The One Where Las Vegas Is Good to Me

This story ends where it begins -- on a semi-deserted desert highway in the middle of the night. To avoid the bumper-to-bumper Vegas-Los Angeles traffic, we traveled to and from Vegas late at night, Ross sleeping and me driving. I'm a professional late night driver, but I still needed my tried and true music to keep me awake. During the Wallflowers song, "Sixth Avenue Heartache," the line "Got my fingers crossed on a shooting star" triggered my memory to how this story begins -- on that same road, late Thursday night, Ross still sleeping. I saw a falling star and, true to supersticion, made a wish. Now, most people would probably wish that they would arrive in Vegas safely or that they would win money or something, but I'm not most people. I wished that Kansas would beat Florida.

I don't believe in that kind of stuff, even though I can be a tad supersticious, so I made a silly wish, hoping that it would come true. I didn't think it would. I know it's just November, but Kansas really needed to make a statement and do something to prove that they weren't just going to go into March looking good but not great and choke in the first round of the tourney. I'm tired of that nonsense. I'm not sure Bill Self should still have a job if that happens again.

For my birthday, Ross bought me tickets to the game. I just wanted to see a good game and see that Kansas could play with teams like Florida. Friday night, when they got dominated inside by Ball State, I doubted I was going to get my wish. If they couldn't outrebound Ball State and get easy shots in the paint, how in the world were they going to match up with Florida?

Saturday night was awesome. Not only did I get a great game but I got a win in overtime, 82-80. It shouldn't have gone to overtime, and I think that just goes to show how much farther Kansas has to go to reach Florida's level, but I was really happy with what I saw. Julian Wright stepped up and completely dominated in the first half. The Sasha Kaun-Darrell Arthur-Darnell Jackson rotation worked beautifully to slow down Joakim Noah, and we got key shots out of our guards. Even Brandon Rush stepped up and took some big shots, including the game winner.

Again, I know this is only November. But if you look at our schedule, this was the game. The rest of our games are against mid-major opponents and lower, which admittedly we need practice against, and the Big 12 is down this year. I know we still have a couple losses ahead of us, but I don't think we have any really tough games that will prepare us for the types of opponents we'll have to play in the tournament to reach a Final Four and win a national championship. So I was really looking forward to this game and was really happy with what I saw. I hope the team can continue to build on this win.