Ernie McCray as an Arizona Wildcat after a 46 point performance

A Shout Out to the Arizona Wildcat Basketball Team

Hey, you, Wildcats!
Man!
You could never understand
how you make my heart sing
when you take to the courts and do your thing.
It’s downright thrilling, appealing,
exhilarating, fulfilling…
And I’m sitting here in my den, chilling,
thinking of rhymes about how y’all beat Belmont
like they were no more than children out to play,
no more than feathers in a hurricane’s way,
and you attached yourselves to Harvard
like leeches feasting on fat prey,
like gloom on a nasty stormy day.
And, what can I say
about that shot
in the Sweet Sixteen
that put you away
other than it’s a lesson for another day.
But you hung in there with them all the way.
Hey, like they say,
at the U of A,
you “Fought like Wildcats!”
That’s where it’s at, Jack.

There are moments when
you guys do things
that are absolutely amazing,
like that blocked shot against
the Aztecs
that seemed to come out of the rarified air
of a place called nowhere.
I mean no where in any physics book
in which I’ve looked
is there any mention
of such an insult to the “Law of Gravity!”
Feel me?
How can one’s heart not sing
after witnessing such an incredible thing?

When I see you do
what you do
I go back in time,
a few decades,
to my playing days
when the program
was in decline,
a bit behind the times,
going through
what happens when old ways
are slow to adapt to the new;
Our stagnant schemes and plays
had long seen better days.
But I ain’t lying
when I say our lack of success wasn’t due to a lack of trying.
No, we “fought like wildcats” just like you,
full of rah-rah-rah and siss-boom-boom
for the old Red and Blue.
We dove for loose balls
and blocked out
and set screens
while the cheerleaders went through
“Go! Go! Wildcats, Go!” routines.
But “wins”?
We hardly knew of such things.
That’s why you make our hearts sing.
We’re old branches on your Family Tree
and we live through you vicariously.
When you win we win.
When you lose our hearts bend.
When you “Alley-Oop”
we wonder when did man learn to fly
and sometimes we call it showboating
and the reason why
is because it is to our dismay
that we couldn’t have ever executed such a play,
back in our day,
if everybody on defense got completely out of our way.
We might talk about how everybody today
palms the ball
and takes an extra step
and pushes and shoves
but we can’t help but marvel
at how your generation
has taken the game to a level way above
anything we could have imagined
ever seeing.
You make our hearts sing
no matter what we say.
You’re our offspring
when it comes to basketball at the U of A.

The U of A.
I have to say
that you gifted athletes chose to study and play
at an institution that has come a long long way
to become as great an institution of higher learning as it is today.
If you learn all you can from this season past,
basketball-wise,
and what the school asks
of you
human-wise, critical-thinking-wise,
creative-wise, health-wise,
fun-wise, self-exploratory-wise,
loving-caring-contributor-to-

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Ernie McCray

I was raised in a loving and alive home, in a black neighborhood filled with colorful characters in Tucson, Arizona. Such an environment gave me a hint that life has to be grabbed by the tail as tight as a pimple on a mosquito's butt. With no BS and a whole lot of love. So, from those days to now I get up every morning set on making the world a better place. On my good foot*, and I hope my writing reflects that. *an old black expression

Latest posts by Ernie McCray (see all)

• Should Democrats, like Superman, Seek ‘Truth, Justice and the American Way’? - December 10, 2018
• Saying Goodbye to a Friend Who Gave Me a Helping Hand - November 28, 2018
• An Awakening - November 21, 2018