Two Points

Welcome to basketball season.

Can I tell you what a miserable day it is outside today? It's rainy and cold but not cold enough to deliver the promised snow. I haven't seen the sun since yesterday and the trees shake bony fingers at me as I watch the wind push their bare branches around. It's miserable, borderline depressing. Any day that makes you grateful for artificial lighting and an allergy-inducing heating system has to be miserable.

Now Tuesday, that was a fine night. The moon was full and high in the sky with a lovely ring decorating it as we walked out of the Smith Center, warmed by friends and a pretty great game. It was still cold, but it wasn't miserable. And of course, it helped that we won.

But you know, I'm not as upset about today's game as I could be. I mean, we're a young team and Kentucky's in the top 5 for a reason. Excuses aside (because we're not as bad as we played in the first half, as Roy said), I'm glad because it was just a 2-point loss. I'm glad because they fought back and they worked and even if they didn't get all the way there, they tried. The effort wasn't the best in the first half, but they came back from that. We didn't lose by 19. And that's my point.

Just in case you thought I was only going to talk about basketball, I'll throw in a little bit of a life lesson at the end, just to prove that I can tear myself away from our boys on the hardwood. Life can be compared to a lot of things, but my recent life was like that basketball game: it started out decent, fell completely to pieces while somebody beat me at my own game, and came back together towards the end. And, like my poor Heels, I just can't seem to win this game. No matter how I try, the attempts aren't falling the way they should and I walk away slightly dejected. But only slightly. Because I tried and because I learned. Because I fight and because I come back and because I'm not going to let this get me down forever. That makes the difference between losing and being a loser.

So, in a couple of games, if they still haven't figured out the whole turnover thing and the whole let's-make-a-gosh-durn-free-throw thing, I'm going to point back to what Roy said after the game: "This is North Carolina. We're supposed to come back. There are no moral victories in this." And there's not. But there's the chance to be better and there's the knowledge that they can come back. It's not a hopeless cause. And as everything reminds me that exams are around the corner, I need to know that life, even beyond exams, isn't a hopeless cause.