CBI Tournament

Korrin B.

April 2, 2011 - 8:25 PM

Who needs to win the national football championship when they can win the College Basketball Invitational (CBI)? This past Friday, Oregon made any lingering pain from the January football loss to Auburn disappear by becoming CBI champions. Even better, I had the honor of watching the Oregon Ducks basketball team win this third best national basketball tournament. I'll take number one in the number three any day! The Ducks' last game in the CBI against Creighton was also my last basketball game as a UO student.

I wore my 2007 PAC-10 basketball tournament champions shirt to the game and began to reflect on some of the great memories I have from my time here. It is so weird to start thinking about things in terms of "lasts." My time as a student has flown by so fast that to call any student activity a "last" is just surreal.

My freshman year, my friends and I were all about basketball. We were members of the Pit Crew and were often some of the first students to rush into Mac Court when the doors would open. We knew all the chants, we learned the words to the fight song, and sometimes we even made our own t-shirts for the games. It was one of the best bonding experiences ever.

Our team was also really good that year. That was the year that we made it to the Elite 8 in the NCAA tournament. I still blame the refs for us not getting further - complete Florida bias. Anyway, it was a wonderful year. Two of my best friends from the dorms and I even drove up to Spokane, Washington that year to watch the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. I have incredible memories from that trip. We all bought matching sweatshirts from the event and it is still my favorite sweatshirt to this day. I came close to a breakdown when I thought I had lost it forever in New York when I was working at a children's camp upstate.

My journey with college basketball started in the shaky building of Mac Court and there I was on Friday in an entirely different arena. I was witnessing change in front of my own eyes. It was the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.

As the weeks of spring term fly by, I come closer and closer to the real end of an era. It is so weird to think about that I honestly can't even find the words to describe it. I'm excited. I'm nostalgic. I'll see if I'm ready come June.