Thoughts from Florida

Thoughts from Florida

NOTE: I wrote most of this late one night as I sat awake at Dad’s house, just sitting and thinking. I don’t really remember what I wrote…

I’ve been in Florida for about 48 hours and I’ve only sneezed three times. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I should be completely overwhelmed by my allergies by now. A few minutes ago, I thought, “Hey! I’m breathing through my nose!” I am very sophisticated.

So far, I’ve seen almost everyone in my family, my friends’ nine-week-old baby and three people I hadn’t seen in several years. I hadn’t seen one guy since the late 90s. Technically, it’s now the late 2000s.

I have a job interview some time this week, but I don’t know when. The deal is that I’ll call some guy on Monday morning, then the guy will talk to me for a bit and maybe decide he wants to do a face-to-face interview some time this week. That’s super except I’m planning on going to Orlando this week, so I’ll need to change my plans. Of course, it’d be a lot easier to change my plans if I knew how I’d be changing my plans.

Lucky for me, I decided to rent a car, so I can make last-minute changes to my schedule. Unlucky for everyone else on the road, I got a Chevy Impala. Compared to the car I own, the Impala drives much like I imagine a tugboat drives. The blind spot might as well just be a posterboard that says “Watch out!” and I often imagine I’m trying to hug an oak tree when I grab the steering wheel. I think a lot of my impressions of the car are heavily influenced by the noxious smell that National included. I get the distinct impression that the dude who cleaned my car just opened the door, splashed a bottle of Clorox around and then sealed everything up.

My youngest brother is almost 10 months old. He’s always happy. I actually met him about seven months ago, just after he was born. Then, he just looked like every other baby I’d ever seen. But when I saw him yesterday, the first thing I thought was, “Holy cow… he looks just like I did at his age.” It’s almost creepy how similar we look. For his sake, I hope the trend doesn’t continue.

I’m being forced to consider the possibility that I could be offered a job here in Jacksonville. Since I left for college, I have consistently been opposed to living in Jacksonville, but I’ve never really been sure why. I think the main reason is that I was getting really bored with the city before I graduated high school. Maybe I think I’ll be bored if I move back here. That may be true, but I ain’t exactly livin’ la vida loca in Dallas either.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve been through phases defined by the stages of others’ lives. For instance, I remember when I entered the stage where everyone I knew started getting married. One after another, it seemed like everyone else was tying the knot. Then the babies started coming. A lot of the couples I know are on their second child. Now, some of the earliest to get married are beginning to consider divorce. What’s sad is that many of those couples were previously the couples having babies.

I don’t understand why people don’t take a little more time when deciding to get married. What they don’t realize is that divorce is rough on parents, but it’s their children who are really affected. They get married for a few years, have a kid, get divorced and they’ve moved on within a few years. But the kids won’t be moving on in a few years; it could be 10 or 20 years before the kids can move on.

A lot of people think I’m a pretty funny guy, and a lot of people think I’m an idiot who says stupid things. I know who’s who, and it doesn’t usually take me long to figure out what people think is funny. I met a couple friends for breakfast yesterday and I realized that, although I hadn’t seen either of them in a few years, I still knew exactly what kinda’ stuff would make them laugh. There’s no such thing as something that is empirically funny. Funny is nothing but a perception, and funny people can identify what other people perceive as funny, then use those things to make people laugh. If you don’t think I’m funny, you might consider that I simply don’t want to make you laugh.

My little sister talked me into playing Candy Land with her today. I think she may have hustled me. She kept saying stuff like, “Oh wow! You might win this game!” and “If you just land on that bridge, you’ll be in the lead!” But she just kept beating the crap out of me. We played like three games and I never had a chance in any of them. On its face, Candy Land appears to be totally based on luck, but I think she might have figured out a way to get an edge. After she killed me in Candy Land, we switched to “Gold Fish”, which I later realized was her own version of Go Fish. We each started with only four cards and I later found out that we were playing with a 47-card deck. Neither of us ever won, but after we finished each game, she’d say, “I don’t know why they didn’t put very many Aces in there… do you wanna’ play again?” I think she was playing some kind of mind game with me.

