Chima, the Scrub

I write today, the first day in weeks where I have had some sort of down time, to tell all of you fans about a little competitive basketball tournament we had go on here last weekend.

Before going into detail about the embarassment itself, you must understand our scheme of preparation, our implying myself and Rob, my partner in crime. The tournament fell on a Saturday, and of course it was two days before I had 3 exams that Monday, but I wasn't about to back down from a friendly/not so friendly challenge. The event was organized by our RA and good friend, Chima. To give you some background information about Chima to understand where we are coming from, Chima is a towering 6 feet 6 inches tall, and is one of the nicest people I have ever met. I am pretty sure I used to think he was Jerome Burney for all of you Maryland basketball fans out there. Being 6'6", he stands out a little bit around campus. He is in the same proportions as Burney, but Burney has an extra inch or so on him. Also, on the night of our pancake floor meeting, a naive, beguiled individual asked Chima if he could dunk the ball. Chima's response, a chuckle.

So, Rob and I started off the tournament on the right foot, by talking so much trash to Chima that he stopped responding to us and simply laughed each time we threw in a little comment. I accidentally took it so far as to call him a scrub, not too sure why I did that. I think it was the 6 chocolate chip pancakes I had just put away because nobody wanted to finish them off. And, naturally, I was not going to let them go to waste. F.Y.I., this picture has nothing to do with anything. I was searching for pancakes and this guy showed up. But see the pancakes he's cooking on the grill-yum. Also, we stuck notes on his door and slid them under his door, just to express our superiority over the rest of the teams in the competition.

So then it came, the day of the tournament. Time for us to finally prove what we are made of and back up some of that trash talking. We were, of course, the number one seed seated at the top of the tournament brackets. Also, Chima was where he belonged, at the bottom of the brackets... scrub. Well we began the tournament unleashing the wrath of our team, the Whizbangs (name given to us by the kid across the hall - Paveman). We decimated our opponent in a game to 11, going by all ones. We left the team heartbroken, crying on the court(coughinternallycough), and with an extreme discomfort in their lower back side. One team faced, one team conquered.

And on a side note, I went up to the kid after the game that was guarding me and said, "Hey man, good game. That was some solid defense you had on me." He responded with, "Yeah, you didn't get any rebounds." I felt bad, but I just laughed in his face. Anyone who has played basketball with me knows that I have long arms and a decent vertical. Rebounds are where I am not less than mediocre at basketball.

The next game, which was the final four of our brackets already, did not go as smoothly as planned. We jumped out to a quick 5-1 lead, only to get a little too much confidence in ourselves. I don't mean to place any blame on this being a factor or try to come up with an excuse for our disappointing play, more specifically mine, but it was around this time that my stomach was launched into full gear, creating a certain amount of pressure in the same area that our previous opponent is now feeling pain. This pressure, however, was not simply air... So I played on, and the game only went south from there.

So after the tournament ended and after I relieved myself(and man it was a relief), we wanted to play again. Without a doubt, Chima and his "Winning Squad" as they were called claimed a victory for themselves, beating those whom we could not. We formally invited the Winning Squad to join us on the court for a friendly game of basketball. They accepted our invitation, obviously Chima wouldn't have heard the end of it if they didn't accept. So we played our little game with relatively few complications. Eventually we found ourselves up 12-8 to these guys, playing to 13 in this match. Game point and we were in control. Rob checked it up at the top of the key and passed to me, on the wing. I probably shouldn't have taken the shot, but I was raining threes all day and decided to pull the trigger anyway (see figure courtesy of Rob). The ball swished through the net concluding the reign of Chima and fulfilling the formal dubbing of Chima as scrub.

Well apparently he wasn't content taking just one loss from us, the Whizbangs, and insisted we run it back. So, we complied with his wish, at this point we felt pity for him. So we got back into game mode and started to light up the court again. We lost the game 13-10 or 13-11, but oh well. We still had our dominating game before that and were quite content just sitting on that win for awhile. Some highlights of the day included: Chima's two-handed dunk over a 5'8" prepubescent Friedman that lives on our floor. Only to be followed by a Rob comment - "that looked like a Lisa Leslie dunk Chima!" Then, there was my partial block on Chima where instead of me knocking the ball away from him, he still had possession and pretended that I didn't even touch the ball and just knocked the lay-up off the glass. Sigh. Also, one of the highlights of Rob's career, would be not the partial block, but a full block on scrub, with the help of the backboard in there somewhere. It's a shame that Chima just retained possession, jumped back up, and made the next shot. But still, a block is a block on a 6'6" guy.

Just some final wrap-up comments. The feelings expressed in this blog do not necessarily pertain to the writer, me, on every account of this event. I would like to give a special thanks to my teammates Rob and Matt, friends Friedman, Paveman, Lisa Leslie and that weird pancake guy. And, most of all, I would like to give thanks to my RA Chima. It is freaking awesome that he set up this entire tournament and gave our floor the chance to play and get to know each other. He is one of the nicest people I have known and easily the greatest RA a resident could ask for. So, Chima, I thank you and anyone else that helped the Whizbangs in their reign as emperor(s) of the ERC West Gym on that legendary Saturday afternoon.

P.S. to Chima. Thanks for taking it easy on us in the game and not embarassing us. The scars you could have left would have had devastating repercussions, both physically and mentally.