Maverick Madness was thursday night at College Park Center. This is the first basketball kickoff event I’ve attended (UTA has held Midnight Madness events many times over the years) and it was a lot of fun. The wheelchair, women’s and men’s teams were introduced by their coaches, with short interviews with the head coaches and there were a few fan contests as well. The national championship trophy was at the event, which was cool too. Acrodunk, a dunk team that has performed on one of the national TV network talent shows and at NBA arenas performed some nice dunks (one of their team members is a former UTA student). I’m not good at guessing crowd sizes, but I’d estimate the event turnout at 700 or so (maybe a few hundred less than were at the ORU game last year).

Brandon Williams, Lonnie McClanahan and Reger Dowell competed in a dunk contest. Brandon had a nice dunk, but Lonnie did a nice bounce-and-catch as part of his dunk and the crowd really went wild. A couple of dunks missed, but I was able to capture two of the better dunks for you: (the first dunk is by Williams, the second is by McClanahan).

Here’s a link to TheShorthorn article and more information about the event at the official athletics website.