My big-little brother is a black belt in Karate. He was telling me how there’s one student in his class that consistently beats up on all the other kids. He told me this kid once beat every student in sparring, one at a time, in a class of 25 students who ranged from rank beginners to experienced black belts. When I went to observe his class today, he pointed her out to me: she was the 95-pound, thirteen-year-old, second-degree black belt instructing his class. I imagine she’s going to have a hard time finding dudes to date since she probably considers most boys to be pansies or sissies.

My cell phone doesn’t work in my Dad’s house, so I have to go drive around the neighborhood looking for a signal. Earlier this evening, I took a drive to check my messages and I had a couple voicemails and text messages. I realized I wouldn’t be able to return any of my messages if I went back to the house, so I decided to keep driving around while I got in touch with everyone. My plan was working out pretty well until I realized how dangerous it was to be driving around at night, in a rental car, in an unfamiliar part of town while thumbing out text messages on my phone. Did I stop? No. I just kept driving and texting while occasionally saying, “This is stupid.”

Same company, new job, new building

Same company, new job, new building

A couple weeks ago, I interviewed for a new internal job with my company. I got the job, but it’ll require me to commute with traffic both to and from work. I became increasingly concerned about this since every time I mentioned that I was moving to this new building, the conversation was always similar:

“Yeah, I’m moving down to the Dallas building.”
“Oh really? Where are you coming from?”
“North Plano.”
“Oh. Ah. EEEEEeeeewwwwwwww… That’s rough man [you should just kill yourself and be done with it].”

It was like I’d just punched the other person in the face, their portentous*, vicarious pain was off the charts. Yesterday I left at 4:30, which is about when rush hour starts getting nasty, and I was home in about 20 minutes. Today, I left my apartment at 7:45 and I was at work by 8:00. I’m pretty sure that’s a shorter drive than I was making to the old building, against traffic. I’m not getting too excited yet because this is a short workweek in the middle of vacation season, so traffic could just be unusually light.

One big perk to my new assignment is that I have a “one-man cube”. At my old building, one-man cubes were difficult tough to come by. The unwritten rule is that you have to be an E03 (read: “E-three”) or higher to get a one-man. E01 (new hire) and E02 (that’s me!) employees share a two-man cube. Obviously, the major driver for this “rule” is a lack of space in my old building. If they had the space, I’m sure everyone would at least have a one-man cube and maybe even a prestigious “high wall” appropriation, but because space is short, they’ve created these rules where the new people get to have cube-mates. The other day, I joked that they were going to have to start assigning co-ops and interns to bathroom stalls if the space problem isn’t dealt with. Anyway, there’s plenty of space in my new building, so I have a very spacious one-man cube.

* I wanted to use “portenful”, but dictionary.com says that ain’t a word, which is odd because I’m pretty sure Romeo screams out “I am portentful!” in Romeo & Juliet and “Shakespeare” repeats the word several times in Shakespeare in Love. Actually, I just checked Drew’s Script-O-Rama and neither movie script has the word “portentful” in it. Am I just imagining that I heard that word? I can totally see Joseph Fiennes saying it! I was kind of hoping it was one of those words that Shakespeare just made up, but that maybe it hadn’t survived to modern English. If that were true, maybe I would’ve looked smart or something. Now? Now, I just look like a doofus who’s written more about how he can’t remember stuff than about the topic of his post. Of course, that’s not even entirely true since I’ve clearly written more in the body of this post than in this asterisk (Is this an asterisk, footnote, aside? I have no idea). What’s my problem?

$55 tournament recap

$55 tournament recap

There’s really not a whole lot to report, but I’ll try to put up a recap some time tomorrow. There were 36 people and I finished 6th, just after the bubble burst. I was very happy with my play and I made some very good reads tonight.

