Last night was the third annual faculty-student basketball game, held as a fund-raiser for charity by a local sorority. This year the threw us a team that included five players from the varsity, including the only 2,000-point scorer in school history. Needless to say, we didn't win...
It was sorta-kinda close for a while, until a stretch of about 4-5 minutes in the third quarter when the guys from the team played really hard. They eased up on us later, but the official final margin of five points owes a lot to the scoreboard operator "missing" a few of their baskets...
My personal stats continue to drop from an all-time career high of 27 the first year. I had 17 last year, and 15 this year (though they gave me 16, counting one three-pointer where my foot was on the line). I also had two shots blocked-- it turns out that while I have offensive moves that work on guys who are taller than I am, and moves that work on guys who are quicker than I am, I've got nothing for guys who are both taller and quicker.... I also picked up a wicked charlie horse from a knee to the thigh, and a similar deep muscle bruise on my left arm from an inadvertant elbow, so I'm a little sore today. Fortunately, I have a fairly light schedule in terms of actual physical activity-- two classes, a couple of meetings, and a faculty happy hour at which the game will be remembered, with advantages.
All in all, a useful reminder of the difference between actual competetive athletes and guys who run around and play ball at lunchtime. And again, it's intructive to note that these are Div III athletes-- the guys in the top Div I programs would shred them about as badly as they beat us.
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I once got stuck in a grad school intramural game matched up against a guy who'd once been a starter for URI. I was 5'11", slow, and had only started playing basketball my senior year of college. He was 6'4" and lightning quick, and I spent most of the game looking at his back as he went by me as if I was a statue.
We've played a few times at lunch with a guy who played Div. I ball recently-- he was a guard at Albany, and is now an assistant coach for the team here. I've heard that he will occasionally scrimmage with the team in practices, and just humiliate them.
Happily, with the exception of one guy on our team who was taking the whole thing a little too seriously (including screaming at the refs), this was pretty low-key. Other than the one stretch in the third quarter, they really didn't play all that hard. Which was good, because there really wasn't much I was going to do to stop them...
I should've noted in the post, but I'll put it here: Many thanks to Kate for putting up with my occasional delusions of athletic grandeur, and coming to watch the game. She can back up my version of events, if necessary...
I used to play a lot of volleyball, and since tournaments usually had about ten teams for two courts they usually involved a lot of sitting around chatting. One of the guys on my team told me that he went to the same high school as one of the Boston Celtics (maybe Dee Brown). Now, this was a guy who was far quicker than the rest of us, who could jump higher and hit harder than we ever would. He said that the Celtics guy made him feel like a weak and uncoordinated child by comparison. You don't notice it when they're all playing against each other, you think one of them looks small or slow by comparison, but when you're actually facing them yourself you realize they're freaks. They're just not even on the same planet as you are, ability-wise.
Such disparities are not limited to athletics, either. In chess, a rating difference of 400 points is considered a sure thrashing. The difference between a competent club player and a championship contender is three times that (1500 to 2700). That means if you're at 1900 you might be the undisputed king of your local club but there's a guy out there who can make you look like a total moron, and then there's another guy who can do the same to him. In Go, there's maybe four or five such "generations" of ability. In programming, it's well known that a top-notch programmer can be 10-100 times as productive as a novice. I'm sure the same applies in any area where head-to-head comparison is possible.
I guess I'm not really going anywhere with that thought. It's just something I find endlessly mind-boggling. We think we're all alike, but really we're not.
"Happily, with the exception of one guy on our team who was taking the whole thing a little too seriously (including screaming at the refs), this was pretty low-key."
Sadly, my other memory of that game is that the guy started pressing me late in the game while his team was up a bunch. I wound up taking out my frustration on their point guard (who was smaller than me), hip checking him into the wall at the end of the court as he attempted a layup off that press. It's the only time I've ever done something like that. I'm not proud of it, but at the time it was very satisfying.