I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Tag: lady gamecocks basketball team

  • A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever


    University of South Carolina Lady Gamecock Kaela Davis (#3) stole the basketball from a Vandy guard and dribbled it hard down the court toward her goal as the Vandy player tried desperately to retrieve that ball from her. Gamecock teammate Allisha Gray (#10), who always has a nose for the basketball, ran full speed parallel to Davis on the other side of the Vandy guard. The trio barreled toward the goal at an amazing speed as Kaela leaped toward the backboard apparently for a difficult lay-up when all of a sudden KD made a no-look bounce pass to Gray who caught the basketball and effortlessly made the lay-up for the two-point score.

    Man, oh man. Pretty and I were sitting with our Gay Boys Basketball Buddies in our regular seats at Colonial Life Arena which are directly above and slightly to the right of the goalpost – just in the perfect position to see the three women thundering down the court and cheer the beautiful pass from Davis to Gray as the ball swished into the net. It was a Harlem Globetrotters moment.

    My words don’t do it justice, but to me, as Granny Selma used to say when she was in her right mind, that pass was a thing of beauty. Whoa, Nellie.

    Davis and Gray are both junior transfers from different schools playing their first year in the Gamecock uniforms and figuring out how to maximize their play together is no small task for Head Coach Dawn Staley, but last night’s efforts against Vanderbilt showed a maturity and presence for the whole team that was fun to watch.

    001 For every game this season, my personal heroes have been our big girls who endure heavy blows to their bodies during the games but still have a smile for the fans whether they win or lose.

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    #41 Alaina Coates

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    #22 A’ja Wilson

    Alaina and A’ja are two fierce competitors who strike terror in the hearts of their opponents when they control the rebounding and scoring in the paint. They don’t mess around, sisters and brothers. You better have on your Big Girl uniforms when you come to play against them because they will be your worst basketball nightmare if you aren’t prepared.

    The good news is we won last night – the bad news is we are getting to the end of the regular season play, and Pretty and I are wondering what we will do without the Lady Gamecocks in our everyday lives. Sigh.

    Let’s hope our post-season play goes all the way to the Final Four in Dallas this year – now that would be a memory-maker!

    (My thanks to the USC Gamecock Basketball Gameday for the unauthorized use of their pictures.)

     And thanks to our Best Candy Maker friend Dick Hubbard for another thing of beauty this week…yummy…creamy fudge…mouth-watering…Happy Belated Valentine’s Day to all our cyberspace amigos!

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  • Despite Countless Warnings, I…


    …browsed through the AOL news this morning. I know, I know. My friend Dick Hubbard is shaking his head in dismay if he is reading this right now. “Please don’t read the AOL news,” he’s warned me over and over again. “You’ll be sorry.”

    Ha, ha, ha, said I to myself. What could happen on a Sunday morning that would either (a) bewilder me (b) mildly annoy me or (c) raise the level of my blood pressure which has been WAY too high recently. Thank goodness for my wellness exam that uncovered my old friend Hypertension who my doctor reminded me was the Silent Killer. More meds, please. Thank you very much.

    When I have distractions like the Australian Open for two weeks or the current Gamecock men’s and women’s basketball season or the Gilmore Girls original series on Netflix with Pretty every night or my cyberspace Words with Friends, Yushino and Word Bubbles or God forbid, I actually read a book or even more unlikely, work on my new short story which has so many threads I can’t figure out how to put Humpty Dumpty together again or who shot who which for a mystery is troubling – I really have no time to read the AOL news.

    Today, as I was hopelessly bored while I waited for Pretty to get up and get dressed for our brunch with Pretty Too and Pretty Too+ later this morning, I mistakenly read a few stories in the news and found a few that piqued my interest and, sadly, fit my categories. Sigh.

    (a) Bewildering – HGTV Flip or Flop stars Christina El Moussa and Tarek El Moussa who are apparently in the process of a divorce were together at an investment seminar in Las Vegas.

    This was bewildering to me since the only reason I even know who these people are is because I watch them at my orthopedist’s office for the two hours I wait to see him but I had no idea they were getting a divorce. I also never know whether to flip or flop.

