The INside Zone

A sports column written by Cluster staff writer Zach Wells about Mercer Bears basketball.

The Inside Zone

The art of 'porch-ing'

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Published Mar 30, in Columns, Sports, The INside Zone

 

(Alex Lockwood / Cluster Staff) Zach will have plenty of memories to share on his porch following another impressive season from the Bears.

I love big porches with columns. In fact, I would say that, other than giant mutant cockroaches and no liquor sales on Sunday, porches are my favorite thing about Georgia. This is my first spring season having a porch, and I’m not sure anyone or anything has had such a major impact on my life (and yes, I do know Jesus). I have a special appreciation for porches, because we don’t really utilize them in my home state of Oklahoma. A nice porch is as useless as a poopy-flavored lollipop where I’m from, because gale-force winds are not uncommon—I might as well sit on the toilet with a blow dryer in my face. In Oklahoma, it’s not that we don’t want to “porch it.” It seems like a great thing to do, but it’s just not reasonable. So if I really get down to it, it’s actually the amazing Georgia spring weather that allows me to enjoy my porch in front of my dilapidated house. The weather is totally outside of our control, but the place we live is not.  In my opinion, when it comes to “porch-ing” (or learning that NASCAR events are actually broadcast on the radio), there is no better place to be than in Georgia.

When it comes to basketball, there is no team I’d rather be involved with than the Mercer Bears. I love these guys almost as much as Lil Wayne loves objectifying women in his songs. I’ve been around college athletes my entire life, and I can honestly say that this group is special. After losing two of our top three scorers to major knee injuries, this team came together like Waffle House and drunk people at 3:00 a.m. The difference between the first and second half of the year was not unlike the difference in personal hygiene levels between the Phi Mu sorority house and the SAE frat house (drastic, and I’ll let you guess which is which).

Brian Mills went from being one of my favorite guys (no homo) to being one of my favorite players to watch. I have honestly never seen, in person, a player dominate games from the mid-range like “Millsy.” Mark Hall, who had come off the bench his entire career at Mercer and had never shown an ounce of discontent, took more charges than Paris Hilton’s credit card this year after being put in the starting lineup. “Sweets” also managed to shoot nearly 40 percent from the three-point line and, when needed, showed the ability to take over a game. Jake Gollon, who has been very nearly physically lame throughout his first two years at Mercer, made huge plays and game-winning shots during the second half of the season. Langston Hall was one of the best point guards in the conference as a freshman. Chris Smith, Bud Thomas, Monty Brown, Justin Cecil, Paul Larsen and Kevin Canevari all stepped up and made what must seem like a very mediocre year to those outside the program a very special year for me.
Every time I thought the season was in ruins, someone else did something that I did not expect.  Coaches from other teams would ask me, “How are you guys doing this?” to which I would confidently reply, “I have no earthly idea.” The truth is, however, that we had a bunch of guys who knew their role, genuinely cared about each other, played extremely hard and wanted to do the right thing. The best thing about these guys off the court is that they genuinely care about each other and, for the most part, want to do the right thing. This is why there is no other college team I would rather be “a part” of. This is also why “porch-ing it” in Georgia has become my favorite pastime—the weather is great, but being in the company of my boys is better.

Unfortunately, our season ended much like the Oklahoma porch-ing experience. Like an unexpected calm, we made a run with young players and some great coaching. We enjoyed a few serene moments, with only a slight breeze easing the heat on a warm spring day. We then played Belmont in the A-Sun tournament, a veritable twister of basketball skills (real talk), and had a nice dose of Oklahoma red dirt blown all up in our faces. Much like porch-ing it in Oklahoma, the experience gave us some sweet moments but a bitter taste in our mouths and tears in our eyes. So right now I’m thanking God I’m in Georgia, because there are no gusting winds and there is nothing I’d rather be doing than porch-ing it with some of my favorite guys, reliving some great memories from an unforgettable year.

The Inside Zone

Zach Wells discusses the changing tide for Bears basketball, and what it means to him personally

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Published Mar 1, in Columns, Sports, The INside Zone

When my mother told me that I was going to have a little brother as a four year-old, I shrugged and said, “good for you.”  I was home educated through high school, and when Emoly West (the only home schooled girl in Oklahoma who did not have unsightly moles or a clubbed foot) asked me to go to the home school prom with her, I pursed my lips and said, “if that’s what you really want.”

