I’ve not shared how my week-long vacation from college basketball went.\u00a0 I indeed managed to avoid almost all college basketball coverage for a full seven days.\u00a0 I didn’t watch games, read about them in the paper, or follow columnists online.\u00a0 Tuesday morning at about 10:00, I checked the Kansas-Oklahoma score but did not read any stories about the game itself.\u00a0 And that was it.\u00a0 A week to attempt to regain some perspective, to try to remember I’m not actually playing in the games and thus should enjoy it when my team wins and be able to move on quickly after the lose.<\/p>\n
Sunday dawned and it came time to test what I had learned over the previous week.\u00a0 Kansas and Oklahoma State were squaring off in Lawrence in what may well have been the Big 12 championship game.\u00a0 (The answer is no, I wouldn’t not have watched this game if they had played on Saturday.)\u00a0 I settled into a seat three minutes before tip-off.\u00a0 When the UCLA-Notre Dame went long, I didn’t panic the way I used to.\u00a0 I calmly read the paper until CBS went to Lawrence about two minutes into the game.\u00a0 It turns out the paper may be the key to retaining composure.\u00a0 Every extended dead ball or television timeout, I worked my way through some more of the Indy Star.\u00a0 Reading about wars, terrorism, disease, and corruption are good ways of remaining level and centered, I think.\u00a0 When KU kept hitting shot after shot, I didn’t get too fired up.\u00a0 When OSU matched every shot with one of their own, I didn’t get frustrated.\u00a0 After a thoroughly entertaining first half that left the teams tied at 39, I calmly went about collecting the trash to take out later in the evening (There’s an analogy there just waiting to be made).<\/p>\n
In the second half, KU went up by eight at one point and seemed about to put the game out of reach.\u00a0 Calm.\u00a0 OSU came right back and minutes later lead by seven points with 5:00 to play.\u00a0 Still calm.\u00a0 The only time I lost a little composure was at around the 3:00 mark when Aaron Miles threw a horrible pass to Christian Moody when KU had a chance to cut the lead to two.\u00a0 Unlike a week ago, when I would have thrown things, yelled, and paced, I just sighed and muttered something PG-13.\u00a0 I have to admit, my pulse did finally quicken over the last 2:00 of the game, but who’s would not have?\u00a0 A fantastic game came down to two equally matched teams seeing who could execute best.\u00a0 Wayne Simien hit a shot.\u00a0 John Lucas hit a shot.\u00a0 John Lucas missed a shot.\u00a0 Aaron Miles hit a driving lay-up.\u00a0 JamesOn Curry hit one of two free throws.\u00a0 Miles did the same.\u00a0 Then John Lucas missed a three pointer that would have won the game by a matter of inches.\u00a0 I clapped twice, pumped my fist, and headed upstairs to start getting dinner ready.\u00a0 No hyper-analysis of every wire story as they were posted on-line.\u00a0 No listening to the post-game show.\u00a0 Be happy, move on.<\/p>\n
“Sure,” I can hear you saying, “It’s easy to say you’ve changed your ways when you get to watch a great game like that.”\u00a0 I can’t argue with that argument.\u00a0 I do think, however, if OSU had won by one or 20, my evening would have been much different than how I’ve spent other evenings this season after close KU games\/losses.\u00a0 I would have been able to talk to my wife immediately.\u00a0 Play with my daughter.\u00a0 Read a book.\u00a0 Basically do all the things normal people do after games rather than obsessing as if I was a coach or player on the team.\u00a0 I don’t think my reformation is complete by any means.\u00a0 It will surely be tested in a couple weeks when the emotional ringer that is the NCAA tournament begins.\u00a0 But I do like to think this was the first step in finding a balance between being a huge fan of a team and managing that fanaticism in a healthy manner.<\/p>\n
