weekend wrapup

Monday, November 10, 2003, at 03:55AM

By Eric Richardson

Not a lot of sleep this weekend (and with that I'm actually including back to Wednesday, just for good measure). Wednesday I went and saw the Matrix. Friday the USC basketball team played its first exhibition game. Saturday and Sunday were spent down in San Diego at a waterski tournament. Click to read more about all of those.

We'll go chronologically, so we'll start with the Matrix Revolutions. I'm not going to say anything all too insightful here, since I'm sure the movie's been disected to pieces all over the place by now. I wasn't bored. I really don't think there was an ending possible that could have satisfactorily wrapped up the series, so I give this ending as much credit as any. Sure, it leaves a lot of things open and unresolved, but that's ok. That's what imaginations are for.

Friday was the first hoops exhibition. I made it out to LA City College to watch some of our players over the summer, so it was fun to finally see them playing together. We were rough, but showed flashes of great things. A lot will hinge on the play of our big men, and that's an area where we're pretty thin. Rory will have a lot of weight riding on his shoulders. McMillan looked a little lost in the first half, but would have short stretches where he would really show what a physical animal he is. I liked seeing him getting emotional out there. We can't look to Des for all the emotion on the team, even though he's got plenty of it.

Saturday morning I got up at 5am and drove down to San Diego for a UCSD hosted tournament. This tournament was actually scheduled for last weekend, but moved because of the fires. The change led to a much smaller turnout, with really only the southern schools making it. My performance was pretty bad, and I've decided I'm blaming it all on this being my first time trying to perform on salt water. For some reason my team's turnout was abismal. We had two people for slalom, and then I spent the rest of the tournament as a team of one. Again I ended up grafting onto the UCLA team -- Gary Hunt, from UCLA, "How is it that we end up picking up the one guy that we shouldn't?" This is the last of the fall tournaments, and gives me a little time to get our team organized and hopefully spend some good time on the water to get my comfort on a ski back before the spring season. The last time I really felt solid on a ski was back when I lived in South Carolina, and I think that's entirely the fault of just not getting consistant time on the water to get my feel back. I feel that USC has to have waterskiers that we just haven't managed to get connected to, and I'm not sure how we're going to solve that. I've got another year and a half with the team, and I would love to think that in that time I could craft a more cohesive team of waterskiers, rather than just a group of people who head out the lake every weekend to wakeboard. I enjoy wakeboarding, and I think it's great that we can get those people out on the water, but at core this is and always has been the USC Waterski Team, and that's where my heart is.