When I received a full scholarship to play college basketball, my father beamed with pride, my mother cried for joy, and I took a nap.  I’m not one to get overly excited about anything.  This run that the 2010-11 Mercer Men’s Basketball Team is on, however, has me jumping into walls, crying tears of joy, and running down busy streets screaming at the top of my lungs.  What the heck is going on with this team?

If you didn’t already know, the Bears have won nine of their last eleven games and are now 10-7 in the ASUN conference.  This means that at one time we had a dismal one win and five losses in conference.  There was a time this season when it appeared doubtful whether we would make our own conference tournament, which will be held here in Macon.  This would have been the equivalent of planning a house party, inviting all of your friends, paying for the food and entertainment, getting a flat tire on your way home from work, arriving late to your own party, none of your friends having shown up, and all of your enemies having come uninvited and ate all of your food while tearing your house apart.  Demoralizing is the word.  We were demoralized at one point this season. But then something happened, something changed.

Right around the middle of January, this team came together in ways that I couldn’t have predicted.  Suddenly, everyone had everyone else’s back.  All the negativity disappeared.  A team who’s defense had been porous all season, became stingy, regularly holding teams to under 65 total points.  A team who had trouble doing the little things, like boxing out for rebounds and not turning the ball over, began taking care of the ball as if it was a dollar bill in Brian Mills wallet.  A team that lacked for leadership suddenly recognized Brian Mills as THE MAN, and began going through him on every offensive possession.  A team that had been described as “soft” and “not tough enough,” suddenly became more leathery than Charlie Sheen’s liver.  What could have caused such a drastic change for this team?

I have given this more thought over the past couple of weeks than Einstein gave to the theory of relativity, and I believe I’ve reached a similar result.  Some might say that Coach Hoffman deserves all of the credit, which is a valid point. But I have been at nearly every practice this year and coach Hoffman has been coaching the same way over the past four weeks as he has all season.  Some might say that our team chaplain, Jon Howard, has prayed some of his best prayers of the season over the last few weeks, securing God’s providential good-will and giving us wins.  I strongly believe, however, that God cares very little about who wins or loses a basketball game (there are Christians on the other team who also pray). Some say the players deserve all of the credit, but these are the same players (with a few exceptions) who have been playing all year–something motivated them to change their approach.

There is only one man who can be given full credit for the turnaround of the Mercer Bears season.  There has been one, and only one, major change within the Mercer Basketball program over the last few weeks.  In fact, I can point to a single date, which took this season and turned it on its head.

On January 13th, Ernest John Kusnyer came back to Macon, GA.  “I was doing well overseas in Holland, making loads of untaxed cash.  But money means nothing to me. When I saw my Mercer Bears were struggling I had to come back and help.”  Kusnyer, the Mercer three point legend, was speaking to me as we sat in the cafeteria on campus. He was stuffing his face with his third chocolate chip cookie in less than five minutes.  “Yeah I’ve helped the team come together and make a great run, but I don’t see myself as some kind of hero.  I just did what needed to be done and the results are what they are.  I just let it ride, that’s what I do.”

When I asked “Kush” what he had actually done to help the team, bringing up that some questioned whether or not he really did anything at all (other than mooch of the Mercer athletics program), he got a little bit defensive.  “Of course you’re going to have people say those kind of things.  When you bring this type of success to a program, people are going to be jealous and try to bring you down.” Yes, but what does E.J. actually do for the Mercer Bears?  “My methods aren’t what’s important. I have the ASUN record for threes in a season, this team obviously respects that fact.  They don’t want to let me down.”

Not everyone agrees with this theory. When I texted John Howard about E.J.’s part in the Bears success, he texted me this message back, “E.J. is always thinking about E.J., there are other people who should be getting the credit.”  When I asked Brian Mills how E.J. had helped him since he’s been back, Mills replied, “Is he helping out with the team?  I thought he was just taking classes and working for the U.C.”

The results, however, cannot be argued with. Since E.J. Kusnyer has arrived back in Macon, the Mercer Bears have been hotter than the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Nine out of eleven speaks for itself, and if you don’t want to listen to that, you can listen to E.J. “Sometimes you just have to do something selfless.  I love these guys, I just had to come help them out. You know what their three-point percentage was before I came back?”  I shook my head.  “Yeah, you don’t want to know.”

The INside Zone

It's the circle of life in college basketball

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Published Feb 9, in Sports, The INside Zone

(photo courtesy of MercerBears.com) Guard Jeff Smith was lost for the season after a knee injury following the overtime win against Jacksonville.

