The moment I stepped off the airplane I was greeted by a voice-over recording of Tulsa's mayor welcoming NCAA guests. Signs adorn the airport floor, the light posts along the city streets, and just about anywhere you see a sign. It's like they hired the NCAA to come through and make sure there was one clear message around town: Welcome to Tulsa.

At baggage claim, I noticed a cameraman and reporter shooting some b-roll. It turns out they are with Teletul, a Spanish language television station in Tulsa, and I am making my Spanish TV debut as soon as they file their story. If we have any Spanish speakers reading this, let me know if they twisted my words! Everyone else, forgive me for looking like I just spent the last seven hours traveling, that was definitely an afterthought. The video will be posted on their Facebook wall. By the way, Melinda Booth in Communications & Marketing, your Facebook ads for Oakland are working. You might notice that on this station's wall there is mention of college basketball (which is not even in English), an ad for Oakland basketball comes up.

The next thing I notice, it's awesomely warm here, 86 degrees and windy. I actually saw somebody's hat fly off their head.

After checking in I get my first dose of vitamin D of the year and walk down to the BOK Center (which stands for Bank of Oklahoma). Unfortunately, I just missed the Oakland practice, but was in time for the tail of the media buffet. I'm used to the spread of free food at student events in the Oakland Center, and this was reminiscent of that (except they never seem to run out!). I touch base with our Oakland athletics guys, talk to a few from Memphis, annoy a Detroit News reporter while he tries to watch Bulter win at the buzzer, and then some.

The Tulsa World, the city's single daily newspaper, welcomed me into their remarkably modern, 103-year-old newsroom for a tour. Sarah Hart, assistant editor, listened to me go on and on about how Oakland's new head team physician and also a Beaumont physician, Dr. Joe Guettler, is an

interesting representation of the OU-Beaumont partnership for our new medical school. You can read his notes on Facebook "Inside the locker room." I also let Hart know about our two bus loads of students coming down for the tournament game, which piqued her interest. Hopefully we'll see the epitome of Oakland spirit in the Tulsa World.

Judging by my tour through the hometown newsroom of Oral Roberts -- the team that Oakland defeated to win the Summit League Tournament -- we're actually on pretty friendly ground. And Coach Greg Kampe had mentioned in an Oakland Post article that ORU would let them practice at their facility. Oklahoma has no teams of their own to root for in the NCAA Tournament this year, and to avoid quoting somebody who probably didn't think I'd be quoting them, it doesn't sound like the locals favor Texas. Hopefully we will have a pseudo home court advantage tomorrow. If anything, "Go Oakland" is a very easy switcharoo for "Go Oklahoma."