Spring Break wrap up and other good stuff

After the Big XII Tourney, we went to South Padre Island, Texas. Our hotel was on the mainland in Brownsville. We drove in rain most of the way from Austin to Brownsville. So we took the exit to our hotel and we found ourselves in a flood. The water was going over the hood of the car and we could feel the water hit below our feet. It was craziness! We had to park our car a block away from our hotel and wade the rest of the way to the hotel. Finally, the rain slowed down and we could get our car to the hotel. That was a fun little adventure. South Padre ended up being pretty cool. In retrospect, we should have forked over the extra money and stayed on the mainland because we would have met a lot more people and had an overall better experience. Oh well though. We learned for next time.

The Thursday of Spring Break we drove all the way to New Orleans from Brownsville. It was a long drive, but we made it. Nothing much happened that night other than walking Bourbon Street for the first time. I did not think that Bourbon Steet was anything special. It reminded me some of Amsterdam's red light district. It just isn't a very moral place. Anyway, I have experienced it and, like Amsterdam, I am in no hurry to return. New Orleans was fun though because of the NCAA tourney and I got to see my friend, Brandon, who drove down from Alabama.

The tourney was a great experience. We had upper level seats for all the sessions, but there were empty seats below. So at halftime of the first game of each session, we would move down to the the first or second row behind the benches because the ushers quit checking tickets at that point. We saw some good teams: Florida, Memphis (who Dave and I were unimpressed with), Creighton, Nevada, Purdue, and Arizona. We were kind of disappointed because the only really good game was the Nevada/Creighton game and our team, Creighton, ended up losing. We still had a great time seeing big time teams as well as maybe the repeat National Champions. During the Florida/Jackson State first round game, Dave was having some fun yelling at some of the Florida players as well as the coach, Billy Donovan. Dave was jokingly criticizing Donovan loudly, and Donovan turned around and glared at Dave. I will never forget that funny moment. Experiencing the NCAA tourney live was a cool experience.

That Friday night, we met up with Brandon and we went out and walked the streets and just had a blast hanging out. It was good to see him for the first time since the Party Poker cruise, where I met him, two years ago.

We left New Orleans immediately after the Sunday bball games. We drove alllllllll night long and ended up getting back to Seward at 11am. The 17 hour drive sucked and we decided we will probably never do that again. I didn't get much sleep at all when I wasn't driving but I finished out the trip fine. Overall, Spring Break was awesome!

Back at school, I finished up my exegetical in the two days after we returned. It is such a relief to not have that on my mind anymore. I have literally done less than one hour of homework in the week and a half since that paper was due.

Finally, in some fantastic news, I went to talk to Coach Schmidt about not playing basketball next year. I had a nice talk with him. I told him everything that was on my mind: the stress it caused me this year, how I have too many people ahead of me at my position, and just my loss of desire to improve over the summer. I told him how much I still love the game of basketball and that I still intend on being a coach when I take my first coaching job. Then, in maybe the shock of the century, he said, "Well Alex, I feel unfinished with you and we need guys like you in our program. What do you think about being our JV coach next year?" My jaw dropped to the floor. He then told me to think it through and get back to him next week. I was just in shock because I didn't think this guy cared about me at all being on his basketball team, much less ask me to be on his coaching staff. Anyway, this is a pretty easy decision because I won't have the stress of playing ball anymore and I will still be around the game and the team. Probably the biggest plus of this is that I will be able to put on my resume that I coached college basketball. So I told him yes this week and we will get all the details of the job figured out soon. I am really excited for next year now because I am ready to start my coaching career.

Sorry for such a long post, but I had a lot to catch up on. I'm going to try and get some pictures up.