I’ve had a stressful couple of weeks, which is why on Tuesday I popped in the greatest movie of all time, “The Lion King”, poured a glass of red wine, and attempted to relax. As I sat on my disgusting couch that has been shredded by my roommate’s retarded dog (Jake, which is ironic because I have a retarded brother with the same name), I let the lyrics of the opening scene wash over me. “Nants ingonyama bagithi Baba, Sithi uhm ingonyama,” over and over again. Then Elton John comes in with “The Circle of Life”, and I, naturally, burst into tears because of the gravity of the moment. In fact, when the Medicine Man Monkey with the blue ass held up little Simba, I joined the other animals, stomping around on the couch and making weird noises (i.e. Tom Cruise on Oprah). After I settled down, I began to think about life’s circles in relation to my Mercer Bears this season and eventually came to this conclusion: I hate knees.      

  I hate knees. If not for the extreme inconvenience it would be to tie my shoes or pull up my socks, I would have my knees removed and walk around like I was on a pair of stilts. Knees have ruined my life. They have caused me insufferable pain and a chance at playing in the NBA (my mother, who was nothing if not objective, happened to be the only person who believed that last part). I have spent more than three years of my life recovering from knee surgery. So I can sympathize a little bit with Jeff “Swagg-rite” Smith and Brandon “Nasty Mane” Moore. Over the last couple of weeks both of them have gone down with severe knee injuries—or as Swagg-rite so poignantly put it on his Facebook status, the Bears have lost two “fallen soldiers.” Swagg-rite, who was our leading scorer, tore his ACL during a huge home victory versus Jacksonville. Nasty Mane tore his ACL, and nearly everything else in his knee, against ETSU eleven days later.

 It is not uncommon for a team to suffer some major injuries during a season, but two senior starters going down within two weeks of each other would be the equivalent of Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck resigning from Fox News within the same period of time. We would all obviously be shocked and deeply depressed if that happened, and this is exactly how the Mercer basketball family felt about their fallen soldiers. Brian Mills texted me, “why does this have to happen now,” the night Brandon was injured. I drew on my vast amount of life experiences and wisdom. I painstakingly typed out several paragraphs of thoughtful insights on my phone, which if I broke it down basically said, “life sucks.” 

 Life obviously does not always suck for everybody, but it always sucks for somebody. The situation with Mercer basketball is no different. As Nasty Mane and Swagg-rite watch from the bench, the team will be forced to move on without them. Players who previously have seen little or no playing time will suddenly have an opportunity to play major minutes for a team who is still in the hunt for the conference tournament. It’s not fair, but life goes on—in circles.

 This is why the opening scene of “The Lion King” simultaneously brings me to tears and causes me to jump around on my couch. It’s difficult to give up the old, but I have to be excited about the new. I hate Swagg-rite’s and Nasty Mane’s knees almost as much as I hate my own, but torn-up knees are just part of the circle. So as I listened, through tears, to Elton John belting, “through despair and hope, through faith and love, til we find our place, it’s the circle,” I could only think of Swagg-rite’s most recent Facebook status: “THRU ALL DA PAIN AND DA STRUGGLIN I STILL SMILIN.” It’s all the same thing; life sucks, but we have to keep moving on. I hope my Bears can win a few games as the young guys learn how to play. I hope that the two senior “soldiers” who are left (Mills and Mark Hall) can lead us to some huge victories. But the one thing I know for certain, other than “only da strong will survive believe dat” (and I actually do believe “dat”), is that the circle of life will continue on, regardless of what I want.

The INside Zone

College Basketball Chaos

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Published Feb 9, in Sports, The INside Zone

(Alex Lockwood / Cluster Staff) Brian Mills seemed to be possessed by the Greek storm god Poseidon, raining down thirty points on the USC-Upstate Spartans' heads.

Coach Hoffman (and pretty much every coach) preaches that every minute of every day is important in terms of winning games. Every sprint during practice, every free throw and every possession of every game matters. Sometimes this seems to be an obvious truth, but at other times I’m not so sure. There are innumerable ways in which people try to explain the happenings of the universe and not all of them make room for preparation: some people subscribe to the philosophy of the chaos theory, which basically states that future events are impossible to predict. Others believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful creator who organizes each and every event that takes place on this earth. Still others place the weight of their good fortune on a lucky pair of underwear. I have to believe in all three, because I am a college basketball fan—more specifically, a Mercer Bears basketball fan. 

