Time To Play

As promised I said I would recap my first 2 nights of playing time. My First game that I played in validated me as a Division one Basketball player. The team: Stetson University, the night: November 21, 2009. It was an even matched game throughout the night.( making me believe I would not be making my first appearance in the game. With four minutes to go we were down 2 points and all I was hoping for was a win at this point. Then miraculously with 1:30, to go we were up 8 and the Barclay Believers (Rowdiest fans in the Big SOUTH. Shout out to the football team) were chanting “we want Sweeney”… With 35 seconds left to go, Coach Rade called my name. At first I was stunned, like who? Me? Then I sprinted to the scorer’s table. After two years of division 3 basketball, one redshirt year, approximately 100 practices, countless weightlifting sessions, numerous 6am pickup games on Friday and Saturday morning, incalculable times shooting in the gym, and 5 years after I committed myself to playing division 1 basketball at the dinner table at my neighbor’s house in Pennsylvania, I accomplished my goal. Those 35 seconds was nerve-racking to say the least. I didn’t want my first collegiate outing to be a trillion. This is 1 minute played followed by 0 in the stat sheet for everything else. Luckily I was able to make the most of my time and secure a precious rebound.

My second collegiate experience was a game that I knew I was going to play in because it was against an inferior opponent, at the Buc Dome. The anticipation to get more then 35 seconds of playing time was quite exciting. Before I knew it, the game was passing by like a blur. It was the second half with 14 minutes to go and we were up pretty big. I was thinking my time would be coming in a few minutes, then coach called my name and I was in. The first time touching the ball, I drove baseline and skipped the ball to a wide open teammate who missed the shot, blowing my assist. (I will not name the teammate due to the respect I have for my team) Next time I pumped fake and went around the defender and shot a floater off the glass that was ¾ the way in then bounced out. Then I had a steal on the defensive end using my cat like quickness. (or probably just got lucky) My goal was to get a 3 pointer up and I did right in front of the student section and it was just short. At this point I was subbed out, (Thank God because I needed a breather at this point) that was more minutes than I get in practice some days. Just before the 4 minute mark I was subbed back in. This may not mean much to some people but it meant a lot to me. This meant at the next dead ball with less than four minutes there would be a media timeout. The team comes to the bench and the players in the game sat down and everyone else goes behind the bench. For the past year I had always had to go behind the bench, but I got to sit down and coach told me the strategy. I ended up with 2 rebounds in the final minute and our team had 99 points with less than 30 seconds to go. The crowd is now chanting because they want our team to score 100, and me to score. I am exhausted beyond belief at this point. The ball was passed to me and I’m telling myself to just get it to the rim. I let it fire and at first I thought it had a chance. Then I realized that it was way long. The remorse I felt by letting down the student section was immense. Some say that I couldn’t have made that shot if I wanted to. But in reality my good friends Austin and Joel (AKA Drogba) had both fired air balls and I didn’t want to out due them. Luckily in the last 25 seconds on the defensive end I was able to redeem myself and record my first blocked shot of my short division 1 career.

So in the first 5 games I have played in 2 games. (not bad) The only problem is in the other 3 games if I didn’t wear my jersey under my warm-ups no one would know because I keot the bench warm the whole night. But hey, someone has to do it.

As for no shave November, it was quite a success in my book. I grew out a decent beard then shaved it off and had the dirty Sanchez moustache for the last game of the month against Trinity. The problem is my upper lip moustache is so light I have seen middle school kids with a darker and more filled out moustache.