To complete the Alabama doubleheader started with Arena #173, it was a quick 90 minute drive back up I-65 to Birmingham for a visit to Bartow Arena on the campus of the University of Alabama-Birmingham ("UAB") for Arena #174. On this day, the UAB Blazers were hosting a Conference USA matchup with the Texas-El Paso Miners. Given that Bartow Arena is located squarely within the confines of the UAB campus, parking was a bit of a chore to find, but thankfully a public garage a couple blocks away was located fairly quickly allowing me to make it into the arena just as the Star Spangled Banner was commencing. Coming from a game that had maybe 200 people in the stands, it was nice to come into an arena that had probably 3,000-3,500 fans present, most of which were thoroughly engaged given that it was a conference matchup instead of a lowly non-conference contest.
I must say, I was reasonably impressed with the quality of Bartow Arena for a smaller conference school, though I realize UAB is a fairly large school with an enrollment of over 20k students even if their sports play in a non-Power 5 league. Plus a venue that offers hard copy programs and souvenir cups in 2022 automatically increases my enjoyment given how many places have eliminated such things for "COVID reasons" nowadays.
Given this was my second game of the day after 8+ hours of driving for the day, I was really hopeful to get an entertaining game to keep myself awake for the entire two hours. Well I certainly got that and then some as the game ended up going into double overtime even though Texas-El Paso led for pretty much the entirety of regulation before UAB tied the game up late. Then, in the first overtime, UAB led for the majority of time until a late run from the Miners put them up 1 with only a few seconds to play. Unfortunately for Texas-El Paso, a boneheaded foul on a three-point shot with only tenths of a second remaining gave the Blazers the chance to win the game in the first overtime. However, UAB was only able to convert 1 of the 3 free throw attempts so the game went to a second overtime; a 5 minute period that UAB thoroughly dominated to secure the conference win after 50 minutes of action.
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