SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – The official start of the college basketball season was Nov. 5 and it was going to be a busy Tuesday for Eric Curry. The plan was to get in some work as senior vice president for corporate sales at Cambria, watch the first quarter at Williams Arena for the Gophers women's opener to support his wife, assistant coach Kelly Roysland, and then fly to Sioux Falls to referee the Wisconsin-St. Mary's (Calif.) opener.
It was Game 1 of the Sanford Sports promotion of big-time basketball at the Pentagon, with the Gophers men and Oklahoma to follow four nights later.
"Change of plans," came the Tuesday morning text from Curry. "We're driving."
Shane Obershaw, Curry's friend, a basketball fan and a private pilot, didn't trust the weather forecast for later that night, when his small plane would be returning to Flying Cloud airport.
We took off in Curry's Escalade at 2 p.m., with John Moore, the now-retired, longtime Benilde-St. Margaret's boys' coach riding shotgun and me in the back, with what became a failed plan to work on a column on another topic.
Failed because the basketball talk started with Curry and Moore on the drive southwest and didn't stop until we pulled up next to a back door of the arena at 5:45 p.m.
By then, there was already evidence of a snow and ice mix, and Obershaw's decision not to fly was becoming wiser by the minute.
John Higgins, the crew chief for the night, had arrived almost simultaneously. Higgins has been a Division I referee for 31 seasons. He might have been put through Hades by Kentucky wackos, with their threats and attempts to ruin his roofing business after the Wildcats' loss to North Carolina in a 2017 regional final, but Higgins remains near the top of his second job — having been selected to referee four Final Fours.