Here’s my long, rambling recap:

This tournament seemed to be less about particular hands and more about surviving and taking advantage of situations. That being said, there were a few significant hands:

This time, we started with 6K chips, the first level of blinds was 25/50 and we played 20-minute levels. As it turns out, the 6K starting point would be significant.

First hand of the tourney, I picked up KTo in late position. There were two or three limpers in front of me, so I limped right along. The pot was 275, and I think five of us saw the flop of KT5 rainbow. I felt very good about this flop since the only hand that really scared me was a set of fives. The BB bet out 100 (pretty small bet that made me think he was drawing or had a weak King and wanted to know where he stood), two people called and I bumped it to 500. The BB and one other player called, and I had position for the rest of the hand. The pot was now about 1875 and the turn was a Queen, but I was only moderately concerned. At this point, I’m thinking I’m against a King and some kind of draw. The Queen did fill a draw, but it would’ve been to a gutshot straight and I know both players in the hand well enough to know they probably wouldn’t try to draw to a gutshot against me (they’d know their implied odds were low and that they’re not seeing a cheap river card). Both opponents checked to me and I bet out 800 (in retrospect, this bet was a little small, but I was mildly concerned that KQ may’ve just outdrawn me and I wanted to leave myself some options if someone came over the top for a big raise) and only the BB called. Now, I put the BB on either KJ or QJ as both hands would explain the betting so far. Many opponents will make a little bet out of position on the flop with flush and open-ended straight draws, but they will also make that little bet with something like top-pair, medium kicker. Also, if he had QJ or KJ, I could see him calling my raise on the flop, so he could re-evaluate after the turn. Both hands would also explain a call on the turn since he would have a pair and an open-ended straight draw. The pot is now 3475 and the river was a 9, making the board KT5Q9. The two cards I did NOT want to see were a Nine or an Ace. The BB checked and I quickly checked behind and said something like, “Let’s see it.” He showed QJ and his straight took it down.*

So, after the first hand, I was down to about 4500 chips. The good news was that we started with 6K chips, so I had some room to operate and try to get back in it. Unfortunately, the next few hands I played didn’t help me too much. Twice, I flopped the nut flush draw (once with a gutshot straight-flush draw), I flopped an open-ended straight draw, top pair and a few of other good hands, but I didn’t win any of them. I found myself down to about 3750 near the end of the first level. I was also realizing that I had a calling station to my left, which was going to make it difficult for me to make many moves using position. He liked to cold-call raises and he liked to min-raise regardless of his position (he min-raised several times out of the blinds with mediocre hands). The up-side was that I felt I had a good read on him, so I thought I could outplay him after the flop.

I was hanging in there, picking up the occasional small pot when I picked up 44 in early-middle position. The blinds were 100/200 and I limped because the table hadn’t been raising a lot, but there had been a lot of calling, so I thought I might encourage several limpers behind me to increase my potential set value. My plan back-fired when the guy to my left min-raised it to 400. I wasn’t too thrilled about the raise, but at least it was a min-raise, so I could see a relatively cheap flop. Everyone else folded, so I was heads-up with 44 out of position against the min-raiser. The flop came down KJx with two clubs. I checked and he checked. Initially, I checked just because I hated that flop and I didn’t want to go putting chips into a pot against a calling station when I knew he’d call with all kinds of hands (gut-shot, flush draw, any pair, etc.). Basically, the chances of my bet causing him to fold were extremely low (in fact, he would be correct to call any bet with many of his drawing hands, although he couldn’t necessarily know that) and I was prepared to give up on the hand if he bet… but he didn’t, which made me think I was ahead. Before this hand, he had always bet and raised with hands like top-pair, but he’d called with call kinds of draws. I figured my 44 was good, so I was hoping to see a safe card on the turn. The turn was another King and a club, making the board KKJx with three clubs. I considered this a very good card since I knew he would’ve bet with top pair on the flop and I figured it very unlikely that he had two clubs in his hand. Sure enough, he did the ol’, “Let me check and see if I have a club in my hand” routine, which told me he wasn’t suited and did not have two clubs. I decided to bet out. I figured if he folded, that was a good result since there could be a lot of scary cards to hit the river, but I figured if he called, I was still ahead and could re-evaluate the river. Sure enough, he called (I bet about 500, which was close to half the pot). When he called, I put him on AQ with one club. That hand would explain all the betting in the hand and I’d seen him call bets with nothing more than a gutshot several times already. The river was a non-club blank, but I decided I couldn’t bet for value because even a crazy calling station isn’t going to call bets on the turn and river with air. I decided to check and call a reasonable bet if he took a shot at it. He checked behind and showed AQ (no club), so I took the pot. Not only did I get a few chips in this hand, but my confidence level increased significantly. I guess to more experienced players, putting this guy on AQ would’ve been no big deal, but it seemed like a very good read to me. Also, my read on the BB in the first hand had given me some confidence.

