This past weekend, some teammates and I went up to Troutville, Virginia. Yes you are reading that right - Troutville.  My teammate Noah States ( http://youtube.com/watch?v=bhzl-dWyNBI) lives there and we love to give him a hard time about living in Troutville.  It was cool to see another part of the country and I really liked it up there.  Its way different from Alpharetta, GA, where I’m from.  Troutville is not super crowded and is just a nice quiet town outside of Roanoke and I really liked how peaceful it was.

My summer school class gets out mid-week next week. I should end up with an A or a B+ in my class which will be good for the GPA. I can’t believe its gone by so quickly.  Even in a short time I’ve seen improvement in the weight room and I’ve been happy with my play in pick up.

Me and one of my friends that writes for SamePageSports.com just planned a trip to Wisconsin in early August.  We are going to be up there for the Green Bay Packers preseason opener at Lambeau against the Bengals to check out my favorite yardbarker Jarrett Bush. We are also going to a couple of games between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Nationals.  I was born in Milwaukee so these are two of my favorite teams.

     With the NBA draft coming up, I thought I’d take the opportunity to do a little namedropping.  One of the things that I have found while playing division one basketball is that no matter where a guy is from, his high school or A.A.U. team would have beaten everybody elses high school/A.A.U. team like a drum.  When you get an elite group of basketball players together (how long until someone bashes Furman…the clock starts now) for road trips, pregame meals, summer school, etc. basketball stories are told time and time again.  I’ve realized that only a few people can hold a candle to the list of players I’ve played with or competed against. One that comes to mind is my teammate Noah States. He went to Hargrave Military Academy with 10 other D1 Players including: Jordan Crawford , Jeremy Jacob ,  Eric Wallace to name a few that went to BCS schools.

In high school, one of our biggest rivals in our region (probably shouldnt call it a rival because we never came closer than 10 points)  was Wheeler High School.  My junior year in high school, they got a big boost from a transfer by the name of J.J. Hickson.  I’m not going to get into details of the transfer but you would probably be not too far from the truth if you said that Wheeler coughUniversitycough has a bigger recruiting budget than a D2 school does. On that subject I should probably keep my mouth shut considering Milton’s (my high school) roster has some new faces on it (I’ve been assured that they all are legitimate move ins).

Anyways, JJ Hickson and I guarded each other which led to some mismatches considering he is a 6-9 post and i’m a 6-7 wing.  We played them at our place my senior year and I ended up dropping 33 points tying my career high and 11 rebounds - 2 more points and 2 more rebounds than J.J..(Apparently you can watch highlights here… http://hsgeorgia.scout.com/a.z?s=37&p=8&c=1&nid=2931045 with a scout.com account).

What I am about to show you is never before released footage.  Here is how it went down… So I’m guarding J.J. Hickson a week or 2 before the McDonalds All American teams are to be announced and rumor is that there is a Mickey-Ds scout in attendance.  J.J. takes a power dribble and lays one in. I try to take a charge (read as: I fall down like an idiot) and J.J. decides to take that opportunity to stand over me and yell, “STAY DOWN F*** BOY”. I decide to get up and push 2 Wheeler players out of my way to chase J.J. to halfcourt to make a point.  I’m not exactly proud of this video and looking back I should have definitely been given a technical at the least.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYJ5D8I-Xzw

This weekend, my teammates and I went and watched The Happening. I’d give it 4 out of 5 stars. The plot was a little unrealistic, but with it being a scary movie, I looked past that and thought it was a good movie. On Fathers day, my mom, sister, and brother ditched my dad to come up and see me. I feel pretty bad about that but its really the only time my family will be able to see me while I’m at summer school. I went out to eat with my brother, sister and mom and then Evan came with me to spend the rest of the weekend and Monday with me. I got to take him out to eat and we had some good brother time. He came and watched us lift weights and play pickup this afternoon. He took advantage of the opportunity to show my teammates and I that he can dunk now, the summer before his freshman year. This is about a year before I was dunking. We also had a chance to watch Tiger and Rocco today.

