Let me start by saying that I had a very enjoyable weekend. It started after my 1-2:15 class ended on Friday Afternoon. My high school's game against J.P. Stevens was postponed from Thursday evening due to the snow. So I headed up to that. J.P. Stevens only had 2 wins on the year so I expected it to be a quick game for our 14-2 team. We started out sluggish but quickly put things together to cruise to a 53-22 win. I'm sure over the next month or so I'll be a lot more intensive with my high school team as well as other high school teams throughout the state. After that, I headed back down to Monmouth to meet up with my friend so that we could go to trivia down the shore. We wound up having a great night and won a $40 dollar gift card to the place. In addition, because we were the team that got 3 answers right and were the first to bring up the answer we got 3 drinks on the house which was awesome.
The following day was going to be a busy one as Monmouth was having a doubleheader against the Long Island Blackbirds and I was working the game for MSG. The women wound up cruising to a huge victory and really shot the lights out and are playing pretty good ball right now while the men did what they do every game, seemingly keep it close before losing a heartbreaker at the end. So overall, it was a long day down at school and unfortunately we couldn't go 2-0.
You may be wondering why I titled this post after the great Rolling Stones song. Obviously the song is pretty well known but for those who aren't familiar, the refrain has a line which says "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need." I think this line really epitomizes the second half of my weekend--being Saturday evening and Sunday. As you can probably see by now, I am a college hoops junkie. I don't mind seeing any team play even if it's the most irellevant conference thats being displayed. My dad refers to me as an 'event guy' meaning I'll see anything regardless of the sport. That is probably for the most part true but you couldn't pay me to see equestrian or some other olympic sports. Usually when it comes to college basketball, I'll look at the schedule for the upcoming week for the days I'm free and pick out a couple worth checking out(3/4 games I was thinking about going to this weekend happened to be team's whose gyms I had not yet been to.)
I'll recap the results of these 4 games
Brown @ Penn-Penn overcame a second half deficit of 10 points to wind up defeating Brown by 2 in overtime.
#2 Pittsburgh @ Rutgers-Almost had a monmoumental upset in Rutgers basketball history as they went down to the wire against a Panthers team ranked 2nd in the nation. Rutgers 3 was off at the end of the game to give Pittsburgh the 3 point win.
#3 Duke @ St. John's-St. John's led pretty much wire to wire over a phenomonal 3rd ranked Duke team and won by 15.
Manhattan @ Marist-Another great game, Manhattan hit a 55 foot shot at the buzzer to win 60-59.
So in those 4 games, there was an overtime game, a near upset, an upset and a buzzer beater which actually made headlines today on Yahoo.com. Think about that for a minute, a Manhattan-Marist game made headlines. Two teams who are combined 8-37 and I missed that. I've seen 7 of the 10 MAAC schools play in their home gym and that would've definitely been the best game so far of the MAAC games I've been to and I missed it. It's frustrating when you look at the games you were thinking of going to and they wind up being good games. For the most part in the times that that has happened they haven't been good games but I got burned this weekend. I've been fortunate to see some great games this year. Only a couple have been bad and there was still something to take away from those games. An example would be Columbia-Maryland Eastern Shore which was a 108-74 blowout, but how often do you get to see an Ivy League school drop 110. Or Monmouth's 40 point loss to Nova, once again how often do you get to see your college take on a top 10 team like Villanova at home?
