Here’s a proud basketball junkie mama moment.Two sons. Two games. Two different cities. Can’t be two places at once.

Hubby and Ant head for the 3rd place game in a league tournament championship. Hubby’s coaching and Ant’s the point guard.

So I’m watching Snacky’s game two cities away.  It’s a battle from the get-go. That’s okay with me, though, because I’m watching my son DOMINATE the game. He’s a balla. A shot calla. 20-inch blades on the Impala. Oops — fell into a rap song.

Here we go, though. Game tied, seconds to go. Snacky has the ball, shoots the short jumper to win the game and.. . their big man blocks his shot into Nebraska. Overtime. Cool. Little guard for the other team scores a 3-pointer. Snacky hits the next two shots to put us up by 1 point. We keep the lead and win the game.

He ended up with these stats: 24 points, 11 rebounds, 4 assists, 3 steals, 3 blocked shots. What a stud!

About the time Snacky scored points 17 and18 (off a sweet little 10-foot jumper), my cell phone buzzed. Text message from my friend Michelle, whose son plays with Ant. She’s watching THAT game. What does the message say? “Your baby just scored 3 3’s in a row.” I found out later that, when he scored those treys, our team was down 9-1. Ant went on a 9-2 scoring run on the other team, to make it a 1-point game. Which we eventually won. What a stud!

Feedin’ mama’s basketball jones. . .

We’re heading to Springdale, Arkansas, this weekend for the 1st annual Arkansas Mustang Invitational, hosted by (guess who!) the Arkansas Mustangs, an elite boys’ basketball club. This tournament is by invitation only, and includes some of the best teams in youth basketball. Grades 3-7 will be represented.

Ant’s playing in the 5th grade division with the Kansas Players Elite, from Wichita, KS. There are nine teams in this division, divided into 3 pools of 3 teams each. In our pool, there’s us (obviously), the Oklahoma Storm, and the Texas Titans. We’ll be reporting back on all the scoops from this first ever Mustang Invitational.

Updated

I have to say that the Mustangs Invitational was very well run from an operations standpoint for a first-year tournament. Since the field of teams was relatively small, all of the games were held in the same facility. That made it easy for teams to watch each other — which always builds up the excitement in a tournament. Overall, the referees were solid, which is always a plus.

The best thing about the tournament, though, was the level of competition.

As I mentioned before, there were only 9 teams in our 5th grade division. But they were quality teams: the Texas Titans, the Kansas Players Elite (us); the Arkansas Mustangs; the Houston RYTES Warriors, and the St. Louis Majestics were all in our division. The up-and-coming KC Tarheels made their regional debut at this tournament, as well.

To begin with, on Saturday, we played pool games against the OK Storm and the Texas Titans.

We beat the Storm 41-23, but I’ve got to give big props to their big man — if you’re reading this, you know who I’m talking about. This kid is amazing — and was arguably the best big man in the 5th grade division.

Our second game was against the Texas Titans, a team pretty well known in AAU basketball circles not only for their success on the basketball court, but for the fact that they’re financed (in high style) by a billionaire. There are a lot of people who hate on the Titans for both of these reasons, but I thought they were a class act. They appear to hold themselves to a very high standard, and not only on the basketball court — players, parents and coaches are all showed great sportsmanship and were a lot of fun to be around.

Back to the game. . .

Our game against the Titans ended up being a nail-biter, despite the fact that the Titans had a 15-point lead on us at one point in the game. What could have been a boring blowout turned very exciting as we battled back and ended up tying the game i42-42 with just one minute left in the game. So, it was anybody’s game as the clock wound down. Turns out it was the Titans’ game, as they beat us 46-42 in that final minute. It was a loss we couldn’t feel too bad about though, since it could have gone either way at the end.

I didn’t realize it until after the game ended, but the game had drawn quite a crowd by the time the final buzzer sounded.

Note: Fittingly enough, both the Titans and the OK Storm were staying in the same hotel as we were. That gave some of us the opportunity to meet, hang out and get to know each other a little bit. I was impressed by the people I met from both teams. Shout-outs if you’re reading, Titans and Storm!

On Sunday, we started out playing the KC Tarheels. After beating them, 48-30, we faced the St. Louis Majestics in a tough game that was marred by some real issues with the clockkeeper, who kept playing with the score and letting time run off the clock. The constant arguing over the status of the score and clock killed momentum for both teams. The Majestics pulled out the victory, though, in a pretty ugly game.

The loss to the Majestics left us at 2-2, and unable to compete for the championship. So we played our final game against the Arkansas Tigers, in a game that meant nothing in terms of the tournament standings. I didn’t have a problem with that, though, because the Tigers are a good team, and I figured that any time we spend on the court against another good team is all good.

All good, except for the fact that we lost. To a really good team. . . but still. I hate to leave a tournament with a losing record (in this case, two wins and three losses).

However. . .
See my report on the Keys Tournament for the results of our rematch with the Tigers a month after the Mustang Invitational.

So who won the Arkansas Mustang Invitational? The Texas Titans beat the Houston RYTES Warriors in the championship. Congratulations to both for making it to the championship — and congratulations to the Titans on the championship.