College hoops fan finishes his quest to see every Division I team in person

Listen Comment on this story Comment Gift Article Share

Early in his quest to see every Division I men’s college basketball team play in person, Craig Caswell resolved that he would travel to see the last school play at home. Caswell’s wife and most frequent travel companion, Jaclyn Meyer, lobbied to finish the journey in Hawaii, but when the Rainbow Warriors played a nonconference game at Illinois in November 2019 — the program’s farthest trip east in more than a decade — Caswell, who lives outside Dayton, Ohio, decided the opportunity to cross another team off his list without getting on a plane was too good to pass up.

Hawaii, which lost to the Fighting Illini that night, was the 330th Division I team Caswell saw play. Three years and 34 teams later, Caswell completed his quest Saturday at Bender Arena, where he watched American lose to visiting Lehigh with Meyer, his mother and his brother by his side.

“This feels more like a milestone than a conclusion,” Caswell wrote in an email Sunday. “I’ll still go to more basketball games this season and beyond, only now with a fresh air of confidence with this achievement under my belt.”

Caswell’s college basketball odyssey spanned 21 years and took him to 442 games in 131 venues. The first Division I college basketball game he attended was Dayton’s 83-59 rout of George Washington on Jan. 9, 2002, at UD Arena. It was his second game, as a wide-eyed freshman at Bowling Green nearly seven years later, that lit the spark for his impressive and unusual quest.

A Detroit Pistons fan who didn’t pay much attention to college hoops growing up, Caswell, 32, walked into Bowling Green’s Anderson Arena for the first time in the fall of 2008 and grabbed a seat in the front row for a game against Wayne State. He felt a bit like Spike Lee sitting courtside at Madison Square Garden, and he was hooked. Caswell went to most of the Falcons’ home games that season and again as a sophomore, when he made trips to see games at Wright State, Akron and Kent State.

The quest entered Caswell’s mind during his junior year.

“I thought: ‘I love to travel, and I love college basketball. How feasible would it be to see every team in Division I?’ ” he said. “I was determined to basically consume as much college basketball as I could going forward. All the years since have involved a lot of deliberate planning to try to achieve that goal.”

In 2011, Caswell planned a vacation to the Outer Banks the week between Christmas and New Year’s with Meyer, who was his girlfriend at the time. The itinerary included stops at the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach and the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, N.C. — as well as games at Richmond, Virginia and VMI. Caswell saw six new teams on the trip, bringing his total to 67.

“That trip to the Outer Banks was the first vacation that I took without my family,” Meyer said. “We had such a blast, and I hardly remember any of the basketball.”

Meyer has joined Caswell at dozens of games in the decade since, and she has embraced his planning vacations around the college basketball schedule. They have developed a routine for the new schools they visit together. If they arrive early enough, they like to walk around campus to take in the architecture and visit the bookstore. In the arena, they stroll the concourse, comparing it with places they have been before. Once in their seats, Caswell checks out the game preview on KenPom.com. Their basketball trips often involve stops at disc golf courses — a shared passion — and sampling new cuisines.

“There’s no way I could’ve done this without her,” Caswell said.

That was certainly true on a harrowing trip to Niagara to see the Purple Eagles play St. Peter’s on Jan. 13, 2012. A drive that should have taken five hours took closer to eight, thanks to a snowstorm that forced Meyer to shout directions “like a NASCAR spotter” from the passenger seat after they crossed the Ohio-Pennsylvania border.

“We roll up to the gate, 12 minutes before tip-off, looking completely haggard,” Caswell said. “A woman came up and said: ‘Here’s two tickets. You guys look like you could use them.’ ”

On a subsequent trip to see Tennessee Martin host Samford, Caswell bought general admission tickets. The couple found seats in his favorite spot — center court, eye level with the rim — on a side of the arena that was otherwise completely empty. A game day operations employee walked over, looked at them quizzically and asked, “Y’all aren’t Samford fans, are ya?”

Caswell told the woman about his quest. A few minutes later, he and Meyer were announced as the winners of the “Best Seat in the House” promotion sponsored by a local furniture company and were relocated to a couple of courtside La-Z-Boys.

“We were laughing because we went from my favorite place to sit to the baseline, which is my least favorite place to sit,” Caswell said.

Caswell tracked his progress through the years on a meticulously organized spreadsheet. During a trip to Las Vegas in March 2016, he attended 10 games in five days at three venues hosting conference tournaments and added 15 teams to his quest. According to his master list, Caswell has seen Bowling Green more than any other team (57 times), followed by Wright State (52), Dayton (41) and Cincinnati (17). He has attended games in 36 states and, as of Saturday, Washington.

“It’s kind of poetic, as a civil servant, to end it at American,” said Caswell, who works as a program analyst for the Air Force.

Caswell has been to several classic college basketball venues, including Indiana’s Assembly Hall, Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium, Butler’s Hinkle Fieldhouse and Kentucky’s Rupp Arena, where he sat courtside for a 2011 game against Georgia. His favorite arena, Pittsburgh’s Petersen Events Center, might come as a surprise.

“I’m 5-foot-5,” Caswell said. “If I’m in an arena that is built out instead of up, like at Dayton, oftentimes I have a hard time seeing. Petersen Events Center has great sightlines and is a more intimate venue, and the Oakland Zoo is one of the most underrated student sections in all of college basketball.”

At the start of the 2022-23 season, Caswell was 12 teams shy of completing his quest. He knocked out Lindenwood — one of five schools making the transition to Division I this year — in early November and saw Kansas in person for the first time eight days later. Caswell made December trips to Dallas and the Bay Area for games, and he drove to Indiana to watch Stonehill, another Division I newbie, visit Valparaiso before Christmas.

This month, Caswell and Meyer flew to San Antonio and then drove four hours to see Abilene Christian, his 363rd team, play Sam Houston State. That left American as the only Division I school Caswell had yet to see.

Caswell and his family arrived in D.C. in a rental car Friday afternoon and visited the observation deck at Washington National Cathedral. On Saturday morning, they explored the campus at Howard before making their way to American and doing the same. At the box office, Caswell purchased tickets in Section 105 near the free throw line. He said Bender Arena reminded him of other Patriot League venues he has visited and said that while it’s not terribly remarkable, it “carries its own independent charm.”

“Traveling around to these games, it’s almost like being let into a special tribe for a single night,” he said. “It’s: ‘Welcome to our tribe. We’ll show you how we do it. We’ll show you our traditions. We’ll show you what’s important to us.’ I love that the majority of Division I toils away outside the spotlight, but N.C. A&T basketball is just as important to the folks that support N.C. A&T as Carolina basketball is at UNC.”

With no schools making the jump from Division II to Division I next year, Caswell’s quest will be complete for the foreseeable future. The list of teams he has seen includes Savannah State, which dropped to Division II before the 2018-19 season, and Hartford, which will transition to Division III in the fall.

Going forward, Caswell will focus on adding new venues to his spreadsheet. He is especially eager to visit the Palestra in Philadelphia, UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, Kansas’s Allen Fieldhouse and perhaps catch a glimpse of Lee at Madison Square Garden. Oh, and he has never been to Stan Sheriff Center in Honolulu, home of the Rainbow Warriors.

“We’ll get to Hawaii at some point,” Meyer said.

GiftOutline Gift Article