They came from 328 miles away, first by plane, then by bus, traveling with the speed of a horse-drawn carriage rolling through knee-high mud.
The Pittsburgh women’s basketball team began its odyssey to Chapel Hill two hours early Wednesday. Their Thursday night game against UNC remained on-schedule, immune to snow, ice and the threat of postponement. So, too, was Pitt — on schedule, on the road, ready to play.
“If North Carolina says, ‘Hey, the game’s still going on, the roads are fine,’ and we haven’t heard anything from the ACC saying the game is canceled, we’re going” said Nick Rivers, the team’s director of basketball operations. “We’re going to make it happen.”
The Panthers took off from Pittsburgh at 2 p.m. A choppy descent notwithstanding, they landed in Raleigh at about 3:15 p.m. They boarded a bus to their Chapel Hill hotel.
It took 20 minutes for their team bus to crawl 400 feet, said Ted Feeley, assistant director of media relations. It took another 10 minutes to leave the airport grounds.
It took an hour and 14 minutes, Feeley said, to drive 1.7 miles in a snow-induced bottleneck.
“Coming from up north, I don’t understand how people cannot drive in this weather,’” said Ashlee Anderson, a senior guard from Chicago.
Cars skidded off the road, sometimes into ditches. Exit-ramp areas became receptacles for wayward vehicles.
Mired in a standstill, staffers jumped off the bus to retrieve snacks and drinks from the undercarriage. Lightheartedness prevailed over the chill beyond their windows.
