Good game, good game

My kids have all played sports on various levels, from the very laid back version of basketball that is the churchcentric Upward basketball and soccer program to recleague baseball and football to competitive softball and high school volleyball. Sometimes they won and sometimes they lost, but win or lose, one constant has always remained.

At the end of the game, both teams did some sort of highfive, hand-wave, shout-out or whatever that included a very important two-word phrase.

“Good game!”

It’s a very simple and very basic sort of gesture, and it’s not even always true, as I’ve seen my kids be on both ends of a 20-2 thrashing or — especially when they were little — a game that, let’s be honest, wasn’t really all that “good” at all. Winning and losing is part of the game.

That’s just the way it works. As much as I hate losing, I’d rather lose than tie. So give me a “good game” to watch and I’m happy.

Such was the case over the weekend as I watched the Arkansas Razorbacks pull off a dramatic win over the top-ranked Gonzaga Bulldogs. And such was the case when I watched the Hogs get owned by the Duke Blue Devils, denying Arkansas an opportunity to make it to the Final Four.

Now, I’m not really a basketball person, but my wife is.

She used to be a big Boston Celtics fan and she played some basketball in school. As we watched the game, she

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wasn’t really watching but she got drawn into it as the game got closer and closer to its conclusion and she commented how “they,” meaning Duke, were “just too big” and “just too good.”

And she was right.

Maybe with a little luck and more time to come up with a game plan, in a 10-game series, Arkansas could have beaten Duke a few times, but in a oneand- done format, the Hogs really never seemed to be in contention.

But that’s OK.

Yes, it would have been awesome to see the Razorbacks back in the Final Four for the first time in a generation. Sadly, it was not to be. And in all honesty, the Duke storyline, with Coach K making one last run, is a great story and I hope they win it all (now that Arkansas is out of the running). And let’s be real… how awesome is it that “we” beat Gonzaga?

And how great is it to see the Hogs get this far? And

Arkansas fanbase about the future of the school’s basketball program?

So, yeah… Good game, Arkansas. And good game, Duke.

And just for the record, my daughter has a t-shirt and on the front it has printed the following text: “Good game, good game, good game, good game, I hate you, good game, good game, good game, good game.”

I think honesty is the best policy, right?