The rest of the night was pretty straightforward, short-stack poker. I made some moves, got lucky, (mostly) got unlucky and found myself at the final table. Once we hit the final table, my cards dried up. I eventually lost count, but I had Q2, Q3 and J2 something like seven or eight times before I busted. I got lucky to outdraw 88 with A6o (straight on the river), AJ with KQ, and I busted with KT vs. AJ.

This tournament was more about psychology than technique. I was short-stacked early and seemed to be missing every draw, but I kept telling myself that I had plenty of room to work and I just had to keep my head. I don’t think I made a bad decision for a significant number of chips, and I made some difficult (but good) laydowns and crucial times. I also made some very good moves to keep afloat, and I was reading hands very, very well. There were also a few hands that, had they gone my way, would’ve given me a legitimate shot at winning the tourney (specifically, I lost an all-in against a shorter-stack with AK vs. AQ, and at the final table, it seemed like the short-stack always doubled-up regardless of how big a dog he was).

So, I bought in for $55 and won $70. I also got some points in our “TOC” race, so I’m currently at number 11, and the top 10 get a seat to the TOC. Basically, if I make another final table in the next two events, I should get a seat at the TOC.

*Later, this same opponent lost a pile of chips when another player hit his open-ended straight draw on the river. What was interesting was how upset this guy was that the other dude had outdrawn him. The betting was very similar to the betting in our first hand, but he didn’t seem to think it was such a great play now that he was the one losing chips. After the hand, the guy to my right said, “Ouch. That was a big pot.” I replied, “Yeah, but that’s exactly how he got most of his chips, so I guess it goes both ways.” Oh, and there was one big difference in the two hands: I didn’t put any more chips in the pot after he’d outdrawn me, but he put quite a few chips in the pot when he paid off a value bet on the river.

I am a Benevolent Leader (?)

I am a Benevolent Leader (?)

I think this thing may be giving me too much credit in the “benevolence” department, but I guess that’s not really for me to decide. It is what it is:

One too many mimosas?

One too many mimosas?

I may’ve driven to work behind Drinky McDrunkerson this morning. The driver in front of me couldn’t seem to keep between the lines despite the unusually wide lanes here (everything is bigger in Texas!). He would center it up, then expertly glide his way over to the rumble strip, then ease back into the roadway. This went on for about 15 minutes before he swayed across the centerline, into the right lane and just decided to stay there for a while. He was kind enough to get off at my exit, then stop a “Yield to ramp” sign, although we were the ramp and there was no other traffic. To his credit, he did have out-of-state tags, but I’m pretty sure it’s customary to drive between the lines in most other states.

I also had the pleasure of driving behind an “over-braker” for a while. These are my favorite. They swoop in from another lane, barely sneaking in between me and the car ahead of me. Then, once they’ve filled that little gap, they hit the brakes because, uh oh!, they’re too close to the car in front of them. Once they’ve made a little space for themselves, they realize that, “Wait a second… the only reason I’m in this spot is that I cut that dude off because he was following by exactly a car length! What if someone else cuts me off? I better fill that gap in front of me!” So, they speed up until, uh oh!, they’re too close to the car in front of them. Rinse, repeat.

