ROAD TRIP

After a nearly four month home-stand, the Santa Monica Finers are on a four and a half month long road trip. My new tour is for a company called Red Peg out of Alexandria, VA, representing the National Guard via 3 on 3 basketball tournaments at college campuses. Last week at Grambling University was intense. Being such a small school, everyone knew about us and the turn out on Saturday was enormous. Aside from the 3 on 3 tournament we also run 3 PT, free throw, half court, and dunk contests as well as the "World's Biggest Game of Knockout" and strength challenges. Each individual winner getting an Ipod. The highlight this weekend though was the 3 on 3. We play fifteen minutes games by ones and twos to fifteen (whichever comes first), call your own fouls, etc. Playing for the championship game and a new flip cam for every team member, the favored team was down 8 - 3 before making a furious come back and tying the game at 11. After stealing the ball they used their lone time out to set up a play. You'd think that a bunch of college kids running a play in a pick up game would just try a simple pick to get an open look at the basket. Cue the following: Person A inbounds the ball and sets a quick screen for person B. After person B comes around the screen, person A rolls off it towards the basket. Person B lobs the ball to the hoop, and person A catches it behind his head and one hand tomahawks down with about 2 seconds left. Let me know the next time you see something like that on the local playground. The nearly 200 people that were still hanging around exploded a la the stands in the old And1 mix tape videos. We were poised for an equally impressive dunk contest, until the gym coordinator told us we couldn't do it because of the lack of break away rims. Overall the weekend was a lot of excitement and success. The team and the person I replaced before me have made this the most successful program that the Guard has, so I plan to do my part to keep it going. This week we are in Carbondale, IL at Southern Illinois University. First impressions: The city of Carbondale should never be a place you come to on purpose. It is still early though. So that was week one. If you would like to know more, check out nationalguard.com\basketball. Come back tomorrow for all my thoughts on the first weekend of March Madness.

                                                    ACTIVITY COURT SET-UP

                                                               3 ON 3 SETUP

FORMER NBA PLAYERS TOM HAMMOND (BACKGROUND), AND JOHN "HOT ROD" WILLIAMS