It was 4:30 p.m. on November 8, 2013 when our University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM) basketball team’s charter bus pulled into the parking lot of the historic Allen Fieldhouse arena at the University of Kansas (KU). KU was ranked number five in the country and ULM’s team was, well, not quite that highly ranked.
As I walked into the arena for pre-game warmups, I remember thinking, “this team has won more conference championships in the last ten years than games lost in this building. The winning percentages may not be with us, but I’m optimistic.
In warmups, I could not miss a shot. I felt like there was a chance that I could have a Steph Curry-esque game and “go off,” as the kids say these days. (Steph Curry plays for the Golden State Warriors in the NBA and is considered one of the greatest shooters ever in the game of basketball.)
As the game started, that’s exactly what happened. I came down the court, pulled the trigger and BANG. I drained the hoop for a three pointer. A few plays later, I got a pass on the right wing, made a jab step, took the shot and it sailed through the air before falling through the bottom of the net. I put my pointer finger up to my mouth as if to say shh quiet down to the crowd. The crowd was not impressed and responded with roaring boos
Everything I did in the first half seemed easy and I could not be stopped. It felt like the basket was as big as the ocean. The crowd was yelling at the Kansas players to try harder, but it didn’t seem to work. We went into halftime with the game all tied up at 37.
When the second half came around, Kansas put their star freshman and current NBA player, Andrew Wiggins on me. He tried his best to defend me, but it didn’t work. I remember thinking, “there is no way this kid can stop me.” I was coming off screens to hit shots. I was driving to the basket and making him look silly time after time. At this point, I felt like the NBA scouts had to put me on their future NBA player list.
With 15 seconds left in the game and the score all tied up, we had to get a defensive stop. Joel Embiid, Kansas’ other star freshman, who is currently under an NBA contract for over a $100 million, had the ball and was attacking the basket from the left wing driving to the basket. My good fortune left me as the only person between him and the basket. To give you context, Joel Embiid is 7’1 and 249 pounds. At this point, all my senses perked up. It was my time to shine. As he drove to the basket and rose up to dunk the ball, I also leaped into the air.
As I leaped, I made contact with his body. I crawled up his extremely large chest muscles, maneuvered my way past his hulk-like biceps getting to the top of his body, where I blocked the ball out of his hands and directly to my teammate Tylor. The crowd yelled with extreme anger toward the referee, but I didn’t stop. I sprinted down the court. The clocked was counting down., It was at four seconds then three ………two …and then Tylor passed me the ball at the top of the key.. At one second left, I went for it and shot a 28 foot three pointer.
The buzzer sounded. The ball swished through the net. GAME! I had won the game on a buzzer beater scoring 33 points against the number five team in the country. All my teammates started to celebrate.
Then I woke up! It was 1:37 a.m. on the morning of the game. I was groggy and a little disappointed that wasn’t real.
The actual game did not play out quite like my dream. It wasn’t that far off though. My final stats for the game were 21, 22, and 1.
Twenty-one minutes played, twenty-two high-fives for my teammates and one awesome screen set (seen in the picture on the left) in a 63 – 80 loss. Okay it was pretty far off.
All jokes aside, this was one of the coolest basketball experiences of my life. How could you not love playing in a famous arena, with a sellout crowd of about 16,000 on national television against future top NBA players? Those are the types of games you dream about when you’re a kid shooting in the driveway with just a ball and your imagination. And that dream came true on November 8, 2013.
This is a memory I will never forget. The outcome may have been different than what I had hoped for, my individual play wasn’t as good as I wanted, and my night-before dream didn’t quite come to fruition, but it was amazing nonetheless. And heck, five or ten years down the road when my memory starts to get a little foggy about what actually happened, I might even stick to that first version of my story!