New basketball season begins 1-0

New basketball season begins 1-0

Well, the summer basketball league has begun again and most of the usual team is intact.  The previous season’s PPG leader isn’t playing, but we picked up another guy who has some Juco experience.  We started out playing pretty poorly and found ourselves down by 13 early in the second half.  Things started to turn when we finally began clamping down on defense and getting some stops.  We got some turnovers, began executing on offense and starting slowly closing the gap.  Down the stretch, we ran some good set plays, hit some big shots and tied it up to send the game to overtime.  In the two-minute overtime, we outscored them 2-1, all on freethrows.  I felt like we were definitely the superior team for about the last 15 minutes of the game.  It felt good to get the win.

The highlights for me were few.  I only had six points, all on 3-pointers.  The first was in the first half, and it was a nice, high shot over a very tall defender.  The second was pretty critical as it was late in the second half, when we were still down by six.  A player in the left corner passed me the ball and I began to dribble to the top of the key when they double-teamed me.  One defender was a little behind me (on my left) and the other was coming up on my right from the freethrow line.  I dribbled the ball to my right hand, crossed it over behind my back (away from the approaching defender on my right, as he was coming in very low for the steal) to my left hand, pulled up and drained the 3-pointer to bring us within 3.

Anyway, we’re off to a good start, but next week we play the team that beat us by one in the championship game.  It’s gonna’ be a tough game.

$50 re-cap from tourney on June 3

$50 re-cap from tourney on June 3

  • 1st hand is AKo, I raise, get one caller. Flop is rags, I bet he calls. He bets turn, I fold.
  • 64o, limp in late position. Flop is K6x. All check to me, I bet, get one caller. Turn is blank, goes check check (I put my opponent on a stronger 6 than mine at this point). River is 4. He bets 3/4 pot, I call and win with two pair.
  • AQo in SB. Two limpers, I raise to 5x BB, only button calls. Flop is K-high, I c-bet, he calls. Turn is a T, I check, he bets, I fold, he shows T8o (nothing on the flop… no draws or anything else). Button was a very, very loose calling station.
  • TT UTG+1. UTG (loose calling station) calls, I raise to 4x BB, everyone folds to UTG who calls. Flop is King-high. UTG checks, I c-bet, he folds after much “thought”.
  • I’m in SB with 95o, there are two limpers. Flop is T65 with two spades. I bet 1/3 the pot, two people call. Turn is 9 (not great, not awful). I bet 2/3 pot, BB min-raises me, everyone else folds, I call. River is a blank, we both check, he takes the hand with T6o for a bigger two pair.
  • I’m BB with ATo. Everyone folds to SB who completes. Normally, I raise to try to win this right now (this same hand comes up later), but against a calling station, I’d rather see a flop. I check. Flop is three rags, we both check. Turn is a King. SB bets out for 1/2 pot. By now, I have a good read and a few tells on him. I watch his bet, watch his mannerisms, listen to him for a second and raise to 3.5x his bet. He thinks for a long time and folds AQo face up. Normally, I don’t bet against a calling station like this, but I knew he was bluffing and I’d seen him make laydowns when he had absolutely nothing on the turn.
  • Nothing happens for a while and I get moved to another table.
  • I fold about five hands and then get Q2s in BB. Everyone folds to SB who completes. I raise to 3x BB, he calls. Flop is JT6 rainbow. He checks, I c-bet 1/2 pot, he raises to a about 2.5x my bet. I “think” for a minute and fold. He shows 66 for a flopped set. Against this player, this play will win the pot (either pre- or post-flop) about 75% of the time.
  • I get moved back to my original table. First hand, I get TT in MP1. I raise to 3x BB, both blinds call (this is for about 20% or so of my chips). Flop is A3x. Blinds check, I c-bet 1/2 pot, SB calls, BB raises to 2.5x my bet, I fold, SB folds. BB shows 33 for a flopped set (I have to assume was playing for implied odds against the calling station loose guy because I didn’t have enough chips for him to try to hit a set. SB showed A7o for a pair of Aces on the flop. I’m officially short-stacked.
  • Next time I’m UTG (about 10 hands later), I get AA and move in for about 5x the BB. Everyone folds and I take the blinds. Sometimes, I’d get cute here and min-raise or limp, but with a couple guys still to act who I knew would call with Axs, two broadway (especially if suited) or any pair, I like the all-in.
  • A couple orbits later, I get Q6s in the BB. Calling station limps, everyone else folds, I check my option. flop is J29 with two of my suit. I move in, he folds. I would’ve made the flush and doubled-up if he called. Oh well.
  • Next time I’m in BB, my M is about 5, and I have T8s. After much ado, calling station min-raises, everyone folds to me. I make a big mistake and call. He obviously has a very big hand here (I put him on AA, KK, QQ) and I simply didn’t have enough chips to call even a min-raise here. I knew if I hit the flop hard, I’d double up for sure, but I still shouldn’t have called. Flop was AJx all hearts, he puts me all in out of turn and I fold.
  • Next orbit, I’m in SB with 57o. Two players (calling station and button) limp, I complete (getting 7:1 even though I’m very short on chips) and BB moves in. Everyone else folds, I count it down and realize I’m getting 2.5:1 to call. I figured I had to call if I had two live cards. I decided that before I put my chips in, I should try to get a read on BB. He’d been playing VERY tight since I sat down and I knew he wasn’t just making a move. He had a hand and I had to figure out how strong he was. I decided that if I took a read that he had a bigger pocket pair than my 7, I’d fold. I looked at him and immediately knew he was very strong. I decided to keep my few chips and see if I could get them in before the next BB. I folded 57o face-up and he showed QQ. This is NOT normally a laydown I will make. The only reason I completed the SB instead of moving in was that I knew I’d get called by at least the calling station and I just didn’t like my hand that much. I was getting 7:1 before BB’s raise, but only 2.5:1 after BB’s raise and I put him on an overpair. I like the fold, but I know a lot of players would really hate it. It wasn’t an easy laydown.
  • Next hand, I get 67o on the button, UTG limps, I move in (for less than 2x BB), BB calls and limper (calling station) calls. I miss the board, BB pairs Jacks on the river, I’m out.

