Alex Baird living a dream with Aggie hoops

Notes from Alex Baird interview

* Saturday was one of the most surreal moments of his life. Going into the game, he didn’t expect anything out of the ordinary to happen other than maybe getting a couple of minutes to relieve Elston Turner. It ended up working out pretty well for the team.

* Thought he was going to be nervous the whole game. At the end of games when he gets a few minutes here and there, he gets pretty nervous when he goes in. However, this time was different. When he got in the game, after about 15 seconds of moving around on the court, the nerves went away. He was relaxed on the court, tuned everything out around him and was able to remain focused the entire time. The nerves played a lot less of a role than he thought they would.

* Definitely a lot more nervous bringing the ball up the court against OSU’s press than when he was shooting a free throw. Can’t tell you what he did wrong in order to miss the free throw.

* Honestly didn’t see an opportunity for substantial playing time ever coming while at A&M. It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy being on the team because he just enjoys being able to help out in practice, but it was hard to see himself getting playing time in the heat of conference play.

* The team needed a win so badly and they wanted to play hard for people like Dash, Khris and Kourtney who couldn’t play. They knew they had to pick up the slack in order to come away with a win. On the court, the team had a lot more to play for than just themselves.

* Dash and Khris were doing a good job of coaching the team on the sidelines. Khris was feeding him confidence the whole game, telling him, “You’re doing good out there man … keep it up.” Khris was just trying to keep the confidence level high. Dash was actually helping him out with plays and where he needed to be on the court during certain plays. Dash was also doing his part to keep the confidence up as well. It was extremely helpful having both of them on the end of the bench.

* Didn’t ever plan on walking on to the team. He didn’t play basketball his junior or senior year in high school but loved playing basketball at the rec center when he had the chance. He found out about the walk-on tryouts through Naji Hibbert and decided to check them out and give it a shot. It ended up working out really well in his favor, much in part to Coach Walker from Coach Turgeon’s staff last year.

* His bio says that his dream date would be with Natalie Portman. And even though he has a girl friend and is no longer interested in Portman, landing a date with her will probably happen sooner than his favorite pro sports team — the Dallas Cowboys — winning another Super Bowl.