Nevada arrives on red-eye to take on VCU

Red-eye flights to Richmond. An early arrival on Thanksgiving Day. Sleep, a shootaround and dinner at a hotel. That was the holiday itinerary for the Nevada basketball team, which plays Virginia Commonwealth tonight at the Siegel Center.

The Wolf Pack was scheduled to leave Reno, Nev., yesterday at 2:30 a.m. eastern time. After connections in Las Vegas and Atlanta, it was scheduled to arrive in Richmond around 9 a.m.

Nevada coach David Carter said he chose the unusual night flights because "if we left on Thanksgiving, we didn't want to take a chance on flight delays and getting there late that night. We thought it would be best to fly at night."

Nevada follows tonight's game with a bus trip to Chapel Hill, N.C. to play North Carolina on Sunday. Nevada's sports information office calculated the entire trip at 5,465 miles.

"In college basketball, you have a lot of tournaments or games over the holidays," Carter said. "I don't think we've ever spent Thanksgiving not playing a basketball game around that time. We're accustomed to that."

--Tim Pearrell