I am realizing how amazing sports are after a weekend like this. I watched 2 games of the NBA Finals, professional baseball games, college world series (Go UGA I guess), EURO 2008 soccer matches, and the US Open. I’m pretty disappointed in the Lakers for their ridiculous collapse. To me its unacceptable to give up a lead like that. I’m becoming more and more interested in soccer lately. It helps that I have friends from Europe including a teammate from Croatia and just hearing him talk about the love that Europe and basically the rest of the world have for the game. Even the security guards go crazy when the home team scores a goal, something that is unthinkable for pretty much any American sports.

Watching the US Open was definitely the most fun I’ve had watching golf. I just can’t see how anybody could root against Rocco Mediate! Tiger has won 8 more majors than Rocco has won PGA tournaments of any kind. Everything Rocco said in interviews made me cheer for him even more. Even though he lost he really played some amazing golf.

This got me thinking that we are witnessing a Golden Era of sports. I’m making this list off the top of my head so I might be forgetting some athletes but Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Roger Federrer are undoubtedly the best to have ever played their respective sports. I will admit that I wasn’t around to see other basketball, tennis, or golf stars in their prime but I really believe that nobody will be as dominant as these three were/are.

Every division one college basketball team goes to summer school and since Furman falls into that category, I am back on campus.  I got back on Sunday and got situated in my apartment.  Furman pretty much requires students to live on campus for all four years.  To make this possible, Furman built 11 apartment buildings on campus.  For summer school we get to stay in the apartments which is nice.  They have a kitchen and living room and then 4 private bedrooms.  Its alot better than living in dorm rooms

Summer school is alot more relaxed compared to the regular school year.  We take one or two classes that meet for 2 hours monday through friday, lift weights 4 days a week, and play pickup 5 days a week.  I’m taking a physics class for non science majors with 3 other basketball players, about 25 football players and a few female athletes.

Now I’m about to go watch the Finals with some teammates in another apartment.  I’m pretty surprised that the Celtics were able to win the first two games. I really thought that the Lakers would be able to steal a game in Boston and would have a good chance at winning the series in 5. It doesn’t really matter to me who wins. I was hoping to see either the Spurs or Pistons in the finals (not necessarily playing each other). I just hope there are some good games.

I officially finished my first year of college on the 27th. I’ll be home for 10 days and then I’ll be back up for summer school. This is the first time I’ve been able to sleep in my own bed for more than 3 nights since August. While I’ve only been home for a couple days so far, I’m loving it right now. I’ve been able to hang out with my family alot. My brother Evan is14 and legitimately 6′4″. He’s in the middle of playing AAU and practicing with the high school program. We have the same sense of humor and have been having alot of fun together. My sister Lauren is about to be 16 and I’ve been able to catch up on things with her having lunch with her on her lunch breaks at work. My parents are awesome too. I would have to guess that the same can be said about the parents of any athlete that makes it to the college level. My parents are one of the main reasons I’ve been able to get as far as have. I’ve gotten to spend some quality time with my high school teammates too. We played pickup at the Alpharetta Community Center and ended up watching some game films from our junior and senior years of high school.

I’m realizing that I’m pretty lucky to be able to live in the metro Atlanta area where there is so much to do. Last night I went to the Gwinett Arena to see an arena football game. The Georgia Force scored a last minute touchdown to win by 1 against the Tampa Bay Storm. When my friend Greg and I got to the ticket office we were told that the $9 tickets were sold out and the cheapest tickets were gonna cost us $40. We were certainly not going to spend $40 each so we started walking back to our car. On the way out the only scalper in the whole place had 2 tickets for $5 each and that sounded good to us. After the 1st quarter ended we snuck down to the 3rd row and watched the rest of the game 5 feet from the action. It was cool to see that former Furman Paladin and Atlanta Falcon Cam Newton was the starting linebacker for the force.