everything i wanted Hoop City to be

On Saturday, I visited one of the best attractions I've ever been to. It's the College Basketball Experience in downtown Kansas City, attached to the new Sprint Center arena. It includes the College Basketball Hall of Fame, but what drew me in was the sign on the outside: "This is not a musuem. You will sweat."

Twelve dollars later, I'm riding up an elevator hearing my pep talk. "Play every game like it's a big game, now go out there and show us some heart, etc." It opens up on the second floor, and I'm a kid in a candy store.

First up, the traditional free throw contest. 60 seconds to shoot as many as you can. The high score was 24, and I made 16. I was pretty pleased.

This is not me.

Then I moved on to the Buzzer Beater drill. There are 6 lighted spots on the court, you have 5 seconds to get the lit spot and sink the shot before the buzzer. I played this over and over. Good times.

Then there was the dunking zone. 10, 9, 8, and 7 foot rims were there for the dunking! I was an inch or two short for the 9 foot rim. But that just meant that I was living above the rim on the 8 foot one. Reverse jams, two handed sideline slams, off the back board, it was awesome.

Then there was the 3-point contest. The object of this drill was to start at the top of the arc and make three shots, then move to the left wing and make three, and then move to the left baseline and make three more. 9 3-pointers in 40 seconds. This was super fun but super hard. Making 3-pointers consistently is a lot harder than free throws. My best attempt was completing the first two stations, getting 6 in 40 seconds.

Also on the second floor, was a full length court, and a seperate court for 3-on-3.

I went downstairs and there were two more drills. Make a chest pass, bounce pass, and overhand pass to hit 3 targets in 30 seconds. This one was easy and not that much fun.

There was also a lay-up drill where you got to bounce and roll of off blockers. Good idea, but it wasn't set up that well. Still fun though.

Also downstairs was a kid's area, a broadcasting setup, XBox, measure your wingspan (6') and Vertical (9') and the actual Hall of Fame (which wasn't very impressive).

I went back upstairs to the 3-on-3 area and found 5 white guys from Minnesota. I offered to play 3-on-3 and they said sure. We ended up playing two games of lightning and two games of 21. I won both games of 21. That was fun.

One thing that made the experience so fun, was that it was so un-crowded that I could do whatever I wanted. For example, the dunking zone is setup to allow 40 seconds for each player, so that a line could move through it. But there was no one in line, so I dunked for 10 minutes and then would move on to whatever I wanted to do next.

Basically if I lived in Kansas City, I would investigate how to get a season pass and go every week. It would be fun to go with a couple of guys, to compete for high scores and do alley-oops and all that as well.