Stephen F. Austin State University

Editor’s Note: The weeks leading up to NCAA March Madness are very exciting. Stephen F. Austin senior center Matt Kingsley, a Cy Creek graduate, will be submitting an online journal twice per week on The Sun website.

The Lumberjacks are trying to earn their first-ever bid to the NCAA Tournament; they’ll attempt to qualify it when they play in the Southland Conference Tournament, March 11-15 in Katy.

Here’s Kingsley:

I would like to formally introduce myself. My name is Matthew Kingsley. I am a 6 foot 9 inch post man for the Stephen F. Austin State University basketball team in Nacogdoches (nac-uh-doh-chess), Texas. I was born in Beaumont, but lived most of my life in Houston. My parents moved to Paris, Texas, almost four years ago, which might go down as my least favorite place to spend any amount of time.

If they didn’t live there I wouldn’t even know the town existed. Ask me where home is, I’ll say Houston. This year marks my fifth and final year as a Lumberjack but only the fourth year that I have been able to play. It has been a long and interesting journey to say the least. I redshirted my freshman year five years ago because, well, I was terrible. If you aren’t familiar with the term “redshirt” it simply means to sit out one year without losing eligibility. I don’t know the exact rules and ramifications of the redshirt laws but if I’m not mistaken any player can redshirt one year, any year they choose. Most people use their freshman year as their redshirt year to get acclimated to the higher level of competition and possibly put on or lose weight. In my case, I just wasn’t ready to play Division I basketball. There were no bones about it with me, I knew I was bad.

Well, enough about me. I am writing this entry in the midst of a race for the Southland Conference Championship. Many teams can still win it, but, as of last night, SFA, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Nicholls State and our arch rivals Sam Houston are the top four teams in the running. This is a very exciting time for us, because if we win our next five games we will be conference champions for the second year in a row. Goodness, I didn’t even realize how bad I wanted it until last night. My roommate (arguably the best player in the Southland) Josh Alexander and I were watching The Bottom Line on ESPN when we saw that both of the teams that we needed to lose, lost (I think that sentence is grammatically correct). We both kind of glanced at each other, slowly reached over, and quietly gave each other five. Well we “skinned it”. If any of you have seen the movie Stand by Me you know what I’m talking about. It’s a hybrid between a low five and, I don’t know, something else. It’s me and Josh’s secret handshake. I digress; we both knew what those scores on the bottom of the screen meant. They meant that if we win our last five games we win it all. I felt an unexpected rush of adrenaline. Josh felt it too. If our team plays up to our abilities, we will win out. We are a very good basketball team that plays great defense on a daily basis. If we can get our offense together we are nearly unstoppable. These next few weeks will be very exciting and I look forward to sharing my stories and thoughts with you along the way.