After crashing pretty hard on Friday night, I got up Saturday morning and headed straight for the breakfast table in the hotel lobby. On the way there, I ran into none other than (JMU WBB head coach) Kenny Brooks, who I had never been so happy to see in my entire life. Knowing that I had finally caught up with the girls, who had been anywhere from 4-10 hours ahead of me for most of the previous day, was really comforting. I wished him luck and told him I was not-so-secretly rooting for him (I'm clearly bad at being "objective" at times) and continued into the lobby so that I could drink my weight in orange juice.
Most of the girls came through the lobby while I was eating. Some recognized me and said hi; some probably recognized me, but were stuck inside their own head wondering why/how the hell I was in Stillwater with them; a few had no idea who I was (bench players who don't ever go to pressers). Either way, it was cool to feel like I really belonged to a team or a movement that was this big, even though I clearly don't play women's basketball.
I spent the morning driving around Stillwater, seeing what there was to be seen... well, it turns out there isn't much of that in Oklahoma. I pass several fast food places, an inordinant number of Conaco gas stations, and one rather large and strangely placed refinery plant and... suddenly I was out of Stillwater and back in BFN. I kept driving because I had literally nothing else to do, but even that got boring after about 10 miles, so I turned around and headed back to my hotel to watch TV until I needed to leave.
Then there was the game. We lost, and there was an issue with my press credentials. Honestly, I don't have much to add about the game that I didn't already write in the three stories I wrote for the paper. Oklahoma State deserves a lot of credit for playing a great game, shooting insanely well (60% from the field in the second half ). I thought the refs got caught up in the moment and ESPN's agenda, wanting to make OSU into "the good guys" and JMU into "the bad guys" because of the horrific plane crash that killed the Cowgirls' head coach in November. Foul calling was very inconsistent, and at one point, I tweeted that the refs were "handing out And 1 calls to OkSt like it was candy on Easter morning." That pretty much summed up my feelings. Other than foul calling, though, they seemed pretty on top of things, and they should be commended for that.
Lauren Whitehurst fouled out with about a minute to go, and that was heartbreaking to watch. I was just a few feet away from the bench, and that's really when the tears started to flow. Everyone was crying after the game, but it wasn't the "we lost" type of crying that tends to border on sore-loserdom. It was the "it's over, we'll never have this again" cry that, though sad to watch, really spoke to the character of this team. Above all things- winning, competition, even the game of basketball itself- these girls loved each other and they loved playing with each other. That much was very clear in their actions, and it was clear when I spoke to them multiple times throughout this postseason run. That's what made Lauren special, and that's what made this team special.
(and now I have to plug myself... for more on Lauren and her incredible career at JMU, check my career recap in tomorrow's paper)
I talked to Kenny after the game, and his pride in this team and their accomplishments was 100 times more pronounced than his disappointment in coming up short of the championship. And that's how it should be. I've always liked Kenny. People say this about coaches all the time, but KB is truly a class act who I enjoy being around.
After I had done everything I needed and taken care of business after the game, I started disrobing on my way to the car. I was wearing three layers of clothes in near-100 degree weather, so I was understandably on fire. Every parking lot within half a mile of the basketball/football complex was reserved for Oklahoma State cars and their crazy orange parking passes, so I had to park on the side of a gravel road (on the outskirts of BFN) probably a mile away from the stadium. Tie in hand, as I'm walking back to the car unbuttoning my shirt, a friendly lady from Oklahoma (Oklahoman? Oklahomian? Stillwater Resident? Person who can bear incredible heat? All of the above?) commented in my general direction, "Tie in hand, you must be coming from an interviw, right?"
"haha, no, actually I was press for the WNIT game."
And that felt weird to say. Still getting used to it I guess.
Now that I was in no particular rush, I took my time driving off of the Oklahoma State campus. OSU as a whole looks like a big college from a big town/small city that God just picked up and shifted to the middle of nowhere. Not only is the State campus bigger than the surrounding town, but it looks much nicer. Campus looks like an oasis to the blacktop strip that comprises the rest of Stillwater.
Still, as I'm driving back through campus, there are other noticable differences between JMU and Oklahoma State. The big thing that I noticed was the presence of fraternity houses. Instead of being hidden away in the depths of the city or various apartment complexes like at JMU, fraternity houses seemed like the cornerstone that the University's designers built around. It was easy to to imagine tons of students spilling out onto the sidewalks and corners of the campus from the Lambda Chi house that seemed to tower over the surrounding streets...
...wait, that's because it is actually towering over the streets. These frat boy geniuses had constructed a wooden platform, emptying out from their back porch, that raised 15 or 20 feet above the streets. A couple dozen lawn chairs were strewn across the tops of these platforms as guys reclined, shirtless, working on their minor in multitasking by tanning and shotgunning beers at the same time. One guy stood in the middle, chucking a football across the road to a guy standing on the sidewalk. He wore teal shorts and a button down long-sleaved shirt, despite the fact that it was approximately the temperature at which an oven cooks a pizza outside. He had a pair of Croakies covering his eyes that, in the 45 second span I spent watching him while I was stopped at a light, he moved from his eyes to the top of his head and back three separate times. He was barefoot, but if he had a closet full of Sperries to choose from, guess who wouldn't be surprised? This guy. (And the rest of America.)
As I sat continuing to watch this character, who would be more than welcome on USA, he grabbed a beer and tossed it to one of his friends. The friend looks at the beer, looks back at Croakies, and then sets the beer down on the ground. Croakies comes over, opens the beer, and shoves it in the guys face. The guy chugs the beer, and Croakies throws him another one and cracks a big grin to himself. He was clearly very impressed with his beer distribution skills. When the guys starts having trouble drinking the second one, Croakies starts laughing so loud I can hear him from my car. He starts giving double guns to his friends like he's the Expert Witness, and his friends shoot him back finger-pointing signs of approval.
Then, the light turned green, and I drove off.
I went to Wendy's to grab dinner after that, but as I stood in line, all I could thing was this:
Some things are universal, and douchebag is definitely one of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment