5:13 Seconds That Led To Second Championship For Stephen F. Austin
By Cheval John
KATY, TEXAS-When Sam Houston State narrowly defeated Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 70-67 on Friday night to advance to the finals of the Southland Conference (SLC) Men’s Basketball Tournament, they shot 20% from the field in the first half.
The Bearkats, who were the No.2 seed, had to play near perfect basketball if they wanted to defeat their arch-rival and No.1 seeded Stephen F. Austin.
Unfortunately, the Bearkats was not able to meet the challenge of playing near perfect basketball as horrendous shooting in the closing minutes of the first half led to the Lumberjacks pulling away with an 83-70 victory to claim their second consecutive SLC tournament championship and clinched an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
In the process, Stephen F. Austin (29-4 overall) became the second team to repeat as SLC tournament champions since former conference member, the University of Louisiana at Monroe, won four straight tournament titles (1990-93).
After a back and forth matchup in which Sam Houston State took a 25-24 lead on Kaheem Ransom’s three pointer, things started to fall apart in the final 5:13 of the first half.
The Bearkats (25-8 overall) missed shots and turned the basketball over while the Lumberjacks capitalized with a 13-2 spurt to close out the half with a 37-27 lead.
The dagger that shut Sam Houston’s coffin during that run happened with 02.5 seconds when the Lumberjacks inbounded the basketball and found Tanner Clayton, who hit a buzzer-beating trey from 40 feet.
Sam Houston shot 30 percent from the field in the first half and finished the game shooting 36.1 percent from the field.
The Bearkats also shot 15 percent from three point range.
Lumberjack basketball player, Thomas Walkup, who won the tournament MVP, led all scorers with 24 points and 8 rebounds.
Bearkat senior Michael Holyfield, who made the all-tournament team, led SHSU with 18 points and 12 rebounds.
Stephen F. Austin will find out later today who they will face in the opening round of the NCAA tournament on Selection Sunday that will air on CBS starting at 6 p.m. eastern, 5 p.m. central.
The Bearkats also have a strong possibility to make a post-season as well, but not the NCAAs.
Build Your Mental Strength Through Adversity
By Cheval John
Photo courtesy of stockimages
Sometimes life will throw you a curve ball when you least expect it.
When the curve ball occurs, you have a choice of whether to go out and have a pity party or pick yourself up and continue to fight for your dreams.
It is true that you have no control over your circumstances.
However, you can control your emotions.
When you want to go after your dreams, they will be a force of resistance that will try to stop you from achieving your goals.
Resistance and adversity are there to test you and see what you are made of.
If you really want to fulfill your goals, then you will find a way to overcome the resistance and adversity to achieve your goals.
At the same time, adversity is your friend because it allows you to build your mental toughness and develop the strength to push through to achieve your goals.
Just like an airplane flies against the wind to receive lift.
So if you are going through a tough time, do not give up.
Your breakthrough to fulfilling your dreams is right around the corner.
The World Is Our Oyster
By Cheval John
Photo Courtesy of khunaspix
As today is the last day of Natalie Sisson’s 15 Days To Freedom Blog Challenge, I want to say that it was an honor and a priviledge to participate in this blog challenge with many others from around the world.
It was a fun challenge because of the discipline of putting out quality blog posts everyday during this challenge.
As I mentioned in the first day of the challenge, I was blogging consecutively from the first day of this month because I thought that Natalie’s blog challenge was a 30-day blog challenge.
I guess you can call me an over-achiever.
However, I needed to start the year off right and blogging everyday was the right energy booster to make sure that 2015 was the breakout year for me.
You can look through this website and see all of the post that was written during Natalie’s blog challenge.
My favorite blog challenge was Day 14, “What’s One Thing You Are Going To Do To Make You Feel Alive And Be A Tourist In Your Hometown?” #paraphrased.
The reason why I loved that blog challenge was because I love to travel and I feel that the world is out there for everyone to explore.
The thing is that there is no excuse for anyone not to travel because the internet has given us the opportunity to run an online business from anywhere in the world.
You might think that you do not have the time to travel because of your work.
The truth of the matter is that we are heading towards a time where the majority of workers will either be self-employed or remote workers.
According to this article by Meghan M. Biro in Forbes, 30 to 45 percent of employees work from home.
What this means is that a person does not have any excuse on why they can’t travel the world.
If you are looking for inspiration on running a business from anywhere in the world or you want to work remotely, you can follow Ms. Sisson’s blog, “The Suitcase Entrepreneur.”
Ms. Sisson is the shining example for anyone who wants to run an online business from anywhere in the world.
If you agree or disagree with this post, you can leave a comment below.
Explore Your Hometown Like A Tourist
By Cheval John
Photo courtesy of taoty
Travel gives people the opportunity to explore a culture that is different from their own.
It breaks the preconceived notions of how people in a foreign country live.
Unfortunately, many only travel as a tourist to escape the rigors of work, especially here in the United States.
According to a report by CBS News, the average American only get two weeks of paid vacation time.
That same report by CBS said 25 % of Americans use the entire two weeks of their paid vacation time.
It is not surprising because we have the mindset of “Living To Work.”
