Volleyball players don't fly well, apparently

By and large, the mainstream sports media didn't really take notice of the Las Vegas Invitational's place in this weekend's hullaballoo along with the All-Star game, choosing to focus more on the M.A.G.I.C. convention and Chinese New Year's. In fact, the only reference we can find is on SLAM Magazine's website, where columnist Sam Rubenstein mentions sharing a plane with a girl's volleyball team that couldn't find a place to store their volleyballs. Rubenstein claims that his plane "sat on the runway for an hour, partially because" of this dilemma.

Rrrright. It took part of an hour to figure out where to store the volleyballs. Happens all the time since volleyball teams never travel...

Rubenstein continued:

Some rather crude gentleman heading to Vegas, made an unfortunate joke about balls, and me and Khalid just looked at each other with the “here we go” understanding. Another girl on the volleyball team was in tears, presumably because she was afraid of flying.

The first part of that snippet seems pretty typical of the weekend. The second part, well, we're not buying it. "Presumably"? Because volleyball players are known for their inexperience with air travel? If you see a basketball player crying at a ski resort, is it fair to presume that he's crying because he's afraid of riding the lift?

Frankly we're surprised there aren't more stories out there about the colliding of basketball/volleyball, but we'll wait a few days to let them filter through the grapevine, which owes us after giving us no warning at all about Jeff Nelson and the Lobos.