All that took almost 3 hours and 8 levels of play. I was shocked at how much time had gone by. It just wasn’t my night. I also played a $40 buy-in tourney the next day, but I forgot to re-cap it. 

 

Fun with screaming!

I didn’t officially get the memo, but I’m pretty sure it’s National bring your kids to Chick-Fil-A and let them do whatever they please Day.  My frequent lunch stop is a Chick-Fil-A just down the street from my office.  Generally, the kids and parents congregate near the play area, which is conveniently located on the opposite end of the restaurant from where I sit.  The manager has explained to me that he tried to segregate the place to keep the kiddies from aggravating everyone else (yes, I know the manager guy and no, I don’t care how much of a loser I am).  Today, all the parents must’ve gotten together, given their kids copious amounts of caffeine and decided that the tables near the play area were off limits.  It all began innocently enough, but by the time I finished eating, there were about 4,200 kids sitting within three feet of me, and each of them was screaming, crying, jumping, banging, kicking or just generally being annoying.  Curiously, I could only count about three parents among the crowd, and all of them seemed more interested in just sitting there than keeping their kids away from my table.  Not surprisingly, it was very difficult to read my book, eat, and not want to smash a butterfly.   

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Women’s College Softball will be big

I’m not kidding. I just turned on ESPN, which is currently showing College Softball, and immediately thought, “What are all these pretty girls doing on TV? Oh look, they’re playing softball! … … … Softball isn’t such a bad sport. Did she just make a diving catch?! … … … She’s cute.” They even do a bio for each player.

Reasons it will be big:

  • There are pretty girls
  • The pretty girls look very, very serious, which escalates the unintentional comedy factor and sometimes makes them even prettier
  • It’s on during the off-season for football and basketball
  • The sport gets significant TV time (because of the previous point)
  • This seems like the kind of pseudo-cult thing that twenty-something and college guys love
  • The game is slow enough that viewers can actually get to know each player
  • It’s a lot like baseball, but not handicapped by the things that make women’s basketball so unwatchable

I’m going to open a Women’s College Softball merchandising company now. It would really help if someone made a mocumentary-type movie about Women’s College Softball (a la Dodgeball)… I’ll start working on that, too.

