Drover Madness is an event that brings the community together and helps kickstart the basketball seasons Wednesday Oct. 25 in the Drover Fieldhouse.
The women’s and men’s basketball programs along with the Drover Dancers put together an event that brings the community together and with the help of the Sport Information Department the entire event is broadcasted live.
Throughout the night the guests were introduced to the three teams along with plenty of games to help incorporate members of the community into the event.
Starting off with musical chairs, which is an event for the young audience members, which came down to a good friendly competition between the two head coaches’ sons, Ayzden Matthews and Zayden Fancis. They both had their team’s support throughout the entire game and at the end when Matthews, when he won the close competition he was raised up by the women’s team in celebration.
After that the faculty and staff knockout game which was won for the second year in a row by Coach Pav, who had the entire baseball team on their feet cheering him on.
Followed up by the Drover Dash in which two kids dribble down to the other baseline and put on a bigger fitting jersey, shorts, and large shoes and dribble back, the first one to make the layup wins the contest.
Courtesy to the USAO Foundation there was a drawing for two book scholarships, one of the winners was Holden Pate, a USAO sophomore, who at first was bummed since his numbers were off by 40 from the first ticket drawn, but he had the next number announced.
“I was surprised and then I was nervous to walk in front of everyone, and even more nervous to answer questions,” Pate said.
Next up was the 3-point contest, in which there were two contestants from each program, each contestant had 45 seconds and the one with the most points wins. The contest was won by men’s basketball player Logan Dolan who went 10-15 in the contest.
The long awaited TV drawing was won by Jordan Simmons. Simmons is a junior volleyball player.
To finish up the Drover Madness contests, the dunk contest was composed of six men’s basketball players, who each had two rounds of 30 seconds to complete one dunk. After many failed dunks, it came down to Jaden Causwell and Jayden Patcha.
“I had never attempted this dunk before, I was just talking about it with Manny a couple practices ago, but never got to attempt it before right now,” Causwell told Danny Henderson in his post win interview.
To wrap up the night, people could grab a warm plate thanks to Jakes Rib’s catering and watch the men’s basketball team scrimmage and get a glimpse of the talent the team has in store.
The women’s team will open their season as #25, according to this year’s first pre-season poll that came out Wednesday morning. The men’s team will open their season next Wednesday, Nov. 1 against Oklahoma Wesleyan and the women will open their season on Saturday, Nov. 4, followed by the men’s game.
Laura Barrios Bardi is a third-year Arts major at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma.
