BECB On the Road Day 1: Indianapolis

As you may or may not have heard, your managing editors of BECB (Robert O'Neill + Christopher Novak) are on a roadtrip from Missouri to New Jersey, where Chris lives.

We've done this trip before. It's awful, to be honest with you. Mid-Missouri to St. Louis is a terrible drive, Southern Illinois is terrible to drive through, and by the time you hit Indiana, you're so drained your only saving grace is Indianapolis.

We decided we were going to make this trip a bit different than years past, though. We decided we'd spread it out and make stops in Indianapolis and Cincinnati, check out Butler and Xavier and other things along the way.

Without further ado, here's a photo journey of day 1. Enjoy.

We don't really have many pictures from Missouri or Illinois. Again. It's a terrible drive, there is nothing photo-worthy. If you really want a picture of the Gateway Arch, let us know in the comments.

Indianapolis

As we rolled into the city we checked into our hotel and were starving. We knew we were going for pork tenderloin but had to find the best place. Enter this fantastic website. We knew people in Indiana took their pork tenderloin about as serious as they take their love for Larry Bird, so a full website wasn't surprising. It was very helpful, however. We landed on The Aristocrat Pub in Broad Ripple. And it was every bit as good as advertised.

Yes. That's a pork tenderloin. Yes. It was about the size of the entire plate. Yes. It was delicious. NOT PICTURED: The awesome house-made beer cheese dip we had as an appetizer, one of the best appetizers I've had in recent memory. After we finished our delicious feast, we realized we were only a couple miles from the Butler campus. The plan was originally just to eat and go back to the hotel, but we figured we'd explore a little. A short trip down the road, and there it was. Hinkle Fieldhouse.

As huge college basketball fans, we were in awe just being outside. Even outside the building there's a certain mystique that is only matched at a few venues in the country. After a few minutes outside Hinkle, we walked around the surrounding area and got pictures of the Butler Bowl and the Blue II Memorial. You can see both below.

Had our night ended right there, neither of us would have complained. And we thought it did. We made the drive back to our hotel. As we were heading inside, we had the following Twitter conversation with Butler Blue

@becb_sbn Well, Pops is off playing Indy 500 these days so it's gonna be tough to catch me w/o him. But if you are free tonight...

— Butler Blue III (@ButlerBlue3) May 15, 2025

Without even thinking twice, we doubled back towards the car and headed back to Hinkle. Once we got back, there he was. Butler Blue. In the flesh.

As if meeting him wasn't good enough, we also were invited into Hinkle for an all-access tour. Pictures of that can be found below.

As awesome as Hinkle was on the outside, it was even better on the inside. Big East Coast Bias would like to thank everyone involved with the Butler Basketball program for the hospitality. Friday will bring us to Cincinnati, where we'll check out Xavier, eat Graeter's, and watch the Reds take on the Giants. We hope you check back again Saturday morning for our recap of Friday!