AUGUSTA, Ga. --- During Tusculum's run in the NCAA Division II Men's Basketball Tournament, junior guard Jimmy Boone (Greeneville, Tenn.) will be providing a daily blog from this year's Southeast Regional in Augusta, Ga.:

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Well, I guess this is my last BLOG entry - which really, really hurts.
Losing a close hard fought game is really tough, especially when it's the last game of the year - enough said.

One of the great things about college basketball is winning, but what makes winning so special is the people you do it with and the relationships that you develop with your teammates over the season. The long practices, the running, the sacrifices, and all the things you do to make winning possible. So the worst thing about tonight, it's the last time we get to play with Ryan Troutman and Marko Kostic.

We played a hard game, we didn't play our smartest game - but oh did we battle. True to our program and our leadership, we played hard for 40 minutes. I missed a shot, the kind you dream about making growing up as a kid, to win the game. We were down by two points with 15 seconds to go against the fourth-ranked team in the nation, on their court. We got a really good trap, and I was lucky enough to come up with the steal. We had a chance to win and I guess that's all you can ask for.

Following the game, Augusta fans were lined up outside the doors from our locker room to congratulate us on how hard and how well we played. They thought it was the best game they had seen all year long. People were just so impressed with our screening and our defensive effort. Our conference commissioner, Patrick Britz, personally congratulated our team on one of the guttiest performances he has ever witnessed.

It was an awesome feeling going down the stretch as we kept getting stop after stop after stop - and, Kyle and Ryan could not be stopped hitting shot after shot. But, as Coach says, we didn't lose tonight, we just ran out of time. And I truly believe that if we would have had just 30 more seconds we would be playing Barton College in the semi-finals tomorrow.

Nonetheless, there are so many people to thank for such a special season with so many first, but most of all I just want to thank my teammates - especially Ryan and Marko, they have taught us all how to be the winners that we are.

Tonight's loss hurts very, very bad, but it just shows us how good we can be when we do the things that we set out to do. I whole-heartedly believe that you will see the Tusculum Pioneers in the NCAA Tournament next season.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Today was a pretty easy day in the life of a Tusculum Pioneer. We got to sleep in until about 11 a.m., and yes I did finally get some much needed sleep. We left the hotel as a team for a TC favorite, Chick-Fil-A.

After that we went to Augusta State's Christenberry Fieldhouse where the regional tournament is held. We had a short, but intense and hard practice. The NCAA is very strict and structured; we all had to enter the arena together and had exactly 55 minutes to practice. We did a lot of shooting and worked on several things. We want to be sharp, offensively for Saturday's game. Our guys were able to get a lot of shots up, as well as getting a feel for the gym that we will be playing in.

Coach Boone told us