Scottish St. Patrick's Day

The first few days of the week were filled with class, the gym, movie watching, and essay writing. I've finished my third of four essays! I've got two weeks to write my final essay, edit, and revise. Scott, Adrian, Mikey, and I have watched movies the last few nights. We've watched some American classics: The Lost Boys and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. It's been a nice way to spend the nights after writing.

Wednesday was St. Patrick's Day! The Glasgow Cup was being held, and that's a tournament between the three biggest universities in the city: Strathclyde, Glasgow University, and Glasgow Caledonian. There were ten different sports with men's and women's divisions in four of them. Over the course of the day the events take place, and the winning schools get points. The team with the most wins and points at the end is the overall champion and gets to take home the cup! Our first basketball match was against Glasgow University. I'd been told by many that Glasgow Univeristy was Strathclyde's biggest rival, so we HAD to beat them. Winning the cup didn't matter as long as we didn't lose to Glasgow Uni. As there were so many basketball games to be played, the format of the games was four six-minute running clock quarters with no free throws. Also, the clock didn't stop in the final minute of the game. The style of play was chaotic and like street ball. It was sloppy but still fun. Our game against Glasgow was back and forth the entire time until the last quarter when we pulled away. We didn't have Ally for the day, so Dade did most of the driving and scored a lot of layups. Akis and I hit a fair amount of shots, but we were happy to get the win.

After a girls' game we had to play Glasgow Caledonian. If we won, we were the champions of basketball in Glasgow! This game was rough and really sloppy. It was even throughout the match. We were trading baskets, which was frustrating because we were better than both of the other teams. We were down by three points with 1:30 to play when Dade stole the ball, drove to the rim, made the layup and got fouled. It was a huge three-point play to tie it up. We stopped them on their next possession and after swinging the ball around their zone, Dade found a lane and scored again at the rim. We were up two with :30 to go. They came down and we stepped up the defense until they broke through and we fouled them on a shot with :06 on the clock. They got a point for the shooting foul and were hurrying to throw up a desperation shot. They inbounded the ball and chucked up a shot from the corner that missed! They got the rebound and made the putback, but time had already expired much to their despair. We joyously celebrated for a bit, picked up our plaque at the ceremony, and then celebrated with the rest of the Strathclyde athletes after we had won the overall Glasgow Cup! As the honorary American, Scott gave me the plaque to take home! Another trophy for the trophy case, right? We spent the rest of the night eating at a bar and going out to a club with the girls' team. St. Patty's was crazy! There were so many people dressed up (Ally dressed as a full-on leprechaun) and having a blast! What a day!