EDIT: There are even girls who get a running start before they swing, like Happy Gilmore hitting a golf ball! How did I miss this for so long?

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My 2006 Final Four experience: Making a run

For the first time since 2000, we coasted through the opening weekend of the NCAA Tournament. We had home court advantage in Jacksonville and neither South Alabama nor UW-Milwaukee gave us much of a game. Regardless of how we did from the Sweet 16 on out, I think Gator Nation collectively breathed a huge sigh of relief. We finally made it out of the first weekend and we would get to see at least one decent basketball game during the tournament.

Through that next week, I was pretty nervous about the upcoming Georgetown game. Everyone knew they were a good team and they would match up well against the Gators. Their guards were solid, their front-court was big and agile, and their offense was exactly the kind of offense that could take us out of our game plan. The Princeton style offense that Georgetown runs uses the same ideas that Izzo had used to defeat us in years past–slow the game down, take your time on every possession and don’t let the Gators get out and run.

The day of our Sweet 16 game, I recruited a friend of mine, gave him a Gators hat and aggravated him for four straight hours by continuously babbling about great the Gators are. “Man, we’re really fun to watch. I’m telling you, we can really move the ball!” Gator basketball just isn’t the same without other Gators cheering around me. My buddy isn’t a Gator, but I made him an honorary Gator for the evening and he was a good sport about it all. The game went right down to the wire and we finally sealed it when Corey Brewer made a crazy circus shot while falling to the floor as he was fouled. I immediately knew that, should we go on to the Final Four, this would be the requisite game-saving shot that each team needs to go the distance.

That night, we also watched the Villanova game. Seeing them play made me very nervous. This was the team who’d bounced us in 2005 and they were very physical, athletic and their guards could flat shoot. I wondered whether our team could hang with them. They basically just bullied Boston College for 40 minutes and I knew they’d try the same thing against us. The referees were letting them play, and I knew that, historically, we didn’t do well against very physical teams. The reason that Kentucky beat us so many times from 2000 to 2004 was that they just played harder than we did, pushed us around and got into our heads. Villanova would try to do the same thing.

That Sunday, I watched the game from my couch. This time, I couldn’t recruit any other Gators–honorary or otherwise–to join in. This was the most important Gator basketball game in almost six years and I was watching it in an empty living room; it was depressing and exhilarating at the same time. I tried not to get my hopes up, but I’d already started looking at plane tickets to Florida in case we won. It didn’t take me long to realize that we were going to run over Villanova. I almost couldn’t even believe what I was seeing: our team was right in their faces, contesting every shot, and matching their physicality stride for stride. Our guards totally shut them down from behind the arc. This game was a coaching masterpiece for Billy Donovan–all he had were mismatches all night, and yet he found a way to stop them from scoring and ran a coherent, effective offense against their swarming guards. All of a sudden, we were going to the Final Four!

The game hadn’t even ended and I was already calling my friends in Gainesville and leaving voicemails everywhere: “Hey, let me know what y’all are doing for the Final Four. If you’re going to Indy, let me know and I’ll go ahead and book a ticket. If you’re staying in Gainesville, I’ll just fly out there. Just let me know so I can book something.” There was no way I�d be watching a Florida Final Four game by myself, I just wouldn�t let it happen. The next morning, they called back and we decided to rendezvous in Gainesville. I immediately booked a ticket and planned to stay in Gainesville through Monday night. At first, I was a little disappointed that we weren’t going to watch the game in Indy, but then I realized we were going back to the Final Four and I was going to watch it all right in the heart of Gator Nation. I didn’t know what it would be like watching the game in Indiana, but I knew what it was like watching the games in Gainesville back in 2000 and that was definitely where I wanted to be.