The third of our Insiders for this year is Aaron Trigg, a senior guard for the Gordon Fighting Scots. If his first post is any indication, he will have a humorous, interesting take on life in “The TCCC.”

I am so excited to write for D3hoops this season. As most Division III basketball players can relate, I have looked at this site more often than NBA refs miss traveling. (See Majerle, Dan). Anyways, it is great to follow some of the successful bloggers of the past like Sean Wallis from Wash U and Mike Dietz of Baruch. Hopefully there is a correlation between deep NCAA tournament runs and D3hoops bloggers.

Before I get too far, I want to give a little introduction to myself and our team. My name is Aaron Trigg and I am one of six seniors and 14 returning players to the Gordon College Fighting Scots. I don’t know what a Fighting Scot is, but if it is anything related to our logo it must be a member of the ferret family. We are a non-denominational Christian college located 30 minutes outside of Boston in Wenham, MA. Gordon is a member of The Commonwealth Coast Conference (TCCC). From the department of redundancy department “the” is part of our acronym. Saying “The TCCC” is actually repetitive and completely unnecessary. I could bore you with more details about our school but there is plenty of time for that later.

Our team is actually much more interesting. Despite possibly being the least diverse team this side of the seven dwarfs, we have quite a few distinct characteristics. So many, actually, we believe ourselves to be “The Only Team in America” with many of these traits. Here are a few examples of what I’m talking about:

• We are the only team in America who has a player who posted his own You Tube video of Hannah Montana’s Hoedown Throwdown.

• We are the only team in America whose entrance music for home games is the theme from Space Jam.

• We are the only team in America who has debated which team member would look best in a dress.
• We are the only team in America who has been to Chuck-E-Cheese’s five or more times this Fall.
• We are the only team in America who awards the “Selfish Award of the Week” going to whoever has been the most selfish person we know. We even have a board for past winners (or losers, depends how you look at it).
• We are the only team in America that sings a cappella before games.
• We are the only team in America with a life size poster of one of our captains in our living room.
• We are the only team in America whose starting point guard must stretch for 2.5hrs before any physical activity, including biking to class.
• We are the only team in America whose Halloween costumes included a cow, a farmer, Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble, a guy riding a pony, and most randomly… a shark eating a person (It was inflatable, and awesome).

These are just a few of our unique characteristics. If anyone out there would like to challenge our self proclaimed Only Team in America title, I would be glad to know. We would appreciate some company.

Back to what I’m supposed to write about. Our group of seniors has had very high expectations since we stepped onto campus 3 years ago. It has been our goal to transform Gordon into a nationally recognized program and we feel we have an opportunity to do so this year. With a veteran led team and a strong group of underclassmen we seem poised to reach our lofty goals. As everyone in basketball knows, nothing comes easy. We will have to work harder than we ever have and compete on every possession if we want to reach our potential. This will be an exciting season and I am looking forward to giving an inside view of our small college team looking to make a name for ourselves on a larger stage.