A pair of Gophers and Middle Tennessee fans set aside their differences for at least 10 hours to make the drive from Memphis to Milwaukee for the NCAA tournament first-round matchup between the two teams.
Audrea Phipps, the mom of Gophers freshman forward Eric Curry, tweeted a photo Wednesday evening of herself in a car wearing a Minnesota beanie next to a Middle Tennessee fan wearing Blue Raiders gear.
The tweet said "A car divided!! Headed to Milwaukee."
Curry and Middle Tennessee freshman guard Tyron Dixon are best friends and former high school basketball teammates at Southwest Christian Academy in Little Rock, Ark. The friends face off in first round of the NCAA tournament Thursday at 3 p.m.
Dixon is a starting guard for Middle Tennessee and Curry comes off the bench for the Gophers.
The old teammates connected over FaceTime two weeks ago, according to the Daily News Journal in Tennessee, and spent the time debating who has had a better freshman season.
Dixon told the Daily New Journal "[Curry] plays with a lot of energy, rebounds really well and he just wants to win just as bad as I do. You know we always talked about playing in the NCAA tournament but we never thought we'd play each other in our first NCAA tournament."
Phipps tweeted Sunday after the brackets were announced a photo of Curry and Dixon together and wrote "The rollercoaster of emotions are about to start!!! #TeamEC and #TeamDixon that live in one heart on the same court at the same time!!"