    (a-1) More and more Texans are doing “doomsday digging” – the survivalist bunker business is booming these days. Seriously? The mind races with underground shelters fighting for territory with moles that are frantically fleeing to Mexico.

    (b) Truly annoying – Kellyanne Conway has hired a chief of staff. I really don’t know what to think about that and the fact that my tax dollars are paying for her to have a chief of staff. What good can come of this? Hm…perhaps the chief of staff can help to connect her mouth to her brain which would be a monumental achievement. I heard Ivanka Trump will be designing the wardrobe for Kellyanne’s new hire.

    (b-1) The foods for a better sex life are, unfortunately, not in my basic food groups; sugar, the WORST food in the world to eat if you want any kind of good health, IS, unfortunately, my basic food group.

    (c) The Trump cabinet and its $1 trillion-dollar connection to Exxon – now that raises my blood pressure, I’m sure.

    Enough of this. Pretty is up and ready to go to brunch, thank goodness. And tomorrow the Lady Gamecocks play the number one team in the nation, UCONN.  I will avoid the news like the plague this week and faithfully take my lisinopril every day. Can’t say the same about avoiding sugar.

    Oh, well. You can’t have everything.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

  • Home is the Sailor, Home from the Sea – and the Lady Gamecocks, Home from the Road


    And so apparently Pretty and Slow’s Chicken Road Curse for the Lady Gamecocks is officially stomped out with another road victory yesterday at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Great Balls of Fire – the girls in the Lady G uniforms finished with an 81 – 62 win against a very good Florida team and three very busy refs who loved to blow their whistles more than most refs will do all season. I’m not kidding.

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    Hey, there – we’re the refs…

    and we’ve got these shiny new whistles we like to blow

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    Please don’t play nice –

    we can’t wait to blow our new whistles

     

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    Lady Gs warm up – Gators bonding

    Coach Dawn Staley had her 200th. win at Auburn Thursday night and kept right on sizzling for number 201 Sunday afternoon. Pretty and I love our coach and have to confess we drive by her house sometimes since she lives a few blocks from Casa de Canterbury – no sightings other than seeing her jog by our house early one morning last summer. That was fun. Thanks, Coach Dawn, for keeping us all on track.

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    Hey, there – old lady with the white hair… 

    You look familiar – do I know you?

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    Coach Staley has a teachable moment during the game

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    Everybody, listen up

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    Associate Coach Boyer has a word with #22 A’ja Wilson who scored 23 points and had 13 rebounds

    (and also scared us to death with an ankle injury in the 4th. quarter – sending good wishes for her speedy recovery)

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    Bianca, did you understand what she just said?

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    #10 Allisha Gray had a big game with 18 points – 

    (everybody takes plenty of notes)

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    The halftime entertainment was an amazing woman 

    who committed unnatural acts right in front of us

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    Never in my wildest dreams

    When the game was over, Pretty and I made our way back to our dogs who had spent two hours in the car with the windows properly ventilated and were thrilled to have our company as we started the 400-mile trip home to Casa de Canterbury.

    All’s well that ends well, as The Red Man was fond of saying, and we arrived home safely in time to catch Meryl Streep on the Golden Globes last night. Wouldn’t have missed her for the world – she was a wonderful reminder of the importance of our resistance to inertia in the days to come in the face of what we know is wrong. Everybody, listen up.

    Finally, there is good news and bad news for us as we settle back in at Casa de Canterbury. The good news is I was able to purchase a new Road Atlas at a truck stop in Georgia yesterday on the way home  – that makes me very happy and eager for another road trip.

    The bad news is Pretty has a horrible cold which puts a damper on her usual good spirits, and Charly destroyed two leashes by chewing them in pieces that can never be put back together again – much like Humpty Dumpty after his great fall.

    Bless us for a safe trip, as Granny Selma used to say when she was in her right mind.

    Stay tuned.

  • Road Trip Detours


    Two possibilities exist to explain how any road trip from Auburn, Alabama to Gainesville, Florida passes through the tiny (pop. 683) town of Plains, Georgia: (a) you are way lost or (b) you really want to go there. For Pretty and me yesterday, it was a little bit of both.

