’s a look at my four such weekends and how the teams fared.

YEAR	HOOPS GAME	NFL GAME
2013	MISSOURI 80, UCLA 71	CINCINNATI 42, Indianapolis 28
2012	Baylor 64, KENTUCKY 55	New England 23, MIAMI 16
2011	KENTUCKY 73, North Carolina 72	MIAMI 34, Oakland 14
2009	KENTUCKY 68, North Carolina 66	Oakland 27, PITTSBURGH 24

WOW! JUST WOW!

Columbia, Missouri is in the middle of nowhere and I had to fly into St. Louis then drive two hours to get there. However, since I was in St. Louis anyway; I stopped at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. This Catholic church is breathtakingly beautiful. I’ve photographed numerous churches all over the world and easily my favorite. Pope Paul VI called this place “the outstanding cathedral of the Americas.”

Though the basilica was completed in the 20th century, the inside is designed to look like the greatest example of Byzantine style under Roman emperor Justinian in the sixth century. It has nearly 42 million individual mosaic glass pieces with a range of over 8,000 different colors that were installed by Tiffany & Company. When I was in Istanbul this past May, there are two former churches (the Hagia Sophia & Chora Church) that were clearly the inspiration for this magnificent place of worship.

CLICK HERE TO SEE MY CATHEDRAL BASILICAOF ST. LOUIS GALLERY

MIZZOU 80, WEST VIRGINIA 71

I got into town a day early to ensure I was there early for my photo shoots with the teams on Friday; so I photographed the Thursday night Mizzou game against West Virginia and also get three time lapses of the game. Missouri dominated from the opening tip. The final score wasn’t indicative, as the Tigers failed to hit free throws down the stretch. And yes, the final score of both Mizzou games were the same.

CLICK HERE TO SEE MY GALLERY OF THIS GAME

MIZZOU ARENA TIME LAPSE

Using my spare Canon SLRs and the GoPro Hero 3, I covered three different vantage points for the time lapse. The 20D was set up with the Canon 17-40mm L lens in the corner, while the 40D was high up in the rafters behind the boards using the Sigma 10-20mm lens and the GoPro was at midcourt. Below is a combination time lapse of these three views.

PHOTO SHOOTS

For the first time since the 2013 Final Four, I lugged out the lighting gear and shot some sportraits of Missouri and UCLA. I photographed six Tigers and nine Bruins. Looking ahead to the 2014 NBA Draft; nbadraft.net has two of these student-athletes as potential picks. On that site, they have Missouri’s Jordan Clarkson going #24 overall and UCLA’s Kyle Anderson at #31

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT MY SPORTRAITSPHOTO GALLERIES

MIZZOU 80, UCLA 71

Three Missouri players posted at least 20 points as the Tigers continued their NCAA active streak of 24 straight home wins to stay undefeated by beating the previously unbeaten UCLA Bruins. This game marked my first in Columbia since the 2001 college basketball season when I did two games at Mizzou within a month. Back then, the Tigers played at the Hearnes Center, before the Mizzou Arena was built three years later.

FAUROT FIELD AT MEMORIAL STADIUM

The Missouri football team’s stadium is under renovation, but I still managed to sneak in and got some shots of the empty stadium. It’s a horseshoe-shaped stadium with seating in the opening end with a grass berm in the curved end that has a giant block “M” that’s made out of pained white stones.

CLICK HERE TO SEE MY STADIUMS & ARENAPHOTO GALLERIES

BENGALS 42, COLTS 28

The Ginger Gunslinger, Andy Dalton, completed 69% of his passes for 275 yards with three touchdown strikes and another on the ground to lead the Bengals to their ninth win of the season. Cincinnati jumped out to a 21-0 lead with ten minutes to go in the second half before Colts QB Andrew Luck threw the first of his career-tying four touchdown passes; but it wasn’t enough for Indianapolis.

CLICK HERE TO SEE MY GALLERY OF THIS GAME

FIRST FOR EVERYTHING

Since the game was in Cincy, I knew I could get out Sunday night and not waste an entire day of travel since I’ve been away from home since Wednesday night. I rushed to the airport only to find out that my flight was delayed, but would still get me home on time. However, that all changed when the incompetent ground crew apparently forgot that it was cold outside and wasn’t ready for us when the plane needed to be de-iced. It meant that with the extra hour on the tarmac that I missed my flight from Salt Lake City home to San Jose. Strangely enough, I’ve never had to stay overnight because of a plane issue in my more than 1.2 million miles on Delta/Northwest, or any airline for that matter. Once, it would've happened when I was living in Grand Rapids, but I just drove home. To add salt to the wound, I could see my actual plane leaving the gate when I arrived – it was in the opposite terminal. To cut the wound even deeper, Delta put me on a 3:00pm flight home on Monday. Luckily, I did manage to get them to change it to a morning flight, but to Oakland. Ugh.

