A proud day for daddy, yesterday. My kids are getting addicted to college basketball. All of them.
Yesterday afternoon I took Paul and Jackson to the Aztecs game versus Fresno State. It was JT’s third game overall but first game of the season.
Paul is hot and cold about the games as he goes to a bunch of them. His interest tends to fade in the middle, while really getting into the opening parts and the ending. But Jackson was pretty interested in the game (and goldfish crackers & Oreos) and cheered along as San Diego State blew out Fresno.
On the way home the boys had a blast playing with their new giant foam fingers. I had to capture this… it was hilarious.
Watching a Game on TV?
At 6:00 PM I sat down to watch two games… alone. UNLV was playing New Mexico at the same time Notre Dame took on Louisville. I flipped back and forth for the first half but the UNLV game was much more interesting than the Notre Dame game. At some point Megan asked why I was watching the UNLV vs. New Mexico game, so I explained that if UNLV beat New Mexico that would be good for SDSU… and it clicked. She got it and understood why I wanted UNLV, a rival, to win.
Jackson and mom went to bed about halfway through the second half. They’d had enough.
Then I flipped back to the Notre Dame game to watch the end. It was ugly. Louisville was ahead and the Irish couldn’t get it together. That is, until Jerian Grant went all Reggie Miller on Louisville, scoring 12 points in 47 seconds to put it into overtime.
Sidenote: When Reggie Miller scored 8 points in 9 seconds against the Knicks Rick Petino was the head coach. Jerian Grant scored 12 points against Louisville and the head coach was… Rick Petino.
The older kids got interested as it went into overtime.
That’s when the magic started to happen in South Bend. Weird shots went in. Overtimes mounted. And we all got more and more into it.
5 overtimes. 25 additional minutes of basketball without a TV timeout, without a bunch of fouls to slow the pace of the game, without starters in the game. Just a bunch of practice players duking it out until the buzzer– and coming up tied each time.
By the time Notre Dame finally won at almost 10:00 PM (1:00 AM Eastern time) we were all exhausted and excited because we’d seen something special.
That’s how addictions start, right? Innocently enough.
If you haven’t seen the highlights, and I don’t know how that’s even possible, here they are.
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