    For most of my life, I’ve traveled with a Road Atlas the size of a very large paperback book bound with plastic spirals – the kind with each state on one big page (or two if it’s Texas) and the most obscure county roads shown on the maps as well as the state highways and interstates with the little numbers in red or blue showing the distance from one town to another. As a matter of fact, I used one so much in the past five years, it disintegrated and I had to throw it away last year.

    No need for another one, said Pretty, since we have all directions in our GPS cyberspace maps now. The GPS knows where we are and if we know where we want to go, a pleasant brilliant woman tells us how to get there. This is, indeed, a fine system as long as we know exactly where it is we want to go.

    If, on the other hand, we are on a road trip without a specific agenda and only a vague idea of where Gainesville is in relation to Auburn, I personally would prefer a Road Atlas to get the general lay of the geography before I strike out. But, then, we might have missed our detour to Plains.

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    Plains is the home of President Jimmy Carter

    Pretty and I have visited Plains two other times and when we found that our GPS navigator sent us east of Columbus, Georgia yesterday through the peanut farming country, we remembered we were near Plains and decided to take a detour to visit again. The brilliant woman told us just how to get there.

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    Plains is one main street – no stop light

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     One Historic Inn with Antiques

    (note the one vehicle parked in front – ours)

    Pretty walked through the store while the dogs walked me and my camera outside in the drizzle.

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    Not much going on at the Plains Pharmacy, either

    Hey, but don’t worry about business in Plains because this weekend former President Jimmy Carter will be teaching his Sunday School class at the Maranatha Baptist Church, and the Plains Historic Inn is full… with a waiting list, thank you very much. People still come from all over the world to hear this peanut farmer who became the 39th. President of the United States in 1976 and chose to come home to live where he grew up when he left the White House in 1981.

    My love for the Carters is no secret, but I had to marvel again yesterday as we wandered around Plains, at the simple country school house and the memory of “Miss Julia,” the school superintendent who told those little peanut farmers’ children that one of them could grow up to be President of the United States one day – and one did.

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    It’s a long way from Trump Tower

    And so are we. We did make it to Tallahassee last night…and will use our GPS to find our way to Gainesville today.

    Stay tuned for Lady Gamecock updates tomorrow.

  • Auburn Breaks Pretty and Slow’s Road Trip Chicken Curse!


    The Lady Gamecocks rolled into Auburn, Alabama with their game faces on and had an amazing first quarter that led to their victory in a gorgeous Auburn Arena which held two bus loads of loyal Gamecock fans and a few of us who made the trip on our own.

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    Next one to miss a free throw…

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    Lord, I can’t watch – makes me too nervous

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    Davis in deep, deep concentration before the game – 

    (she scored a USC record 19 points in first quarter) 

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    Pretty before the game – feeling optimistic

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    Elaina Coates ready to play

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    Captains Confab with refs before game

    (better known as Let’s All Play Nice)

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    Star-Spangled Banner

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    Gamecocks didn’t quite maintain the first quarter intensity and points but played well and managed to score 73 points before all was said and done. Auburn struggled in the first quarter but came back to score 47 points as their defense held our Bigs to the fewest points they’ve had this year so very good effort from the Tigers. Unfortunately, our guards were On Fire and hit 14 of 28 from the three-point line which was another record night.

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    Everybody happy as they left the battlefield

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    Pretty happiest of all – Road Trip Curse broken!!

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    Coach Staley hugs Lady G Road Warriors

    Pretty and I discovered why War Eagle Nan loves her Auburn University – it’s a special place. We even got to see the War Eagles themselves when they posed for celebrity photos prior to the game behind our seats. They look ferocious but were tolerant of the paparazzi.

    All in all, the Auburn experience was a Memory Maker, as Granny Selma used to say when she was in her right mind.

    But…we were all dragging by the time we got back to the motel…Spike and Charly stayed in the car while we went to the game, and Charly destroyed her leash to punish us. Oh, well.

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    Road Trip continues as we make our way to Gainesville for the Florida game Sunday afternoon.

    Stay tuned.