(link)
Early March is a strange time in Minneapolis. The weather is schizophrenic to the point where you can see people running outside in short sleeves and snowblowing in arctic cat onezies within the same 6 hour period. People are confused as to whether the Twins are going to be awful or god-awful this Summer. But the strangest thing to me this weekend was that I found myself alone, in my living room, at 3:00 pm Central time, pacing nervously back and forth watching a college basketball game.
A note about history. My dad and I used to go to Williams Arena and sit in what were actually the worst seats in the stadium. Obstructed view, 2nd to last row*, upper deck, long way from the bathrooms and not even close to the aisle. We went to a ton of home games the year Bobby Jackson and Sam Jacobson took the Gophs to the Final Four.** It was a good time, especially for an 11 year old. Then the gophers got caught for some stupid things and were bad for a decade and change. Michigan hoops was an underachieving, awful, woe is me, unlikable group while I was in college.
Not anymore. Not eh-nee-moar. Am I a fair weather fan? Maybe. More likely I was just burned and then disappointed and possibly just completed the healing process. To my former roommates, I’m now the optimistic college basketball fan, now.
Fast forward to yesterday (or just hit the “live” button on your DVR remotes) and I’m nervously striding the same 20 foot path back and forth for two hours straight. Michigan-Sparty in Ann Arbor, both temporarily in the top ten in the AP rankings. So yeah, kind of a big deal. Most pundits were picking MSU to wax ol’ Blue just like they did a few weeks ago in East Lansing, but your forever optimist was still that way. In most good hoops contests, it’s back and forth for a while and really only the last 8-10 minutes matter. A run here, a run there, you usually don’t win or lose the game in the first 30. This game, no different. With about 6 minutes to go and Sparty looking to take the game over, they decided to slap Trey Burke’s the floorboards.***
This was a bad idea. Trey Burke, usually a robot of point guard efficiency, got fired up and literally stole the game. At the end, I figured Sparty would pull out some Wisconsin Miracle 3-ball garbage and I’d suffer another disappointment. But,
Victory good guys. Just a friendly reminder of one of life’s best aphorisms:
Because he’s better than you at basketball.
_________________________________________________________________________
*This is important. The last row at least had a backrest, as my dad pointed out, and you could lean against it.
**Asterisk-asterisk-academicfraud-asterisk-IDONTCAREITWASAWESOMETOBETHERE.
