The Final Four
This past weekend I had the grand opportunity of going down to San Antonio for the Final Four, which is what I consider the most exciting sporting event every year. Although I did not have the chance to attend any games, the festivities surrounding the games we well worth the trip.
I was initially invited to attend the Final Four by one of my best friends, EJ Kusnyer, and I accepted the offer without hesitation. EJ's dad works for Adidas, and helps run the Adidas booth at the NABC Final Four convention, so he was able to get us into all the major events/parties surrounding the Final Four.
My journey began right after my Apocalypse class last Thursday, which let out at 1:50pm; by 2pm I was flying down I-20 head for Dallas, where I would pick up EJ and then drive through the night to San Antonio. At first I didn't know if I would make it the whole way to Dallas because the night before I had stayed up until 6 in the morning studying for my visual culture test, which I had to take at 8am. So with only one hour of sleep the night before, I thought I might have to pull over and sleep on the side of the road. But, the excitment of getting to San Antonio overcame my sleepiness and I made to Dallas in under three hours. When I got to EJ's school to pick him up, he was working on a test, which took him almost two hours to finish. But once he finished, we loaded up the car, filled up on gas, and hit the road around 8pm.
On the way we stopped in Austin around 11pm to eat dinner with my little brother, Jared, and my friend Christine, who attend the University of Texas in Austin. After we finished eating, we hit the road once again; but, I had just gotten on the highway when I realized that I was going to pass out from exhaustion, so I pulled over and let EJ drive. We finally made it to San Antonio around 2am. We were staying in EJ's dad's hotel room so he had waited up for us; and once we got into the room we went straight to bed.
The next day we woke up at around 11am and headed to the NABC(National Association of Basketball Coaches) expo/convention. Inside the convention there were tons of booths set-up with the newest line of basketball products, from clothing to equipment to shooting machines. First, we went to the Adidas booth to meet up with EJ's dad and I looked around at some of the new team shoes and clothing, some of which our school will order for us new year, hopefully. It was at the adidas booth where I got the chance to meet and talk to Nolan Richardson, the head coach who lead Arkansas to 3 straight Final Fours, and won the 1994 national championship. After talking with Coach Richardson, EJ and I walked around the expo looking at the different booths. The most interesting booth was a booth that was selling a product called Noah. Noah was a shooting machine that helped players with their shooting arch, specifically helping with free throws. Noah was a computer program hooked up to a huge speaker system that was electronically linked to the ball, and when a player shoot, Noach measures the arch of the ball, then Noah announces what the arch was through the speaker. The ideal arch was 45 degrees. The people running the booth allowed me and EJ to do two trial runs each. At the end of our trial runs, Noah printed out a shooting chat that charted the path of each of our shots; each path line was a different color to represent how close or far we were from 45 degrees. I thought it was a very interesting machine, but for $5800 I would never by one for a team.
After looking around the expo, EJ and I walked down the Riverwalk to a nice little Mexican restaurant to eat lunch. After lunch we went back to the hotel to relax until it was time to go out for the evening. That night we went to the Adidas party, which EJ's dad helped host. It was a very nice party with a very exciting atmosphere, plus it was great free food. At the party I got to meet a lot of coaches from big and small schools alike. I also got to meet some of the better college basketball players in the country, such as Eric Gordon, from Indiana, and Michael Beasley, from Kansas St.
After the party, we met up with 3 of EJ's female friends and went to a club in downtown San Antonio. It was just a regular club, so nothing to exciting happened. After we left, we went back to the hotel and straight to bed.
The next day, the expo ended at 1pm, so we decided to skip it, and we slept in until 12:30. After he finished cleaning up his booth, we met up with EJ's dad and went to lunch at the same Mexican resturant we ate at the day before. That night, EJ's dad had gotten us ticket to three parties to watch the games. The first was a pregame party, so we decided to skip it. During the Memphis vs. UCLA game, we went met up with the same girls from the night before, and went to the first party, while EJ's dad went on to the other party. After Memphis beat UCLA, we headed over to the Hoop Group party, which was way better than the first, because it had free food, so I was happy! Also, in was similar to the Adidas party, in the fact that there were a lot of college coaches there.
After we watched Kansas destroy North Carolina, we went out on the town again, with EJ's dad, his old high school coach, and a high school teammate of his who now plays at Saint Mary's in San Antonio. First we went to a hotel where all the big time coaches were staying, so we could meet a few od EJ's dad's friends; after that we went and sat outside at a restaurant on the riverwalk, where we just relaxed and talked about basketball. We ended the night by going to Denney's and then finally made it to bed around 3am.
The next day we woke up around 11am and packed our stuff; EJ's dad had left early in the morning to catch his flight. We finally hit the road around 12:30pm and around 2, we stop in Austin, once again, to eat lunch with my brother and his friend at Dirty Martins. After lunch we headed for Dallas. When we got there, we stopped and ate dinner at my house with my mom, my dad, and my grandma. Also, our friend, Jeff Montague, (who I went to high school with, and he also went to Centenary with us for 2 years, but now he plays basketball at the University of North Texas) was in town for the weekend, so he joined us for dinner as well. After a wonderful meal, prepared by my mama, I was on my way back to Shreveport; Jeff volunteered to take EJ back to his apartment in Plano, so I would have to drive 45 minutes out of my way.
I finally made it back to campus around 12am Monday morning; it was the conclusion to an amazing weekend. Now I can understand how you might not think this sounded like an amazing weekend, but for a college basketball player, it was a dream come true. Have a good week.