So you might ask what'd I do instead? Well I got a text from my dad after working at Monmouth asking if I wanted to go with my family to the Meadowlands Racetrack. Without missing a beat, I immediately said yes, even though the entire day I had planned on either going to the Brown-Penn or Pitt-Rutgers game that evening. I guess there's a multitude of reasons on why I did that...I had already seen Penn play a basketball game at the Palestra so it was not like I necessarily had to see them. Second, the Rutgers game was much later--it started at 8 and frankly, there's no challenge in seeing them. I'm 15 minutes away I could see them anytime...although they are the remaining NJ school I have yet to see. Or maybe it was just the fact that I enjoy spending time with my family and going to the racetrack. I also knew my dinner would already be paid for although truth be told, Geno's or Pat's in Philly is damn hard to turn down. My friend Dan and I also had planned on going somewhere to watch Strikeforce as well and I knew if I was coming back from Philly I'd probably be a lot later than coming home from the Meadowlands. Then yesterday, I was thinking of going to either the Manhattan-Marist game or Duke-St. John's game but sometimes with these further distances like a Marist which is a little more than 2 hours away, I have to be more secretive with my parents cause they think I'm freaking nuts trying to see all these games, a few of which at this point have been out of state and a couple hours away. It also didn't help matters that this game was a 12PM game so if I wanted to go I would have needed to leave pretty early. I was going back and forth on the Duke-St John's game which started at 1 and I guess the main reason I didn't go to that is truthfully I thought Duke would win relatively easily...oops and also was feeling a little lazier yesterday morning and wasn't really in a hurry.
So what'd I do instead? I wound up taking a drive up to the Scranton area to visit my friend at her college to watch the NHL All Star Game and hang out with her. She's been my friend since elementary school and I told her back in our freshman year that I'd love to visit sometime but never was able to get up there so I am glad I finally did, before she graduates. It was a lot of fun watching the ridiculous 11-10 All Star game, going to dinner and catching up with her.
I guess the ultimate point I want to make here is that basketball will always be there. I can see a game anytime I want for the rest of my life. Hell, the next 2 months of my blog will be heavily reserved for that...this is what my basketball schedule looks like over the next 2 months or so...
2/12-13-The Primetime Shootout in Trenton featuring some of the best teams in the nation
2/19-20-Me previewing the county quarterfinals
2/26-27-Me previewing the state tournament
3/5-6-Me previewing the later rounds of states/conference tournaments
3/12-3/31 Me previewing March Madness
And while I did want to get up to a couple games this weekend, especially since they all wound up being great games. A realization I had this weekend is that I could do that anytime. I mean I guess obviously this is always in the back of your mind as well but on the way back from the racetrack, my parents informed me that one of their friends for nearly 30 years passed away of a heart attack. He was 59 years old. I saw him probably a single digit number amount of times in my life. Whenever I saw him though, he seemed like a great and funny guy. It's weird how you can see someone only a few amount of times in your life before they're taken away from you which is why I guess a good way to treat someone is to treat them as if it's the last time you're ever going to see them. You never know when someone you know or love is going to be gone. Nothing in life is guaranteed outside of death and taxes which is why it's incredibly important to live each day to the fullest because you never know when your time is going to run out.
This relates to my weekend however because as I keep saying basketball is always going to be around. Unfortunately, going to the racetrack with my family isn't. None of us are going to live forever but if there is an opportunity to capture one more memory with my family and possibly win some money in progress, 9 times out of 10, I will take advantage of that opportunity. Even though I am a huge basketball fan, I am a bigger fan of my friends and family and at the end of the day, they matter most to me even if they think I'm crazy with half the shit I do, and believe me, a lot of it is crazy. The same thing goes for my friends too--any one of us could die at any time. Fortunately, I've been lucky with this so far through my life. No one in my graduating class from high school has passed away yet and none of my close friends either. Thank God. I don't know what I'd do without them. What was most important to me this weekend, was hanging with my friends and really following through on things I said to them in the past. A couple times in the past Dan and my plans have fell through for watching Mixed Martial Arts so I felt bad about that and I also had told my friend Nikki 3 years ago, that I would visit her some point at her college. So I'm glad I was able to do both.
So while I wanted to go to a couple of games this weekend but never got around to actually seeing them, what I really needed was to be around my friends and family...to socialize, to catch up, to have fun, to reminisce, to learn, to joke, to explore, to bs. That is what I really needed. Basketball can wait. Friends and family can't, and I wouldn't want it any other way. They mean the world to me.
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