UP NEXT: NY Jets at Carolina

Much like the Titans home game in Week Four, I’m beyond stoked to do this game. I had it circled when the schedule came out for a multitude of reasons. 1). I get to do my 28th out of 32 NFL home venue time lapses, 2). Photograph Cam Newton in an NFL uniform (I do so at the 2010 Iron Bowl when he was at Auburn), and 3). I will drive to Columbia, South Carolina Saturday after the production meeting to photograph my 41st U.S. state capitol building.

-- AndysPictures.com --

TRAVEL/PHOTO BLOG: Austin (Kansas at Texas)
By Andy Lopusnak, AndysPictures.com
January 17-19, 2013

It’s déjà vu all over again. On this same weekend a year ago, I was in Austin doing the Kansas-Texas game and I’m back for round two. Last year, I took lots of great shots of the Lone Star capital and the city. One of my favorite places to shoot is along Lady Bird Lake, which flows more like a lazy river through downtown. Its slow current is awesome for near mirror-like reflections of the skyline.

My first two days in Austin, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky (much like last year). However, on game day the sky was outstanding and I nabbed a lot of great shots with the beautiful sky and great reflections. I didn’t get the chance, but wanted to visit the Museum of the Weird. Maybe next time.

CATHEDRAL OF JUNK

Vince Hannemann began building his temple to trash in 1988 and he believes that it has more the 60 tons of junk. This is actually located in Vince’s backyard in a residential neighborhood.

It’s nearly invisible from the road and you could easily just drive by without noticing. When I arrived, Vince welcomed me into his scrap shrine. He even offered me a beer. Well worth a stop if you’re in Austin. Hopefully Vince’s home if you stop by or else you can’t see it.

FOODIE JAUNTS

Austin is a foodie paradise. It has more food trucks per capita than any city in the world and has some awesome BBQ and burgers. I had one of my best burgers and absolutely the best fries ever at the Counter Café. This place is only up from 7am-4pm. I had lunch my first day in Austin there and had a cheese burger with fries. Simple, but OMG tasty. Cooked perfectly medium rare.

For dinner my second night, three other CBS crew members and I drove 20 miles outside of Austin to The Salt Lick. It’s in the middle of nowhere, but the BBQ is delicious and all you can eat for $20. On Sunday morning at the airport, there’s a smaller Salt Lick and the biscuits & gravy with the brisket mixed in is awesome.

LBJ MUSEUM

On the UT campus is the presidential library and museum for Lyndon Johnson, the 36^th US President. It’s free, though they just started taking donations. Included inside the three stories of exhibits are a 1/8^th scale replica of what the Oval Office looked like under LBJ, a joke-cracking animatronic LBJ, a presidential limo and artifacts from the time of the LBJ administration.

GHOST TOWN

After the game, I drove about half an hour outside of Austin to snap some shots of the J. Lorraine Ghost Town in Manor. It’s a revision of an Old West neutral territory for outlaws and lawmen. The owner, George who I met, built it in the 1980s and it’s now essentially a bar & grill with a pretty good burger. It has free movies on a big screen on the weekends. I grabbed a burger and stayed for some night shots of the empty town.

The story goes that George bought the land to do some farming and unearthed some old wood planks and other artifacts just a few feet underground. A small stack of stuff became a larger one and he stopped everything to find out what all of it was from.

After some research, he found out that in the late 19^th century there was a small town of less than 500 named J. Lorraine. There are some different stories of how J. Lorraine met its end. One says that it was destroyed by a hurricane and another claims that an angry mob of nearby citizens burnt it to the ground. Anyway, George decided to rebuild the old town with all the wood he found.

KANSAS 64, TEXAS 59

The fourth ranked Jayhawks, winners of 14 straight entering the game, trailed for most of the game and erased an 11-point second-half points to beat the slumping Longhorns 64-59. Kansas freshman phenom Ben McLemore led the Jayhawks with 16 points, including 11 in the second half. This marked the third straight season that I’ve done a Kansas-Texas matchup and the road team has won all three (the first in Lawrence and the last two in Austin).

TIME LAPSE: LOW CORNER

Using the GoPro Hero 2, I shot from where CBS had a low camera in one of the corners. It’s the same corner only lower that I shot my first Frank Erwin Center time lapse on the same weekend a year ago for this game (click here to view that one). It’s the not greatest of angles for a wide shot as you can’t see a lot of the game action, but here it is.