November 8, 2023 – Paxton, Massachusetts
Anna Maria vs. Bridgewater State
Men’s Basketball
Whenever I bring this project up to my father he will inevitably ask the same question: So, do you make any money off it?
No. I don’t. And I’m not going to.
Sure, getting paid to do fun stuff is fun, but this project is mine and mine alone. Willingly becoming beholden to the whims of anyone else is the absolute last thing I want to do here. If I want to write about French fries or pinball then I’m damn well going to do it and not let anyone tell me differently.
Everyone should have something like this in their life. Find something that’s your own that you keep your own. Yes, share it with friends. But create by yourself, for yourself. If other people like it, that’s wonderful. However, it should be for you just for the sake of doing.
I post these blogs a few places and some people enjoy them. I love that. I’m not going to change my philosophy though. I’m here because I’m here. Finishing this project will take a decade, maybe two. That’s exactly what I want.
I want to tell the story of this chapter of my life through college basketball in New England. Who gives a shit if I can’t monetize it? The journey is in the doing, and the joy is in having done it.
Don’t let the economic machine convince you that everything must be a side hustle. Shit can just be fun because it’s fun. A goldfish can outfox finance bozos so enjoy the enjoyment.
It’s a lot better than grinding yourself to dust.
Now relax with a moment with Bella.
The Good Eats
Anna Maria is in Paxton but there is almost nothing of note in Paxton outside of the college. Look at the sign outside the Paxton DPW: it’s a snowplow. Peak small-town New England.
The towns west of Worcester are pretty spartan until you get toward Chicopee and Springfield. So for a good meal I went to the next town over, Holden, for a bite at Val’s.
Val’s is Greek restaurant, but this is no townie haunt. From the warm dining room to the cozy bar, Val’s is a cut above. And that’s without even talking about the function facilities in the building that can host everything from birthday parties to weddings.
The owner and executive chef Valerie James was showcased in the documentary A Fine Line: A Women’s Place In The Kitchen which dissected why just 7% of executive chef positions are held by women. There’s a trailer on the restaurant website that you can watch at the bottom of this page.
The menu is extensive without being overwhelming.
It was quiet when I dropped in. Not many people are having lunch at 3 pm on a weekday after all.
I started with the Greek Lemon Chicken soup. It was good. Thick but not rich. Flavorful without being overpowering. I couldn’t get much bite of the lemon’s acidity but that wasn’t a problem for me. I’m sure it gave the soup body, and it was just a really good chicken & rice soup.
For mains I had the lamb pita. This was a Greek restaurant of course so lamb felt right.
The pita was sublime. The bread. Holy shit, what perfect, chewy bread. With a base like that it was almost impossible to miss. The fact that the lamb was perfectly cooked, and that the tomato and onions provided the perfect brightness and crunch, this was damn close to a perfect sandwich.
I’m not usually a fan of feta cheese, but it did a ton of heavy lifting here in giving the sandwich a rich, fattiness that held everything together.
And those fries were excellent.
On the way out you can stop by the shop at the back of the restaurant to get merch, prepackaged foods, and other kitchen odds and ends. There were also copies of The Fine Line for sale too.
Important Cultural Activities
A half hour northeast of Anna Maria, in Clinton, is the Icon Museum and Study Center. However, I went a few weeks before it changed its name from the Museum of the Russian Icons.
The museum is dedicated to the study and preservation of Orthodox Christian iconography. Founded in 2006, the museum is 16,000 square feet spread over three floors.
As someone with little to no knowledge of Orthodox Christianity, I had had this museum circled for quite a while. Of course, what even is an icon in this context?
In the basement there was a whole exhibit dedicated to how to make icons along with a display of old crosses, some dating back to the fifth century.
The museum had an odd setup where you started in the basement, then the main gallery was on the second floor, and the main desk/gift shop was on the first floor. Very odd layout.
However in the elevator there was a padded bench. All elevators should have a padded bench.
The second floor was a wide open pair of galleries flush with icons of all sizes. It is intimidating as someone who can’t read Cyrillic because I couldn’t understand any of the writing. Nonetheless, the gravitas was felt immediately.
On the main floor there was a space for a special exhibit. It was showcasing the photography of Alain de Lotbinière and his travels through the Orthodox communities of Eastern Europe and North Africa.
Overall, it was an enjoyable way to spend an autumn afternoon and I learned some things about a culture I knew nothing about. However, I don’t know if I’ll be going back much.