The Mercer men’s basketball team’s Christmas Break was about as jolly as a kick to the crotch. We lost to Georgia, Charlotte and ETSU by a total of five points and gave up a nine-point second half lead to Georgia Tech—all within a twelve-day period. This would lead me to believe that the whole “every possession matters” theory is true, considering  the outcome of each of those games could have been changed by one more stop (or one more score). It’s difficult to explain the effect those games have on a basketball team—it’s almost like falling in love with a beautiful woman (“Winning” would be her name) and then finding out she’s in a relationship and was just jerking you around the whole time (which has never happened to me). It just crushes you physically, mentally and emotionally (like I said, totally metaphorical).  

The only bright spot during that period was when USC Upstate came to town. It was like a cleansing rain storm. Brian Mills seemed to be possessed by the Greek storm god Poseidon, raining down thirty points on the Spartans’ heads. It’s difficult to say whether we beat Upstate because (a) they suck, (b) “B Mills” was possessed by the aforementioned Greek storm god, (c) the managers all drank Yoo-Hoos right before the game (mine was warm and disgusting) or (d) I purposely mismatched my pants and blazer. I’m pretty sure it was (b), because we have already lost to some not-so-good teams this year, we tried the Yoo-Hoos for our next game and it didn’t work, I am extremely unlucky, and I’d like to believe Mills was possessed by the Greek storm god as we played a team whose mascot was the Spartans because I’m a glutton for irony. Regardless, the feeling was relief when the final buzzer sounded. Finally something that made sense: we played well and won. 

Just when things seemed to be gaining some order and I was beginning to think there might be a gracious all-knowing creator directing the Bears’ season, the Campbell road trip happened and things got weirder than a First Friday at the Synergy night club. It began with our bus driver, Charlie, telling everyone over the bus microphone that we were not allowed to have “colored” drinks on the bus. I took a sip of my Coke as I turned to the players behind me with a look on my face that said, “Who the heck says ‘colored drink?’” Luckily, Bus Driver Charles was just a lot of talk and didn’t even try to make us give up our drinks.

The actual game at Campbell was horrible for about 33 minutes. We were down by fifteen points for almost the entire game. Somehow, through a slew of substitutions, presses, steals, an inordinate amount of swear words said under my breath and two free throws with .1 second left on the clock by Mills, we tied the game and went into overtime. Unfortunately, that whorish “Winning” was just jerking us around again and we lost in OT. After getting punched in the gut, we had to spend an extra night in North Carolina because a snowstorm had hit and Bus Driver Charles didn’t think it was safe to drive. From what I could tell the next morning, North Carolina had been hammered by a devastating half-inch of sleet and snow during the night. Needless to say, we made it back to Macon later that day, and Bus Driver Charles will not be used again by the Mercer men’s basketball team.

Our next trip was to Stetson, and nothing about it made any sense whatsoever. I feel like I’m entering the Twilight Zone every time I walk into their gym, which I believe has actually been around longer than the Stetson hat. We played terribly—we let a 6’2” power forward score all over us, a man with only one eye out hustle us, and let a center with boobs that would make Pam Anderson blush get every rebound. We lost by seven points to a bad team. The world does not make much sense.

We continued our Florida road trip two days later at Florida Gulf Coast University. FGCU is like the Kenny Powers of the A-Sun—a lot of talk and good looks, but no real results. We desperately needed that road victory. It was one of the hardest played games I’ve seen all year and it was also the worst played game I’ve seen all year. We shot 30 percent from the field for the game, while FGCU shot a scorching 34 percent but had twenty turnovers. As time wound down I thought it would be proper for the game to end in a tie, or possibly both teams could just take a loss. But no, something even more outlandish took place. We were down by two points with 11 seconds left, when Jeff Smith barreled down the lane with the ball, jumped in the air and hung for what seemed like five seconds,  looking for an open man. Jeff found Justin Cecil in the deep corner; Cecil, who was in the game only because Mark Hall had missed all seven of his shot attempts, caught the ball and didn’t even hesitate as he launched it toward the basket. I sat in my chair, leaning back with my arms crossed, and watched in amazement as the ball ripped through the net. A 14 percent three-point shooter had just won the game for us. 

I couldn’t even move from my seat for the shock. Coach Hoffman let out a “Praise the Lord!!” The players were all jumping up and down, ecstatic that something had actually gone our way. I could only sit there shaking my head with an ironic half-grin on my face. Everything I thought I knew about college basketball was wrong. There is no way that anyone (other than Justin Cecil and his mom) could have predicted that outcome. So while everyone else was jumping around acting like a bunch of crazies, I just sat there with these thoughts running repeatedly through my head: “Preparation is useless, the whole world is chaos, God does not care about basketball, and I’m wearing this same pair of underwear until we lose again.”