Dec. 12, 2008

Memphis Pre-Game Post

"Cheesesteak Factory to Miss Jahidi"

As one half of Team Bay Area, I was hoping my compatriot Drew would be writing this blog. After all, he's the one that traveled on last second notice to Memphis last year, just before Christmas, to watch the Hoyas take on the Tigers.

I imagine he had a good time for most of the first half.

After that, the night went downhill. Not only did Georgetown not exactly pull out the win against a team that would come just a few free throws from a National Title, but I got a phone call later detailing how extremely overrated Beale Street was. Overrated barbecue. Pathetic live music. No one around.

So, needless to say, I was looking forward to a good and bitter preview of this Saturday's tilt against the same Memphis Tigers from Drew. After all. He has a gigantic bone to pick. However, given that he's about to become a first time father any minute now, the task falls to me.

Happily, I find I have a bitter memory involving John Calipari as well.

I was a freshman at Georgetown in the Spring of 1996. Coming from San Diego, college sports in general were more or less an unknown phenomenon to me. Sure, I had seen a decent amount of football on television and been to a few games, but I have never been a real fan of a team. And I'm not sure I had ever seen a college basketball game in any manner that wasn't at least an Elite Eight game.

I stepped right into one of the most talented teams Georgetown has ever had. There were four future NBA contributors on that team, including a future NBA MVP in Allen Iverson. The frontline was just as imposing: Othella Harrington; Jerome Williams; and coming off the bench, the biggest person I've ever met in a cafeteria, Jahidi White. (One of the student newspapers did a April Fool's Day spoof that once featured the headline "Entire Georgetown Team Turns Pro/Cheesesteak Factory to Miss Jahidi".)

(As a completely another aside, this was the old Cheesesteak Factory, not the overproduced and built up monstrosity they have now. I will not step aside as someone even older and out of touch than me details how I didn't really go to Georgetown because "The Pub" was gone before I got there.)

The team also featured a lesser know lefty out of DC named Victor Page. Iverson and Page did things that shouldn't be possible against most D-I opponents. Some games they simply tossed alley oops back and forth to each other as they ran up and down the court. It would be like a game. Iverson would throw to Vic and he'd dunk it; the next trip Vic would throw to the sub-six foot Iverson, and it would be just as easy.

So, needless to say, I was hooked. My friends and I would head up to one of our local friends' houses in the People's Republic of Takoma Park or Fredericksburg to get a car so we could be the first people at the "Big Pringle" in Landover.

We'd devise simple strategies to get the front row seats that we were immensely proud of at the time (such as one of us getting through the gates, then the next person struggling to find his student id so as to give him a bigger head start).

It was worth it, of course. At home, the Hoyas could do no wrong. The team went 16-0 at home that year. I was in the first row for most of it, watching Iverson dunk over hapless Connecticut centers or the team blitz Villanova by forty on senior day while the crowd held up telephones to taunt the suspended Kerry Kittles.

Alas, a title run was not meant to be. I've blacked out the Big East Final from my memory completely (Jerome Williams is by all accounts a wonderful person, but I have a hard time remembering him for anything but…I can't even say it - he was too good a Hoya - but you know where I was going - ah, darn it - he was fouled!).

We celebrated the early NCAA wins in fine fashion, including a 98-90 win over Texas Tech. Everyone I knew was convinced we were going to the Final Four.

And then we met John Calipari's UMass team. Sure, they cheated. Marcus Camby was paid. But the reality is, two little known guards beat up on our vaunted DC-Virginia backcourt. It was a slaughter as Carmelo Travieso and Edgar Padilla slowly destroyed our Final Four hopes.

My friends and I sat in the Village C Fifth Floor Lounger watching the game. My friend Steve set a record for consecutive profanities uttered in a row spontaneously (57, if you're curious) as Edgar and Carmelo sliced and diced our defense apart. I don't even think he was that big of a sports fan. Okay, I know Steve was not at all a sports fan. He's the kind of guy who picks his fantasy football team solely on the comic value of the players' names. But he, like the rest of us, had become a little bit attached to that team.

Perhaps it was Victor Page dropping through our floor for some odd reason to say hello. Or perhaps it was Daymond Jackson's repeated trips to our floor's microwave to pop some corn. Or maybe it was just the fact that you knew something special was going on.

Either way, the build up for the game with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst was intense.

Unfortunately, the game wasn't that close.

So, on Saturday, I hope we take a little revenge. A little revenge for my friend Drew who spent last Christmas season in Memphis unhappy. And a lot of revenge for Othella Harrington, Jerome Williams, Jahidi White, Allen Iverson and Victor Page (and everyone on that team) for the 1996 NCAA tournament.

And quite a bit of revenge for my friend Steve, who frankly didn't have enough innocence to lose when he rattled off fifty seven straight swear words as the television panned through two soon to be forgotten guards and one John Calipari. But in any story, fifty seven swear words is quite a bit, and let's face it, Steve and I have been waiting for over twelve years for this. Go Hoyas.