Dancing, Just Not At The Dance
'"It's nice when it fills up"
Inara Verzemnieks: There's no way to get scientific about it, to quantify the minutes of lost sleep, the number of Buffalo wings gobbled during an all-you-can eat bracket-party frenzy, the strangers who shout good luck from windows -- the collective joy of a team that's tumbled into the strange reality of March Madness for the first time. But we can zero in on one player from Portland State's basketball team.
Four days after he learned that his team is bound for the NCAA Tournament -- one day after he learned that they would take the court against one of the best teams in the nation -- Kyle Coston, 20, is standing in the kitchen of the apartment he shares with his older brother, washing dishes, scrubbing the dried remnants of egg off a frying pan.
Because that's the way it is when you're living through something extraordinary -- your normal existence is suddenly juxtaposed against the surreal. Right now, he's up to his arms in dish soap, but in a little more than 24 hours, the sophomore forward and his Vikings' teammates will board a plane for Omaha, Neb., to face a team that he has watched over and over again on ESPN, wondering, "How would I stack up with them?"
