Goin' back to Cali

My dog, Barkley, who just had his 1st birthday likes to run around in the backyard and monitor the situation among neighbor dogs. He still has a lot of puppy in him, so he will run back and forth and communicate with the other dogs by whimpering or showing some excitement by trying to jump up the wooden fence. Another act, and one of my personal favorites is when he will lift one of his legs (always on one of the 3 fences, never in the middle of the yard, or on a tree) and relieve himself. Of course many dogs mark their territory, especially in their own yard.

The Jayhawks played a Sunday morning game against the USC Trojans today. As always, the Jayhawks alumni showed up in full force to support their Jayhawks. The last time the Jayhawks visited California ended in an elite 8 loss to UCLA in San Jose. A good friend and fellow Jayhawk, Stephen, and I witnessed the Hawks fall one game short of the Final Four last March in San Jose, and I found myself sitting next to him to watch this years Jayhawks take on USC. The Trojans have a pretty good squad. They have some great young talent in freshmen O.J. Mayo and Davon Jefferson. They had a 16-6 lead early in the game and Kansas came back and made it a three point game at halftime. We acted pretty care-free for most of the first half. Calm, cool, collected. Like it wasn’t the end of the world if we lost this game, which it wouldn’t have been. But during Kansas’ run I turned to Stephen and said, “I don’t want to lose this game”. He laughed and said, “I was just thinking the same thing.”

The Trojans football team just beat UCLA the day before to clinch a spot in this year’s Rose Bowl. They are a football school. Recently their basketball program (like KU football) has turned around and they are going to be a team I would not want to face in March. But it isn’t March. It is early December and Kansas is playing their first away game and true test, besides Arizona at home. It was a great test for this ball club, who held a 9 point lead with 6:30 to go and saw that cut to 4 with 2 minutes left. With 20 seconds to go and only a 2 point lead, Mario Chalmers drained a three-pointer from way behind the arch to put the nail in the coffin. Drained it. All we needed was a two and with 5 seconds on the shot clock he released the ball and… splash. The mysterious “Rock Chalk, Jayhawk- K-Uuuuuuuuuuuuuu” chant filled the Galen Center as I thought of how good it feels to pee in someone else’s yard.