Editor's note: Ball State's Tamara Bowie, last season's Mid-American Conference Player of the Year, will share a weekly diary with ESPN.com throughout the season.

Nov. 26, 2001

Greetings from another week of Ball State basketball! The last week has been great for all us at Ball State, especially with the success of our men's basketball team in Maui. They beat No. 3 Kansas 93-91 to open the tournament and then, 24 hours later, knocked off No. 4 UCLA 91-73 to advance to play the nation's No. 1 team, Duke, championship game. We played an awesome game but ended up falling by 12 points, 83-71. I really thought Duke was going to get beat.

	Tamara Bowie averaged 18.6 points and 8.4 rebounds as a sophomore in 2000-01.

I have a new idol now, "Sparky" Owens from our men's team, AKA Robbie Owens. He played with such enthusiasm off the bench to help the team. The whole team played together and it was so exciting for all us. Everywhere our team went last week, someone was talking about Ball State basketball. On the way home from our tournament in Los Angeles, some Kansas fans approached us at the airport and talked about our men's team.

Speaking of the No. 1 team in the nation, we have our chance this week when we play at UConn on Friday. Not looking past our game with IPFW on Tuesday, but it's a great opportunity. In the past, our program hasn't played many nationally ranked teams. We know Connecticut is one of the best teams and it will be a big challenge for us. I think everyone has so much respect for their program. We at Ball State hope to be able to reach some of that success and model our program after the Huskies.

For everyone that does not know, we had a Thanksgiving Tournament at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles last week. Thanksgiving dinner wasn't the best, but at least our team was able to spend time together.

We opened the tournament against Arkansas State. We played well for most of the game, but couldn't pull it off and lost by two, 74-72. Arkansas State never had a lead until the last six seconds of the game. I think we all know we played well and gave one away. As they say, learn from it and try not to let it happen again.

On Saturday, we played Louisiana-Monroe in the consolation game. We won the game 85-63 to end the week 1-1. Jessi Reiter played really well throughout the tournament and was named to the all-tourney team. She had 24 points against Louisiana-Monroe.

The trip home was long and tiring. We left L.A. at 11 p.m. Saturday, which was actually 2 a.m. in Muncie. I slept the whole way home! Sunday was a day off and today we get back to practice! I have to have a good week.

See you next time!

One Love,

Bowie