Premature E-Shaqulators - Alec Kerr

I’m sure all of you have been patiently awaiting the results from Thursday night’s intramural tournament opener (actually you probably could care less than when Kentucky Kingdom closed), but for those of you in agony, wait no longer. As I stated in my last post our team (whose name I’m yet to learn, maybe it is because I choose not to and frankly I don’t care since it isn’t the “Premature E-Shaqulators” that I wanted, but as far as I’m concerned that’s what it is) was up against an 0-3 squad.

The chances of us losing were a lot worse than the chances of Wil Van Dyke getting a girl pregnant just by staring at her, which may or may not actually be possible from WVD. With my knowledge of terrible teams in intramurals I thought it would be a typical game where we could possibly win with 4 players, I could make every pass a behind the back pass for the whole game, and pull NBA range trey pounders multiple times. Come to find out this isn’t your average 0-3 team. Naturally, undaunted by their record we chose not to stretch or warm up, this is where went wrong (obviously for me, my favorite part of the game is making it rain in warm ups, dating back to high school when even though we went 26-1 my junior year, I’m still convinced the 4,000 fans at every game were there to see me drain 3’s, and do my signature pro hops and spins resulting in missed finger rolls before the game started).

Their main threat was a 5’8” point guard who had such a cool beard even Grizzly Adams would be jealous, he claims he didn’t play basketball in high school and that he was a “soccer player” which was a blatant lie. Since we hadn’t shot around yet, I felt the first play of the game would be the perfect opportunity to show off my silky smooth jumper. I came down the court and yelled “computer blue” which is not a play whatsoever, we don’t even have plays, yet it distracted my defender just enough to do a fade away 3 that missed, barely touched the rim, and resulted in an easy basket for the other team. As the other team took an early lead and we called a timeout because I was “dyin” out there, I continued to say “yo, I haven’t eaten all day” and “told you we should’ve warmed up."

Luckily Pat and “tall kid” took up the slack and started hitting some shots, as we took a 10 point lead. We started playing our game, this when “the block” happened, as Moses drove down the lane and tried to put up a floater, I had a Dikembe Mutombo like block that sent it back a good 5 feet, easily becoming one of the better defensive moments of my basketball career. Of course not stretching took me out of my mindset of being a lock down defender late into the first half as I got tired and my man started knocking down some 3’s. Pat said “is that your man?”, of course that’s my man, that’s like saying “watch my stuff I’ll be right back”, no shit I’m going to watch your stuff, who wouldn’t say something if some random person came and grabbed your backpack, so what if I’m too lazy and my man single handedly brought their team within 1 before halftime? Long story short the second half was much like the first until the last minute, when things got juicy.

With about 20 seconds left we threw up an ill advised attempt at a game winner with the score tied at 55, the beard wielding soccer player got the rebound and threw a full court pass to his teammate where I tried to block his lay up for the last second shot, I obviously fouled him and he missed the shot with a no call from the ref. Now this could be because he feels bad for not calling a foul earlier in the game when I was cracked in the nose and had no idea where I was at for about 10 possesions or it could be because the fact that we share the same love for Kirk Cameron in Growing Pains (with Kirk Cameron and Jeremy Miller as “Ben”, who couldn’t love that comedic duo?) I’m not sure what it was but that reluctantly took us into overtime.

Overtime we basically just took over, sure it was highlighted by my jumper with about a minute left to put us up 4, but I wouldn’t take all the credit. I’d like to think I was a real contributer after I said “all day” when I hit that jumper, but with a stat line like 6 points, 2-15 from the field, 3 turnovers, 1 assist, and giving up 15 points it was anything but that and I hurt the Premature E-Shaqulators if anything, so I’d like to think I was more of an intimidation factor. Nevertheless we got the W and moved one game closer to the championship (and thank God we won, Pat, considering the thought of overtime was making me feel like the HYPER was going to turn into a scene of a bad Okwerdz rap battle). I would also like to commend Terrell on a great game, he made up for Wil Van Dyke's absence and then some, which I miserably failed at doing at Delts later that night (grinding on every bitty at the party, making a huge scene, and waking up in the formal with just compression shorts on is harder than it looks).

"Sure I've been called a xenophobe,but the truth is I'm not. I honestly just feel that America is the best country and all the other countries aren't as good. That used to be called patriotism."