The Campus
Anna Maria College was opened in 1946 as a Catholic women’s college and went co-ed in 1973. Located in Paxton (pop. 5,004), AMC is incredibly small, although it’s grown quite bit in the last 15 years, with just 1,100 undergrads, 333 grad students, and an endowment of $7.2 million.
Driving around campus, some of the buildings look their age, but everything is cozy as you’d expect with a college this small.
While the buildings are larger, the first thing you drive by when you get onto campus is Caparso Field, home of numerous Anna Maria teams including football.
I bring this up specifically because football has been a boon to the school, helping boost enrollment in a huge way. Sure, 100 guys enrolling at Michigan may not move the needle, but 100 guys enrolling at school with just hundreds of students is a huge deal.
In fact, it was so huge, that AMC football was featured in an excellent piece in the New York Times back in 2019.
The Game
Anna Maria calls the Fuller Activites Center home.
Like the campus at large, Fuller is small and cozy with bleachers on just one side of the gym and minimal room on the baselines.
Even the lobby is tiny.
Now before the actual ball, I need to explain something. The teams here are called the Amcats. What’s an amcat? Is it some mountain lion in New England? Maybe it’s named after some myth or tall tale?
Nope.
Amcats comes from Anna Maria College Athletic Team Sports. A-M-C-A-T-S.
On this night the Amcats had the Bridgewater State Bears to contend with. And both teams flew out of the gates early. I kept waiting for the pace to slow. It never did.
Bridgewater opened up a seven-point lead midway through the half only to find themselves down nine just seven minutes later. Anna Maria stayed in front thanks to shots like this from Jayden Dickerson. He would finish with 16 points in 15 minutes off the bench.
And even with that mojo, BSU found a way back to cut the gap to just a bucket, 52-50 after 20 minutes.
Of course the second half couldn’t keep up with the manic pace of the first half SIKE, it absolutely did.
That was Zach Taylor with the sick finish for Bridgewater. He would finish with 12 points, ninth-most in the game.
And that was what made this game so great to watch. It was just frantic from start to finish. College basketball is good for a rock fight now and again where getting to 50 points is a chore. This was the total opposite of that.
The Bears and Amcats combined to average a shot attempt every 15 seconds. And even with all those shots, and all those makes, defense still found a way to shine. The teams combined for 26 steals.
Another strong performance here from Louis Jennings, whose dad I was sitting next to and was a good dude. The younger Jennings finished with 11 points and eight rebounds off the bench.
Anna Maria kept finding ways to stay in front through the early portion of the second half. That was made easy by having four starters go for at least 17 points and shoot 50% from the field.
That was Ray Carter Jr. starting the highlight for AMC with two of his 24 points, and that was Dante Kikuba ending it by drawing a foul for Bridgewater.
The game continued to build and build. Baby Claire was with me and didn’t much mind or notice as the teams traded the lead nine times in the final 12 minutes of the game.
Inside the final two it got out of control as Carter and Kikuba started trading threes.
In the end, it came down to a final throw and a shot at the horn…
To send us to overtime tied at 98 because this game refused to end.
And it continued to move like a house afire as 89 seconds into OT there had already been 19 points scored and Bridge led 107-106
But the Bears had Kikuba. Now, I was also watching my daughter throughout the game, but Kikuba was so smooth yet quiet throughout the game that I never quite noticed how much of an impact he had on it until the overtime.
That layup put the Bears ahead. And that foul led to a free throw to put the Bears up two.
Then he pulled out a dagger with a minute to go.
That bucket put a bow on a sublime performance that saw the sophomore quietly, QUIETLY, score 40 points on 13-24 shooting.
It was one of the best performances I’ve ever seen live and carried the way to a season-opening win for the Bears.
Bridgetwater State 119, Anna Maria 110. Final/OT
Time of Game – 2:11:29
Player of the Game – Dante Kikuba (BSU) 40 points, 9 assists, 6 steals, 5 rebounds
Price of Admission – Free
…
Everyone wants to see great games. However, not every game can be great, and we shouldn’t want every game to be great. We shouldn’t want every performance to be as spectacular as Kikuba’s.
If every performance is that good…if every game is that exciting then none of the performances are good and none of the games are exciting. Every 87-64 game we instantly forget happens is made so much more worth it when we’re able to see a gem like the one that played out in Paxton.
I certainly will be back here with Claire when she’s older and can better appreciate it. For now, it was a fun time on a Wednesday night in the woods.
And, as always, here’s one for the road. I think a game as chaotic as this one deserves something to match the chaos:
Through the Curtain 
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