There's no Cram Session this morning, as this lowly blogger spent his entire Sunday and Monday either being in the mountains or traveling from the mountains (and, as this lowly blogger is a complete wuss, suffering an altitude-induced nosebleed from the mountain air). Fortunately, we've got an even better treat for you. Rumors and Rants blogger Ryan Phillips gets to be in Maui every year for the Invitational, and this year he offered to lend his behind-the-scenes observations to The Dagger. His work is below.

Greetings from Maui everyone. This is my fifth consecutive year attending this tournament and I've gotta say, great basketball is even better when you get free food along with it.

Here's the media room. Pretty spartan, but hey, we're in Maui. Who could complain about anything?

Not much of a pregame spread, the standard cereal, and bagels with some coffee, and fruit too:

The absolute cream of the national sporting press:

Newly minted World Series champ Shane Victorino was in attendance and signing more than his fair share of autographs. I talked to him briefly and he seems like a great guy. He was supporting St. Joe's but was wearing a burnt orange t-shirt. What gives Shane?

Victorino wasn't bad, but the real star of the day was the St. Joe's Hawk. As part of the dumbest tradition in sports, the perpetually moving mascot continued his assault on my sanity (STOP FLAPPING!). And -- since the game was a bit of a blowout -- I did a little experiment. I calculated that he flaps his wings 37 times per minute. Therefore, by my calculating, throughout the hour and 59 minutes he was on the court, he flapped 4,403 times.

Between games I had a chance to harass Jay Bilas, Bill Raftery and Sean McDonough. They all actually seem really cool. Especially Raftery. Here he is looking suspiciously at the camera, for whatever reason: 

Mike Brey was apparently very, very sleepy. Have a Red Bull, Mike: 

The Hoosier faithful came out to Maui in droves. The fact that it was 13 degrees when I left my apartment in Indiana on Saturday morning might have something to do with that. But you can already tell that the fans have accepted that wins and losses won't matter this year. The Hoosiers played poorly, but the crowd never let up. They were in it to the last basket. IU fans will love this team for the sole fact that they'll play hard.

Below is a quick shot I got of IU's Tijan Jobe, who looks like Mr. Eko from Lost. If only Jobe, a perpetually lost 7-footer, was as good as his profile is intimidating:

(If all goes well, Ryan will be checking in with more stuff from Maui later this week. As always, check back for more updates.)

Related: College Basketball Media