TCU Upsets Kansas | The KJ Blog

I thought it would be fun to write a blog about my experience photographing the TCU/Kansas NCAA Men’s basketball game for USA Today Sports Images last night since it was a monumental upset and my first time dealing with fans and students rushing onto the court after the game.

For those that do not follow college basketball much, this game was a classic David versus Goliath scenario as Kansas is always a perennial power and came into the game with a 19-2 record while TCU on the other hand had a 9-12 record and had not won a conference game at all. I believe the Las Vegas experts had Kansas favored by 18 points and so I didn’t have my hopes up for a good game! I’d be VERY wrong!

As I watched and concentrated on getting some quality game action shots, I was shocked at how both teams were really struggling to score. In fact, It was almost to the 5 minute mark in the first half before I think Kansas had more than 4 points! Yes, it was some very ugly basketball to watch for sure, but TCU was making a few shots here and there and holding a lead. Since it was a late 8pm CST tipoff, I had to go in to upload images at about the 6 minute mark before halftime and saw that TCU still held the lead while I was inside the media room.

Myself and most of the other photographers that were covering the game figured that Kansas would come out storming in the second half and play the way we are used to seeing them play, but that was not to be. TCU made clutch shots when they had to and Kansas made mistake after mistake after mistake! As the time in the game kept ticking down, I thought to myself, HOLY COW, this could be one of the biggest upsets of the year! I immediately put my 300mm lens away underneath the basketball goal and put on a 16-35 lens on one camera body and left the 70-200 lens on the other one.(I didn’t want to have to drag around a 300mm while running into tons of jubilant fans on the court.)

In the final couple of minutes as it looked like TCU was going to hold on for the victory, I had to switch my thoughts from covering game action to figuring out how to capture the emotions and story of this big win.(Knowing full well that the students and fans would turn the court into one giant Mosh pit soon after the final buzzer sounded!) I personally like to shoot basketball games on the outside near to where the baseline and endline meet.( Especially now since I am using the full frame Canon 1DX cameras.) Well, at TCU, you have to be setup on the side closest to the TCU bench. This is normally fine, but in some instances players on the bench can get excited and jump right in front of you. So, I made sure to move close in to the goal for the last couple of minutes as I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t blocked when TCU would be celebrating after the buzzer sounded. Luckily, as the horn went off I got a very clean shot of TCU players celebrating on their way back to the bench as well as the look of dejection in the Kansas players BEFORE the rush of fans stormed the court.(I had about 4 seconds to get the clean shot.)

My next thought was that I needed a good jubilation shot of TCU’s leading scorer Garlon Green. So, I immediately looked for him and locked on to him before most of the fans would make moving around impossible. Luckily, some fans lifted Garlon up on their shoulders and it made a nice photo. Once I got that shot, I ran upstairs really quick to get an overall shot of the crowd and team on the floor before heading back down to grab a couple more celebration shots.

It was my first college basketball game where I got to experience fans rushing the court and it was awesome! It just goes to show you that on any given night, anything can happen! Here are some images of mine that were published last night and today…

You can see all of my photos from the game here… TCU-KANSAS PHOTOS

Congrats again to TCU for a great win!

This is on ESPN’s Front Page…