SI.com - 2005 NCAA Basketball Tournament - The Ultimate Road Trip: Day 2 (cont.) - Tuesday March 15, 2005 11:51AM

SI.com - 2005 NCAA Basketball Tournament - The Ultimate Road Trip: Day 2 (cont.) - Tuesday March 15, 2005 11:51AM

My dream job, three guys and a chick pile into an SUV and tour the country experiencing March Madness. They give shoutouts to the Texas Roadhouse and Hummers. I've talked to the guy, John, who is traveling with them. One of these days, I too will follow the madness and keep a blog about it. Until then I'll post their account of Morgantown.

We finally pulled into Morgantown around dinner, so John and I decided to "Hoof it on Over for a Legendary Meal" at the Texas Roadhouse Grill, where the Mountaineers men's hoops team -- which is headed for Cleveland to play Creighton -- was devouring rack upon rack of killer ribs. The team posed for a couple of glamour shots for SIOC. John Walters and I chatted briefly with WVU forward Kevin Pittsnogle. That name. Classic. We had to know more.

"I don't know," Pittsnogle replied when we asked about its origins. "My family is from Martinsburg [W. Va.]. As long as I can remember, we've been there. There have been Pittsnogles in Martinsburg forever. My great, great, great grandfather was from Martinsburg. He was a Pittsnogle. They're everywhere in Martinsburg."

(We checked this one out. There are 11 Pittsnogles listed in the Martinsburg phone directory: Bev, David, J, J and James, L.D., Lisa, Lon, Paul, Phil, Robert, and last but not least, W.D. Pittsnogle.)

We loved the Texas Roadhouse Grill, by the way. The wait staff serenaded birthday boys and girls with choruses of "Yippie" and "Yee Haw" as we sat down. Later, they line-danced to Shania Twain's Up. According to our waitress, Lyndsay, a WVU senior studying accounting, the Roadhouse staff must get jiggy once an hour, lest they fear the wrath of the restaurant management. "The manager makes us take lessons," she quipped. "Brings in an instructor, and we practice outside in the parking lot in the mornings." Brent gave the line-dancing his best shot, but from the looks of it, he also could have used formal instruction.

If impromptu line-dancing seems difficult, then factor in worrying about errant police cars careening into you. According to Lyndsay, the Roadhouse was closed for a week over Christmas break "after a police car drove into our meat room." As the story goes, a cop was giving a drunken friend a ride home at 2 or 3 a.m. The friend passed out in the front seat of the police cruiser, but when he came to, he panicked and grabbed the wheel. The Chevy proceeded to give a whole rack of T-bones some kinda whuppin'. At least that's the way Lyndsay tells it.

On Lyndsay's recommendation, we headed out after dinner in search of Hummers, apparently a can't-miss Morgantown landmark. We traveled down Jerry West Boulevard from the Roadhouse in search of the joint, all the while wondering if there would ever be a Kevin Pittsnogle Boulevard. Alas, Lyndsay's directions were faulty (and I wanted to watch 24), so we headed back to the hotel.

At 10:30 p.m., though, we busted out the Morgantown phonebook, got the address for Hummers and punched that puppy into the Hertz Never Lost GPS system in the Expedition. Exactly 1.8 miles later, we found ourselves greeted by Victor the bouncer and at a table facing a 60-inch plasma TV with some lively live entertainment in the background.

With Bob Seger's Night Moves blasting from above the stage, we asked Victor for his Final Four picks: Duke, UNC, Wake -- "If we don't beat 'em" -- and Oklahoma State. We asked Victor about our man Pittsnogle, and he replied, "If he can learn to dribble and chew gum at the same time, he'll be in the NBA." Victor seemed to take a liking to us and he invited us back to Hummers free of cover charge.

Back at the Hampton Inn, we all hit the sack, ready for Tuesday's drive to Dayton, Ohio, and the play-in game. On with the Madness. ...



-n