Few Miles Shy of Hollywood; January 22, 2016

A good friend of mine in Dallas, Jacob Phillips, the cross country and track coach at Dallas Baptist University, is trying to blog every day.

I'm going to pull for him a lot to be successful because I'd like to, but am not getting it done.

I enjoy expressing myself.  Just trying to get things out of my mind and make sense of life.

Although I certainly have little to complain about.

It is Friday night.  I'm in Los Angeles.  It has been a long day.

I was up at 3 a.m. Central time to make it to my desk by 5 a.m. (made it at 4:50 a.m.) so I could get my work done and leave by 9 a.m.

My flight to LAX left just before noon, landed here at about 1:30 p.m. Pacific, got my bag, picked up a rental car from Enterprise and made it to the Marriott Courtyard here in Culver City.

The goal this weekend is to see three college basketball games and run two races.

The first basketball game is out of the way:  saw #12 Stanford send USC to their fifth loss in seven games and move to 15-4 on the season and 5-2 in Pac-12 play.

The Trojans play in the Galen Center - a beautiful facility just across the street from the USC campus.  Had some time before the game to see the outside of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which has such an incredible history over the last 80-plus years.

Back to the basketball game:  I couldn't have been more impressed with the play of 5-8 freshman point guard Marta Sniezek for the Cardinal.

She was a Parade All-American who hails from the Washington, D.C. area with four siblings either played or play college athletics and is the second youngest of a family of 10 children.

Her coach, the legendary Tara VanDerveer, told this to the Palo Alto Online newspaper about Sniezek -- and it is spot on.

"Marta is a heady point guard, sees the floor well, works hard.  Her assists were great, scored when she needed, but she's really a great distributor. She's smart and she's a student of the game."

Yep.  Without a doubt.

The Trojan that I was most impressed with was #41 Temi Fagbenle.  Learned just now that she transferred from Harvard after graduating from there with a degree in anthropology.  Wow.

She's 6-4, from Nigeria, a Parade All-American like Sniezek and competed in the 2012 London Olympics for Great Britain.

Not a big girl, but physical and sometimes gets away with some calls despite her aggressiveness and quickness.

USC has such a rich women's basketball legacy with the McGee sisters, Lisa Leslie, Cheryl Miller and their current coach, Cynthia Cooper.

All of their numbers have been retired by the school.

Some may wonder how I can just make a trip like this by myself.

I've just decided that I'm not going to let the lack of certain things in my life keep me from enjoying it.

As I've stated before, I'm an introvert.

I'm perfectly comfortable doing things by myself.  Sure, it would be good to have company, but I can let the lack of good company place me in a dormant state of life.

So I keep busy and cram as much into it that I can.

I hope to run a 10K in the morning with basketball games at Loyola Marymount and Hope International in the afternoon and evening.

Hope you'll make it a great day too!