none of us doubted we could do it, even though we'd lost the last four times we played them. we all had faith that we were indeed the better team and deserved to win this game. we all believed, that is, until we looked at the score with 13 or so minutes to go and we were down 17. at that point it's possible that we doubted. i'm sure the whole crowd doubted. by then we'd played unintelligently for long enough that our heads were down and our hearts were heavy.

i'm not really sure any of us could tell you when it all started. i remember looking up, and seeing that we were back within 16. then 10. then 5. then holy cow we'd tied it. soon after they pulled out again by 3, but by then the momentum was in our favor. and so was the confidence: if we could destroy a 17 pt deficit in about 5 min, then 3 points was nothing. we kept getting stops when we needed them and started playing like a team. they couldn't miss a shot for the first thirty minutes of the game, but our confidence freaked them out and they started missing shots and free throws like mad. their coach seemed to shut down. he didn't call any time outs to slow us down. instead he sat down on the bench and didn't say a word. and we pressed on.

even though we'd struggled with them today, we made our last 2 free throws to put us up 3. with just a few seconds left their tying 3 attempt to go into overtime didn't fall. we won!

we always knew we could. we just weren't sure how.

coach told us before the game, as he had many times before: "we're going to win this game. and this is how we're going to do it." we didn't do it just like he wanted... that's for sure. and each of us could take back how we did this, or that. yet somehow we pulled together at the end and pulled it out.

if i could burn an image into my mind, it would be of my mom, dad, aunt, friends and cousins all jumping up and down in the stands screaming and pumping their fists. i've never seen my dad so excited [nor prolly ever seen him jump up and down]. never. and over a basketball game, too! my basketball game, cause he/they all love me.

cutting down the net this time meant to much more than 3 years ago. this time i understood how much it took to get to where we are.

and wow, i'm excited.

kentucky, here we come.

this new year, i've really wanted to get back into blogging. however, it hasn't yet happened consistantly. therefore, i think i'm going to try something new. for the next week or so, i'm going to try to make five observations about my day and blog about them. they can be as short as a sentence, or as long as i want [hehe]. maybe it will help me get back into blogging, or maybe it will just be a fun experiment. [this kinda stems from the 25 things about me... it was really fun to try to think of random facts about myself].

1. i enjoyed going to church with my family today, even though it was two brothers, my parents, and myself.

2. my family usually sits near the back of the church. today we didn't. oops. here's why: when standing, my dad, cade, colin and i effectively create a substantial barrier between the activity on stage and the people standing in the pews behind us; with me being the shortest at 6', you can surely imagine.

3. if you put my family [probably would need all five brothers for this one] on one side of the church, and the other 400-600 persons of the congregation on the other side of the church, and everyone sang at their normal vocal level, i believe that my family would still be heard loud and clear above everyone else. when we do something [anything], we do it well.

4. it doesn't matter how many pink outfits a baby girl is given at a baby shower, they are each the most adorable thing ever seen and deserve a roomful of "awww, how sweet"s.

5. i have got to go back to eating healthier. i need someone to be willing to help me. i think i'm going to give up all drinks with sugar in them for a while [i used to never drink anything with sugar, and i've gotten away from that]. you should probably decide to give up something for a while, and we can do it together - doesn't have to be the same thing.