By the way, contrary to a rumor started by a loyal reader, I will never, ever become a Big Ten fan.\u00a0 If I was left with nothing to watch other than Big Ten basketball, I would surely never watch the game again.\u00a0 Of course, the source that started this rumor has been known to prance around the greater Kansas City area wearing shorts that across his ass spell the name of a Big Ten school that is his favorite team’s arch rival.\u00a0 So consider the source.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve not shared how my week-long vacation from college basketball went.\u00a0 I indeed managed to avoid almost all college basketball coverage for a full seven days.\u00a0 I didn’t watch games, read about them in the paper, or follow columnists online.\u00a0 Tuesday morning at about 10:00, I checked the Kansas-Oklahoma score but did not read any stories about the game itself.\u00a0 And that was it.\u00a0 A week to attempt to regain some perspective, to try to remember I’m not actually playing in the games and thus should enjoy it when my team wins and be able to move on quickly after the lose. Sunday dawned and it came time to test what I had learned over the previous week.\u00a0 Kansas and Oklahoma State were squaring off in Lawrence in what may well have been the Big 12 championship game.\u00a0 (The answer is no, I wouldn’t not have watched this game if they had played on Saturday.)\u00a0 I settled into a seat three minutes before tip-off.\u00a0 When the UCLA-Notre Dame went long, I didn’t panic the way I used to.\u00a0 I calmly read the paper until CBS went to Lawrence about two minutes into the game.\u00a0 It turns out the paper may be the key to retaining composure.\u00a0 Every extended dead ball or television timeout, I worked my way through some more of the Indy Star.\u00a0 Reading about wars, terrorism, disease, and corruption are good ways of remaining level and centered, I think.\u00a0 When KU kept hitting shot after shot, I didn’t get too fired up.\u00a0 When OSU matched every shot with one of their own, I didn’t get frustrated.\u00a0 After a thoroughly entertaining first half that left the teams tied at 39, I calmly went about collecting the trash to take out later in the evening (There’s an analogy there just waiting to be made). In the second half, KU went up by eight at one point and seemed about to put the game out of reach.\u00a0 Calm.\u00a0 OSU came right back and minutes later lead by seven points with 5:00 to play.\u00a0 Still calm.\u00a0 The only time I lost a little composure was at around the 3:00 mark when Aaron Miles threw a horrible pass to Christian Moody when KU had a chance to cut the lead to two.\u00a0 Unlike a week ago, when I would have thrown things, yelled, and paced, I just sighed and muttered something PG-13.\u00a0 I have to admit, my pulse did finally quicken over the last 2:00 of the game, but who’s would not have?\u00a0 A fantastic game came down to two equally matched teams seeing who could execute best.\u00a0 Wayne Simien hit a shot.\u00a0 John Lucas hit a shot.\u00a0 John Lucas missed a shot.\u00a0 Aaron Miles hit a driving lay-up.\u00a0 JamesOn Curry hit one of two free throws.\u00a0 Miles did the same.\u00a0 Then John Lucas missed a three pointer that would have won the game by a matter of inches.\u00a0 I clapped twice, pumped my fist, and headed upstairs to start getting dinner ready.\u00a0 No hyper-analysis of every wire story as they were posted on-line.\u00a0 No listening to the post-game show.\u00a0 Be happy, move on. “Sure,” I can hear you saying, “It’s easy to say you’ve changed your ways when you get to watch a great game like that.”\u00a0 I can’t argue with that argument.\u00a0 I do think, however, if OSU had won by one or 20, my evening would have been much different than how I’ve spent other evenings this season after close KU games\/losses.\u00a0 I would have been able to talk to my wife immediately.\u00a0 Play with my daughter.\u00a0 Read a book.\u00a0 Basically do all the things normal people do after games rather than obsessing as if I was a coach or player on the team.\u00a0 I don’t think my reformation is complete by any means.\u00a0 It will surely be tested in a couple weeks when the emotional ringer that is the NCAA tournament begins.\u00a0 But I do like to think this was the first step in finding a balance between being a huge fan of a team and managing that fanaticism in a healthy manner. By the way, contrary to a rumor started by a loyal reader, I will never, ever become a Big Ten fan.\u00a0 If I was left with nothing to watch other than Big Ten basketball, I would surely never watch the game again.\u00a0 Of course, the source that started this rumor has been known to prance around the greater Kansas City area wearing shorts that across his ass spell the name of a Big Ten school that is his favorite team’s arch rival.\u00a0 So consider the source.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31,52,58],"class_list":["post-590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-kansas-jayhawks"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15508,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions\/15508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}