Training camp begins for the Towson University football team next Monday, so this will be my final installment of odd occurrences during my 25 years traveling with the Tiger football, men's basketball and men's lacrosse teams. I have saved this one for last because what should have been an easy trip turned into an absolute nightmare.

The 2010-11 Towson men's basketball team was not a successful one. When the Tigers defeated La Salle on Dec. 29, 2010, 93-60 in overtime, it would be the last victory of the season. The team would lose its final 17 games. That win over La Salle would also be the final victory in the Towson career of head coach Pat Kennedy. But that has nothing to do with this story.

The date: January 26, 2011. The destination: Fairfax, Virginia for a matchup with the Patriots of George Mason. Game time: 7 p.m. It never happened.

The team gathered on a very overcast, cold Wednesday afternoon at the loading dock of the Towson Center. We were supposed to leave at 2 p.m., stop for a meal, and then proceed to the Patriot Center for the contest against George Mason. But, as was the norm in those days, the 2 p.m. bus wasn't leaving at 2 p.m. We probably got on the road around 2:30 p.m. Now, under normal conditions, it should take a little over an hour to get to George Mason from Towson. What transpired were not normal conditions.

The one thing you always have to worry about when traveling to the DC area, is traffic. Especially rush hour traffic. We left Towson and by the time we hit I-95 south it was starting to flurry. It was right about that time I fell asleep on the bus. I woke up a little later to find we were just hitting I-495. I remember looking at my phone to see what time it was and thinking we are really making good time.

Uh-oh.

About five minutes later we stopped making good time. As a matter of fact, we stopped period. Here's a snippet of the official National Weather Service description from that day: Conditions deteriorated rapidly as heavy precipitation overspread the region at the start of the late rush hour. Colder air moved into the area during this time, allowing precipitation to turn quickly to sleet and then into heavy snow. There were many reports of thunder and lightning occurring with the sleet and heavy snow. Heavy snow continued into the evening hours with snowfall around two to three inches per hour during the height of the event.

The key words in that paragraph were the first three "conditions deteriorated rapidly." The federal government decided to shut down early, so everyone was leaving work at the same time while the snowfall was causing hazardous driving conditions. We were stuck on 495. I mean we didn't move for an hour.

It got to be around 5:30 p.m. when Pat Kennedy called then-George Mason coach Jim Larrañaga and told him we were stuck. They decided to push back game time to 8 p.m. I am listening to this thinking "good luck." Around this time the bus driver decided maybe if he got off of the beltway and took a back way we would be better off. Nope. As we got off the exit the bus got stuck trying to get up the ramp. He tried for a half hour to get the bus to move. Nothing would work.

At one point, he asked us all to get off the bus. Here we all are standing in this blizzard, watching the bus trying to move. We had a freshman guard by the name of Dre Connor. Dre was from Lauderdale Lakes, Florida and had never seen snow. I was standing next to him as he was calling his mother on her cell phone. I will never forget him saying to his mother "Ma, it looks like the end of the world here. I don't think we're gonna make it through the night."

It was right around that time that Pat Kennedy came up with an idea. Pat always wore the same tan trench coat. He offered the bus driver to put his coat under one of the tires to try and get some traction. At this point the bus driver was game for anything. So Pat puts the coat under the tire and the bus driver hits the gas. Within seconds snow wasn't the only thing flying around, so were the hundreds of shards of Pat Kennedy's beloved trench coat. Back to the drawing board.

I honestly don't remember how the bus got unstuck, but we finally got moving again. For about a minute. Kennedy and Larrañaga got on the phone again and postponed the game until 9 p.m. Again, I'm thinking good luck. By this point, half the busses cellphones were dead because no one thought to bring a charger for a one-hour trip down, the game, and then a one-hour trip home. The entire bus was starving. Up ahead in the distance was a burger place. We decided to pull in since traffic wasn't going anywhere. The problem was that there credit card machines were down, and between the entire bus there wasn't a whole lot of cash. Finally the manager agreed to take down assistant coach Jim Meil's credit card number and feed us.

Back on the bus, by this time we realized we were never getting to George Mason. The next problem was where to sleep. All the hotels and motels were booked because thousands of commuters had given up trying to get home. Everywhere you looked there were abandoned cars. It was an unreal scene. The game got rescheduled to the next day. The coaches were scrambling through the bus trying to find anyone who had any juice left in their phones to try and find a hotel or motel that could take us.

Much like I can't remember how the bus got unstuck, I can't remember what hotel we finally stayed in. All I know is we didn't get there until around two o'clock in the morning. Twelve hours to get from Towson to Northern Virginia. Crazy.

The game was played the next afternoon and to no one's surprise, the Tigers got crushed 84-58. The CAA publicly reprimanded Towson for missing the regularly scheduled game time. That was a little much if you ask me. If the CAA officials had been on that bus for 12 hours they would have known we had all been punished enough. No one who was on that bus will ever forget it.

Next week we will start taking a look at the 2016 Towson football team.

Until then, GO TIGERS!!!