The Game That Kick-Started the Season

. . .Once-Balding Italian's roommate, our other neighbor, Buttercream had recently lost his virginity during first semester. Understandably, he was proud of this milestone. We called him Buttercream because his initials were B.C., the same initials used to denote the 'butter cream' at a local bakery The Greying Writer had worked at for a period of time in the fall. For undisclosed reasons he was fired before Christmas. He began calling him Buttercream and the rest of us followed suit, mostly because The Greying Writer had a way of pushing people's buttons for the amusement of others. But Buttercream enjoyed the name after a while, and sadly it has become one of the more sensible nicknames any of us have once had.

Buttercream had also recently activated into his fraternity and was unable to play on our intramural basketball team. He learned a handshake and a couple of songs about drinking beer in the process. This they felt would lead to being drunk and sleeping with loads of women. I preferred to skip the middle step and go right to the drinking and trying to sleep with loads of woman. To save any suspense, I failed on the latter. Buttercream was enjoying his freshman year, and when not playing baseball, was attending different fraternity functions. He would take different girls on weekend getaways with the fraternity and then return on Monday to tell us of upon the sexual escapades he had embarked. Apparently these fraternities were on to something with weekend getaways.

It was the second week of the season and we had added two new guys onto the team. The Long-Armed Hippie was an extremely talented player, and competed with Slow-Release each night for top player honors. He was extremely long, a great shooter from anywhere on the court, a decent ball handler, good passer, and great defender. He had recently deactivated from his fraternity. Mute Bruce Bowen was a good friend of Slow Release and a cousin of Metrosexual Cowboy. He never spoke, and only shot threes from the corners. However, that's where the comparison to Bruce Bowen ends because he played shit defense. Metrosexual Cowboy was just about my least favorite person on the planet during that time. He played little, shot too much, and spray-tanned twice a day. His own stories are left for another time and place.

We were playing an athletic fraternity team without much basketball experience. It would be a different test for us, but a chance to play more organized basketball and work on our half-court defense and zone offense. I'm not an advocate of any zone in any pick-up basketball game, but I have to admit that it's a smart move in a C-League game because the chances that we shoot well from behind the arc is slim. The Baseball Player and The Athlete noticed the zone right away and called a timeout to get us set up in a zone offense. It consists of three guys quickly moving the ball around the perimeter with one guy running baseline and another cutting to the elbow of the lane. We ran it effectively, but still had to settle for looks from three. Luckily, V-Neck, Mute Bruce Bowen, Long-Armed Hippie, and myself were able to knock down some open looks and give us a comfortable 20 point lead to maintain throught the game. I only contributed 6 points, but it felt good to feel like my shot was starting to drop and I felt more comfortable in the course of the game. Any of our misses were cleaned up by The Insane Fifth-Year Senior and Faceman. It was a dominating performance, against a good group of athletic guys. It gave us the confidence we needed to carry into next week's battle against one of the best teams in the league. But for the time being we celebrated our win back at the dorms.

Buttercream convinced me to throw in a dip while we played some video games and drank a few beers in his room. After hearing of his sexual explorations through heavily trampled area over the weekend, I did the usual, and began trying to convince him he had either 1) gotten someone pregnant and would have to drop out of school to support the child, or 2) had contracted an STD and would be rotting in two months. After a while, he visibly seemed nervous, and it was satisfaction to know he would have trouble sleeping that night after laughing his ass off at the agony I was in after dipping.

But no matter what I said had had gotten off to a great start in college. Only in terms of sleeping with promiscuous woman whom he barely knew, but it was still a good start. Likewise we had handedly beaten a team that could have given us a much better game. We also felt like we were off to a good start.