Today marks the last day of the trip. Elliott and Hannah left early this morning and Mat a little later around 10. After seeing him off at the bus stop, Clay and I donned our basketball effects once more and hit the courts. The battle was epic but it all began innocently enough. Both of our knees were a little creaky from last night’s games and no amount of warming up would make a difference, so we just started playing. Clay opened up a sizeable lead in game 1 going up 8-2 at one point with a barrage of 3-pointers. I managed to put 4 more points on the board, but Clay closed it out easily 11-6. I can only assume he felt good and proud. The win boosted his lead in our perpetual grudge match series which now stands at 14-12.

I’m going to go ahead and write off game 1 as a warm-up where Clay happened to already be hot. His luck did not persist in game 2. I now had the hot hand. I hit a number of 3-balls from the top of the key forcing Clay to tighten up on me and blew by a couple of times for more easy scores. Final score: 11-4. Clay had egg on his face and didn’t like it one bit. Even as we trudged off the court to retrieve water and shade, he was gearing up for the winner-take-all final game.

The temperature reached up into the mid-80s and the sun beat down relentlessly as we stepped out for one last go of it. The heat and two prior games made for a decidedly different contest from the first two games. Our legs were tired and our vision fuzzy as we hoisted up ill-fated jumpers and slogged toward the basket on achingly slow drive attempts. Points were traded up to 11-10, at which point we decided to win by 2. I missed a jumper, Clay retrieved the ball and tied it up. We traded in this manner for another 4 agonizing points although once Clay took the lead at 14-13. He got me up in the air on a shot fake at the elbow and drove past for an open layup but missed the left-hander that would have sealed it. I went on to score three straight and securing the final, sweet, exhausting victory. Overall series count: 14-14. I’ll be sure to milk this one for all it’s worth in the 10 or so weeks before Clay returns to the States.

I’ll be shipping out around 7:30 tomorrow morning for a day-long journey that will only carry me to 6:30 pm in Raleigh at which point I’ll head directly for day 2 of Los tryouts.