It’s long been a complaint that the student sections in the Frank Erwin Center leave a lot to be desired. And to keep from pointing fingers at any one particular group, I’ll go ahead and expand that complaint to the entire arena. The simple fact of the matter is that the FEC is rarely home to an intimidating atmosphere, and is nowhere near the level of product that Rick Barnes puts out on the floor every year. And while these are issues I plan on addressing here at LRT as we close in on opening night, today it seems like there may be a little hope that things are going to be different this year.

The marketing department in Belmont has scheduled a night of giveaways, promotions, and general pandemonium to be held in Gregory Gym on Friday, October 26th. While I couldn’t get much in the way of exact details from the gentleman I spoke to in the marketing office, he repeatedly mentioned that they were looking to get the word out to students about the basketball program.

Of course, most students still have no idea what is going on with the ticket system or the Stampede pass, and there is the looming question of whether or not anything will be done to remedy the giant clusterfuck that occurred at the final home game of the season against A&M. And sure, there’s still more to be done to increase attendance in the rest of the arena. But I’m glad to see some acknowledgment that there’s an elite basketball team on this campus and a slight effort to get our gigantic student body to fill up its small ticket allotment.

I’ll post more details as they are released, but for now let’s all cross our fingers that this is the first in a series of initiatives to increase attendance.

While much of the attention this weekend will be focused on the likes of Greg Oden, Arron Afflalo, Joakim Noah, and Roy Hibbert, Longhorn fans will be paying special attention to Kevin Durant. One of four finalists for the Naismith Award, KD will find out on Sunday whether or not he will win the prestigious award as only a freshman. And if he does in fact bring home the hardware, you’ll find full coverage here at Longhorn Road Trip to peruse while eating your Monday morning bagels.

In the coming weeks, I’ll also be working to bring you the tales from the road that have yet to be posted. My goal is to unveil one a week, but if I’m feeling extra-productive, who knows what will appear. Along with that comes the remaining photo galleries, which includes all of the home games and post-season as well. And along the way, I will randomly be revealing different top-ten lists regarding my time following UT hoops — top arenas, top games, best fans, and the like.

If you don’t feel like visiting the page on a daily basis, you can always add the RSS to your news feed if you’ve got an aggregator. Or you could just join in with the hundreds of folks who are bookmarking the page. Either way, you’ll be sure to find new content all spring and summer as we await the start of the next season of Longhorn basketball….and perhaps a new season of road trips.

Yes, we’re alive and in Austin, not dead somewhere on a mountain in Montana. It’s been a weird, weird week without Texas basketball around to talk, think, or write about. I guess I didn’t realize it while the season was going on, but making all of these trips had essentially whittled my life down to school, work, and basketball. It’s kind of odd to have the biggest part of that suddenly missing.

But fortunately, tonight the NCAA tournament is back. I can only hope that these Sweet Sixteen games are as thrilling as Saturday’s second-round action. I may or may not get to a USC wrap at some point this weekend. In all honesty, that game was so ugly and demoralizing, I don’t have a whole lot to say about it.

There is still a ton of stuff going on in the basketball world, though. We’ve got ex-Horns playing in the homestretch of the NBA season, there will be a ton of coaching changes in the college ranks — Tubby Smith is out at UK as of today — and, of course, we get to play the “Will he or won’t he?” game regarding Kevin Durant.

Once again, apologies for the disappearing act this week and enjoy the ballgames tonight. Longhorn Road Trip should be back full force by Monday.

Today I am really excited to finally unveil a new feature here on the site. I’ve mentioned in some previous posts that I have been fooling around with the Google Maps API in order to give you an easier way to navigate the content from all of my trips. I think I have finally gotten the finished product to a point that I am comfortable with showing the public. That finished product is, of course, the map you see below.

Each city I have visited is represented by a basketball, which you can click to open an info bubble for each trip. There you will find links to the previews and wrap-ups from each game, along with the photos and blogs from each city. As I continue to add more pictures and blog entries from past trips, I will update the links in the map.

There is a slight delay between clicking a link in an info bubble and the new page replacing the current one. I’m not sure if there’s any way around that, since I am forced to use IFRAMEs in order to work around the way WordPress sets up directories. If any of you out there are more technologically inclined than yours truly, feel free to leave ideas in the comments section or shoot me an email.

While this map will slide further down the main page as I write more entries, you can still easily find it every time you visit by clicking on the brand new “Map” link in the grey navigation bar up top.

Jayhawk preview coming at you either later this morning from Austin or late, late, late tonight from the outskirts of Kansas City.

Edit: Apparently there is only one basketball showing up for users who have Internet Explorer. I’m not sure what is causing this and I likely won’t fix it before I leave for Kansas. But hey, isn’t this a great opportunity to finally download Firefox like you’ve been meaning to?

Buenos días, readers. This morning, I’ve got three new photo galleries up for you to peruse — Houston, Stillwater, and Lincoln. After I get the Tech re-preview posted, I’ll get back to the rest of the photo galleries and hopefully get them all knocked out before the OU trip this weekend.

The Google Maps feature is coming along quite nicely and should also be ready to roll once the last photo gallery is posted. That will make it a lot easier to find all of the content that’s spread out across the site in an easy-to-navigate map.

Then all that’s left is to finish updating the trip blogs. (Phoenix was posted on Friday night, for those of you who may have missed it over the weekend.) If all goes according to plan, everything should be up-to-date and all of the bells and whistles functional before conference play is over. Which sets us up quite nicely for all of the tournament action, of course.

Can you smell that? March is right around the corner.