Transfer: Ahmadd Rorie

[GrizLA]

Funny, the thing that most draws me to basketball is the challenge of going up against the very best.

One of my proudest sports moments was a few years ago at Pauly Pavilion. There I sat with one of my lifelong friends, a dyed-in-Carolina Blue Tarheel fan, to watch our underdog Griz take on UCLA. We get off to a slow start, but slowly make a comeback, then take the lead. Slowly it dawns on me: Qvale is the best center on the court, Cherry the best point guard. We go into halftime with a small lead, certain that UCLA will come storming back. But--it's just the opposite. We just keep pouring it on. With about five minutes to go, we're up by twenty. With the cat in the bag and the bag in the river, it's UCLA that makes a final push to make the final score "respectable." We win by plus ten.

A couple of years before that, I sat alone in a sports bar to watch a game nobody else wanted to see: Montana v. Nevada. The heralded Nick Fazekas would tear us apart, everybody knew that, so I figured to leave at the half. Well, Fazekas was good, but Strait was better. Matthews and Criswell were superb. We were one game away from the Sweet 16--a game against Boston College that was tied at the half; a game where a B.C. guard who couldn't put the ball in the ocean suddenly got hot, raining threes from all over the court, while our kids went cold. Still: One game from the Sweet 16.

Against the very best. The big boys.

AzOne knows: The easiest way to succeed is to lower the bar for success. My approach--and DeCuire's too evidently--is to raise the bar. To take on challenges. To get better by playing the best. The moments of satisfaction can be few and far between--UCLA in the 70's; the Nevada game; the game at Pauley. But the thrill of victory for me is even more intense than winning a national championship against second-rate competition. Because we did it against the best. We did it against the men.

I, too, was at Pauley on that rainy night but was not the least bit surprised at the outcome as UCLA was very off that year and UM was not the only "2nd tier" team to win at Pauley that year. Still, the ease of scoring was almost shocking.
I, too, see scheduling perennial powers as a good thing. But, for me, the greatest win I have seen the Griz pull off was the enormous comeback, led by AJ being fed by Cherry, at Weber State. I, and the rest of the people in the restaurant I was at, downtown LA, was transfixed by that game. The cheers from the neutral crowd every time AJ scored were like watching the Bruins or Trojans in a playoff.....The other great win was at Stanford, who had just come off one of the best years they ever had....UM, when given opportunity and good coaching, can most certainly compete. Now, they need to develop a mindset to win....They could have defeated Cal, last year, and had Davidson on the ropes that was playing the best they did all year....The base for a great season is here....Should be fun.