1. I hated that I had to do it, but my decision to stay home on Saturday was the right thing to do. I woke up this morning still feeling scratchy and a bit tired, but I could tell that the rest I accumulated by staying home contributed to the improvement of my health.
2. Before long, if you read this blog with any regularity, you'll see that I hold great admiration (even feel love) for several college basketball teams across the country. Yesterday, I mentioned Seton Hall, Gonzaga, and Oregon. Add the University of Virginia Cavaliers to my, well, long list of teams I try to watch every time they are on television. This morning, UVA played Arizona State. Seeing the Sun Devils in uniform brought back memories of a few of their games a year ago -- their stunning victory over Kansas in December, their OT loss to Oregon in the Pac-12 tournament in March, and their pounding of a team I loved last year, St. John's, in their first game of the NCAA tournament.
This season, ASU lost its 2018-19 stud of a freshman, Luguentz Dort to the NBA, but two streaky scorers, Remy Martin and Rob Edwards returned to ASU.
UVA is rebuilding its team after winning the national title a year ago. Kyle Guy, Ty Jerome, and De'Andre Hunter, the foundation of their brilliant 2018-19 team, all left Virginia to play professionally. But, here's the deal. UVA head coach Tony Bennett coaches defense better than any coach in the nation. UVA also plays patiently and deliberately on offense. Combined, these two elements of UVA basketball keep game scores low and games close. UVA always has a good shot at winning.
So, in today's UVA/ASU game, the Cavaliers played tight defense and I could tell they were in the process of figuring out who their primary scorers will be this season.
As the first half drew to close, UVA held a ten point lead, but just before the half ended, ASU scored five startlingly quick points and drew within five. ASU continued its run of scoring in the second half, scoring fourteen more points before UVA hit a bucket. That 19-0 run put ASU up by nine. I found it remarkable that ASU was scoring like this against Virginia and that they had taken this lead. But, then two key things happened: Virginia made a defensive adjustment by running their front court players out near the three point line to disrupt ASU's sharpshooters. In addition, UVA started to get scoring from Mamadi Diakite and from freshman Casey Morsell. Morsell hit a couple of huge three pointers, including the game winning bucket as Virginia won this low-scoring tilt, 48-45.
3. This afternoon, Carol hosted a party celebrating Paul's 60th birthday. Cosette, Zoe, Molly, and Travis were all home and Christy, Everett, and I joined in. We had a leisurely cocktail hour with a variety of hor d'oeurvres before dinner and talked and laughed about a variety of things before heading to the dining table for shrimp cocktail, a green salad, and two cheese fondue options, one made with beer, the other not. Plenty of cubed pieces of bread sat on the table and we all used our long fondue forks to dip the bread into the cheeses. The dinner was both fun and delicious.
We retired to the living room, sang a rousing Happy Birthday to Paul, and then, for dessert, we dipped either pieces of fruit or pieces of sponge cake into a fondue pot of chocolate -- very tasty.
It's fun to listen to Cosette, Molly, and Zoe talk about what's happening in their lives these days. All three are establishing themselves in the professional world, each in her own way; today I enjoyed experiencing them as adults who are growing into their abilities and maturing into insightful, capable, and caring people.
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