College basketball game delayed by bat attack

With Nevada leading 63-56 with 5:40 remaining, Sacramento State prepared to inbound the ball when a group of bats started pressing the bewildered Hornets. As players covered their faces and dodged the flying creatures, or possibly transfigured Transylvanian counts, the referees called a stop to the proceedings.

After a delay, the game resumed, and the Wolf Pack took control. They finished the game on a 14-7 run after subbing in the bats, as Sac State players couldn’t handle their pressure defense. Or their own fear of contracting rabies.

In the final seconds, the bats returned, perhaps to celebrate with their fellow denizens of the Lawlor Events Center in Reno. This time the referees let play continue, as Nevada was way ahead. Perhaps they felt affinity with the bats, since people ask the referees if they’re blind all the time.

Nevada coach Steve Alford doesn’t like the bats, or delaying games, even if the battiness helped slow Sacramento State’s momentum - they’d swooped back into the game after trailing by 16 points.

“It’s getting pretty embarrassing and it needs to be fixed,” Alford said of the bats, via Jim Krajewski of the Reno Gazette Journal. “We shouldn’t be dealing with bats,” he continued, evoking sentiments held by the Joker, the Penguin and the Riddler, among others.

The Wolf Pack aren’t the first basketball team to deal with bats. On Halloween night in 2009, a bat flew on the court of the AT&T Center. And Manu Ginobili of the San Antonio Spurs defied the bat’s sonar, slapping it out of the air like King Kong on the Empire State Building.

Unlike their coach, the Wolf Pack players have embraced the bats.

“We like it,” Nevada’s Hunter McIntosh said about the bats, via Krajewski. “We embrace it. It’s cool. It’s unique.”

The bat infestation does give Nevada an advantage at Lawlor. Perhaps it’s the home-court advantage Nevada deserves, but not the one it needs right now.