We are really focused on getting the promotion we will sacrifice living just to achieve the promotion.
In reality, we were raised to believe that we had to go get good grades in school that we could get into college.
Once we get into college, we should choose the major that will get us that job and from there work until retirement.
We don’t think that it is possible to spend time in a foreign country and explore a different culture.
Another belief is that the only ones who could spend an extended period of time overseas are college students.
The truth is this type of lifestyle in overseas travel is open to anyone who really want to experience a different culture.
However, it doesn’t hurt if you start living abroad during your time in college.
According to the National Association of Foreign Student Advisors (NAFSA), 289,408 U.S. students studied abroad during the 2012-13 school year.
That is only a small percentage of about 18 million students who attends universities in the U.S. according to the Statistic Brain report.
What this shows is that if you studied abroad and are looking to enter the workforce or try to gain an overseas assignment with a company, you will stand out from the millions of people who did not studied abroad.
And if you did studied abroad or lived abroad, you will experience re-entry culture shock.
You will start to feel like things are boring in your hometown, will feel sadness because you can’t relate to your friends or family because they have not spent time overseas.
I can tell you that if you feel that way, you should try to find people who have studied abroad themselves and learned how they overcame re-entry shock.
Also, you can start exploring your hometown like a tourist.
You can visit the museum, attend a symphony orchestra concert, go to a sporting event, etc.
That will allow you to maintain your sense of adventure when you traveled abroad to your hometown.
I can tell you that while I spent three months in Chile, (the majority of the time in Vina del Mar), I walked around the city and explored it.
Prior to spending time in Vina del Mar, I had a preconceived notion that it was going to be touristy because the city is the tourist capital of Chile.
However, I was happily surprised that it was not too touristy because I had arrived during their winter time and the weather changed a lot like here in Texas.
After returning and experiencing re-entry shock, I decided to read up on stories of people who lived overseas.
I also realized that I could walk around the city of Huntsville, which is a small town, and get around easily.
Now that I am in the Houston area, I will aim to explore Houston as much as possible while I am here.
I know that I will learn something new about the city of Houston and will also maintain my sense of adventure for travel.
Have you studied, interned or lived overseas? If you did how did you overcome re-entry shock and how have you maintained your sense of adventure in your hometown? You can leave your comments below.
This post is in response to Natalie Sisson’s question, “What is the one thing you will do to make you feel alive in your hometown as a tourist #paraphrased as part of her “15 Days To Freedom Blog Challenge.”
Don’t Do What Everyone Thinks Is Best For You
By Cheval John
Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles
When I first started blogging four years ago, I would not have imagined that I would fall in love with it.
I saw this as an opportunity to showcase my thoughts on what was happening in the world and being able to tell stories of people who are achieving success the right way.
Let just say that I did not had a direction of what niche I wanted to get into.
All I knew was the fact that this was an amazing platform.
One thing I did not do was remain consistent in the blogging schedule because it was like the spur of the moment if a particular event happened.
In that first year, I learned that you had to keep on blogging every week because if you did not, you would lose some readers and it would take a while to gain them back.
Even to this day, I still struggle with writing long form content because I will admit, I get bored if the content is very long winded and it does not get straight to the point.
However, it has been a fun challenge to write longer form content because I am a contributing blogger for Millennial CEO and I want to give their audience the best information possible that will make them feel better and give them actionable advice.
Since founding this website three years ago, the blog posts has been a mixture of sports, some travel and university affairs.
Also, the site has been growing slowly with viewership from around the world whether they stumbled on the site by accident or had meant to visit it.
I will be honest of the fact that I wished I could have bigger viewership.
At the same time, I rather this type of slow growth because I want to see what works and what does not work.
I also want to achieve what is called the “5 to 10 year overnight success” because I want people to see that there is no such thing as an overnight success.
I want them to see that they have to put in the effort and work to achieve their goals and not think that someone was lucky when they achieved their goals of writing a great book, running their own company, etc.
When they say that someone is lucky, all they are doing is cheapening the success of the person and validating their excuse that they cannot achieve their goals.
Also, I want this site to be as close as the Huffington Post as possible.
Is this a lofty goal?
Yes, it is a lofty goal.
At the same time, I believe it can be achievable and I am willing to work extremely hard to achieve the goal of being a close to the Huffington Post.
The only thing is that I will not use any short cuts to get there because I rather achieve the fruits of my labor.
Another thing I want to address is the fact that there have been so many blogs, podcasts webinars, etc. that talks about choosing a niche.
While I am totally in agreement with the people who mentioned about choosing a niche, I have to disagree with them to a small degree.
The reason is that I love sports, travel, business and social media and I feel that it is very difficult to choose one out of the other.
I believe that these things above is who I am and I want to express myself here by writing about sporting events, travel and interesting things that is going on in social media.
Maybe I am not the only one who think this.
If I am the only one who think it is o.k. to write about different subjects like sports, travel or other things that interest them and not just one particular subject, then I will not apologize for it.
All I care about is making the reader feel better about themselves and solving their problems.
This is the reason why I am blogging.
I hope that you will do what you love and not worry about what other people think about you.
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