All Over Albany

How far is Boise, exactly? Siena's checking the map

One of the problems with college basketball over the last few years has been that a lot of good teams from conferences that aren't traditional powers have had trouble getting good games. And without a slate of quality opponents, it's harder to get a good seed in the NCAA tournament. So someone came up with the idea of all these good "mid-major" teams playing each other in a series of games called the "Bracket Buster" (you know, like busting the NCAA tournament bracket) -- and to make it even better, a lot of the games get shown on one of ESPN's many channels.

So, the Siena's men's hoops team is taking part in the Bracket Buster and it recently found out that its game will be one of the ESPNs (hopefully not the "Ocho"). That's the upside. The downside? The Saints have to travel all the way out to Idaho to play Boise State for their February 23 game.

According to Google Maps, that's a trip of roughly 2,500 miles (just 1 day and 12 hours of driving straight through). And in case you're wondering, no, there is no good way to get from Albany to Boise. A Kayak search for airfare reports the cheapest day-before/day-after fare as of this morning was a United flight for $520 -- that is, if you don't mind leaving Boise around 7:30pm the day after the game, making two connections, and arriving at ALB around 11 am the next morning.

But, hey, the Saints are getting a good game on TV. Better make sure the iPod is charged.

map: Google Maps