Be more underwhelming? No Musical Act? Not on campus? No publicity besides a few tweets/facebooks? Not good. 

Funny how it's called Colonial Invasion and they have retreated from Foggy Bottom!  I'm not excited about an invasion of Fort Myer.

Agreed- this seems to be a misstep.

You're telling me they couldn't have gotten Wale or another local act to perform? I'm a GW fan but I can tell you I won't be going Friday night. No incentive to go on a bus and go all the way out there for no apparent reason.

Wale? It's the Fort... where are the Cherry People?

No musical act would be a selling point for me and probably others on this board more focused on basketball.

But can see how it might not lure students to Rte. 50 on a Friday night.

 Wale will be at Syracuse. 

It's definitely one of the dumbest things I've ever seen.  For as great a job as the new marketing people have been doing over the past 2 seasons, the decision to do this at Ft. Meyer is inexplicable.

Its just not a big deal.  Even if they had a big name act performing before a packed Smith Center, with pyrogenics (is that at word?) and lots of dunking, I doubt that would translate much into the marketing of the team for the upcoming season.  Limited marketing dollars are better spent elsewhere. I would rather use the funds to buy a power forward.

Actually, its a very big deal to potential recruits. I just hope for our sake, ML conveniently forgot to invite any to this mess.

Why spend over $40 million on upgrading GW's campus venue and then ship out events such as Colonial Invasion - that's no way to get butts in the seats at Smitty!

 IT comes down to their being no draw for students to come. I can understand the military angle and its admirable, but those families are not going to be the ones coming to every game who live blocks ffrom the arena. If you were going to do it in Virginia, you needed to get a musical act, comedian, some sort of draw where you could get people to make the trek with the promise of free tickets. I agree with the person who mentioned the recruits. Hopefully none are coming because I can't imagine more than 500 people show up to this. 

 Really guys? Come on, this is awesome. A return to a historic gym where GW used to play. I think it sounds like a lot of fun.

I think this is about ML's desire to honor tradition and history and being part of a community.  I think that's nice and commendable, even if it may be slightly miscalibrated here.

i wonder how many of the people complaining about the site have actually been to Ft Myers to see the Colonials play.  for some of us that was the only place we could see a GW home game. must be tough to take a bus there if you're a student.  perhaps we can get a limo service for the Colonial student faithful.

All of the student tickets were give out from what I heard. Buses will be taking students there before the start of the performance. 

 I remember fondly as a student getting on the bus that left from the front of the Student Center to take the fans to Fort Meyer.  Faciniating contrast of us draft dodging, pot smoking long hairs mixing with the military during the heart of the Viet Nam war.  Of course, way back then, I went simply by the name "Suffering Fan".

Nats game 5 conflict not helping invasion attendance.

True monument.  I am one of I assume many that was planning on going to the invasion but will now be at Nats Park instead.

I think it would make more sense to have it on campus, but one factual clarification that I'm surprised the oldtimers haven't made.  Fort Myer isn't "all the way out there."  Outside of rush hour it's maybe a 10-minute bus ride from GW.   

The choice is a no brainer, Foam Hat.  Go to the Nats game...but pull very hard for George to win the presidents' race.

It sure seemed all the way out there when hopping on a bus and going to faraway pre-Metro Virginia. Same was true for P.E. bowling where we took a bus to a  "far away" Glebe Road bowling alley.

From this and other sources, Mason will have Mayimba, Evan Taylor and Byron Hawkins in tonight.  Castro will be at Butler, Severe at St John's, Tre Campbell at GU, Embiid at Kansas and Roddy Peters, Phil Booth and Obi Enchioinya at UMD.

As far as I have found, Skyler White will be at Colonial Invasion and I assume the two verbal commits will be there as well.  We had a large contingent of local visitors last year, so hoping we'll see some new/old names there.

 Hopefully we have no recruits there. 

 Some of you guys are WAY too fucking negative.  This sounds like a fun opportunity. --And it's on a Friday night for Christ's sake.

 For context, do any other schools hold their midnight madness / season kickoff outside of their campus arena? I've never heard of that before and on the surface it seems incredibly stupid. Is there something happening/wrong with the Smitty? I'm genuinely asking...

 I wish I could see Ernie Cage again.

 I went. Very sparsely attended like I said. Womens coach seemed enthusiastic. Contests were pretty weak. All of the military stuff was well done and only thing that kept it from being a complete waste for me. 

Dunno.  Seemed pretty packed considering the location. It seemed a lot better organized than last year. They cut out the life-sucking speech from ML.  The kids seemed to be enjoying themselves a lot more this time and they got the soldiers involved in the festivities.  I'd say a win, given that they had decided to hold it there.

didn't see any recruits, but the setup wasn't conducive to crowd watching.

I saw the Terps' show on TV. It was just dumb, and reminded me of so many other smilar dumb, pointless shows I've seen. Why should GW compete on that level of dumb sameness? The show at The Fort may have been less than compelling, too, but at least there was some service related point to it. And, I am sure that for BM, it was at least twice as good as any alternative. Or half as good. My guess, BM, your daughter was happy to spend that time with her dad (not kidding), and it will go down in family lore.

I saw coach Strickland sitting with two young men during a portion of the event, and then he led both of them down to the floor to watch the performance by the drill team, which was very good, before leaving with them.  I wasn't close enough to see who the two young men were, but think that one may have been Nick Griffin who tweeted that he was at the event.

I hope it returns to the Smitty next year!

I would like to see the AD heavily discount a block of tickets each game where they are available to be sold to vets from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hatchet

 How about Camo uniforms? 

Answering FQ's + others comments on the CI video here.  I'm guessing it was cross-posted:

There wasn't much to say about the players besides their enthusiasm.  It really seemed like they were having fun with the crowd, each other and the troops who got involved.

Tsipis' speech was by far the most enthusiastic one I've heard outside of KH's when he got the GW job.  Value add.  Ritchie also gave a good speech.

Can't see it in the video, but Garino used his left arm on Armwood's shoulder to get up that high.  Still impressive and generally fun dunk contest.

Larsen beat Armwood in the sprint by holding him back as they ran down the court.  He's a load.

Pellom was there without a brace, but didn't see him do anything physical.

No camo unis, but they did give out camo GW caps.  For sale at the bookstore with a portion of proceeds going to a good cause.

 As I mentioned months ago, Garino will not have too much trouble covering  a big for short stretches. Back during the tourney at Gtown Prep, at the same time that everyone was making a push for Carrera, he smoked the Montrose player with a nice close in block going one on one at the hole.  He also rebounded well. (garino, that is). 

As I suggested, he is a modern day version of Walt.... more handle .... Like every other freshman, expect him to get stronger. (stupid thing to say, but the point is, I know he isn't Walt now, but he has the tools to be a special player).

I do have a question... when larsen pulled Armwood back on the sprint, did he get a Yellow Card?

I realize that this venture to The Fort has fallen a bit flat as a MM substitute, but it seems well intentioned, and, I hope it was well received. Maybe some of the grunts got a little time off, and enjoyed a bit of the Buff and Blue as well.

I'd like to see GW and the authorities at Fort Myer make some sort of continuing effort to carry their relationship forward: invite folks at the Fort to next year's season-opening ceremony, if its at the Smith; and reserve a block of seats for enlistees, every game. Someone suggested a buck off: I am sure we can do better. Over time, it will help GW become a program.