Flagrant Foul (gxg)

Chapter 47

Every year, the Atlantic Coast Conference holds a tournament for all the women's basketball teams that play in that conference. And almost every year, that tournament is held in the Greensboro Coliseum in the aptly named Greensboro, North Carolina. That was only a short drive for several teams in the conference, like us, NC State and Wake Forest. Several of the other teams had slightly longer drives or flights to make, but it was well situated for hosting just such a tournament.

The way the tournament worked, the higher ranked teams got the advantage of automatically qualifying for the later rounds, while the lower ranked teams had to play every round to keep advancing. As the top ranked team in the conference, we were automatically qualified for the final eight, and we ended up playing against Georgia Tech in our first game.

They were a decent team, but finished with as many losses as wins, and our game against them was an easy one, as we beat them by 20 points. At this stage of the tournament, style points didn't matter, we just wanted to win and stay healthy. If we were all in good shape, we knew we could play as well as any team in the country. Which is why we were worried when our second game, in the semifinals, was against NC State.

They had been the number four team and had won to advance to play us to get to the championship game. We knew we could beat them, handily at that, but staying healthy with them might be a different matter. I definitely didn't want another concussion!

"Don't expose yourself to them, okay?" Skye said before the game.

I put my goggles on while handing her my engagement ring and gave her a nod. "Yeah, I plan to keep it simple. I'm not going to elevate this time, no dunking. I just want to get through this game and onto the next." We didn't know who we were playing in the next round, it would be either Louisville or Notre Dame, but they played in the game after us. We'd beaten Louisville  earlier in the year, and Notre Dame was our lone loss. I really wanted redemption for that!

"Just play your game, you'll be fine," she assured me. "You've been kicking ass out there lately!" She had a point. As the games were getting harder, it seemed as though Leah, Imani and myself were getting better. We fed off each other's intensity, so it was easy to get fired up when one of the others was on a roll. Bryn and Dayana were playing their complementary games too, and the attention paid to us gave them wide open looks multiple times per game. We were rounding into shape at the perfect time.

"Go sit with your moms, I'll see you after the game, beautiful." I gave her a quick kiss before heading out to the court for warmups, breathing evenly as I started to get loose. I was feeling good, nothing was going to stop us tonight. I took a look down at the other end of the court and was surprised to see Tegan looking a lot better than the last time we played. Maybe she finally got her life in order? It wasn't going to matter, at least I hoped, we were still going to crush them. I wasn't trying to be cocky, since I knew that any team could beat another on any given day, but it just seemed like we had their number because we had too much motivation on our side.

After warmups, we settled in for the tip off to start the game. Tegan took the jump for NC State, while I took it for us. "You're going down tonight, Rivers," she boasted before the referee tossed the ball in the air.

"Damn right I am!" I scoffed. "My fiancé lets me do that every night!"

"Fuck you!"

"That's her job too, sorry!" It wasn't like I was trying to get under her skin this game, but she did start it. I wasn't going to just sit there and not give a little crap back to her.

When the referee tossed the ball up, I jumped up, tipping it over to Dayana, who passed it quickly to Leah, and we were off. I'll say this, Tegan was playing out of her mind. They had a new trick that they were trying, sending her through multiple screens to get her matched up with someone smaller than me, and she started knocking down three pointers.