Sunward I've Climbed, and Done a Hundred Things You Have Not Dreamed Of

The long, delirious, burning blue

I had some form of this in mind for Tennessee’s eventual NCAA Tournament happenings, one that probably would’ve befit a future 86-79 win in the Sweet Sixteen or something. That will come eventually, and maybe it will be as in-the-moment inspired as this is. But sometimes, you break protocol.

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High Flight by Canadian Air Force member John Gillespie Magee Jr. is one of the few poems I would wager the average American has heard in some form. It gets referenced a lot, most famously by Ronald Reagan after the Challenger disaster. It is such a pervasive and unavoidable piece of work that it has been adopted into musical form by no fewer than 20 different musicians over the last 80 years. You can read it here; the part you are aware of previously would be below.

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

– Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

I would not deem High Flight a personal favorite. It’s good and deserves its spot in the canon; I don’t really revisit it that much. But there is a reason why it is in the canon, why it is so pervasive, why everyone has probably heard at least some form of it in an English class at some point. There are the visuals.

The visuals of takeoff, so novel and unfathomable to those of us bound to the ground. To a fighter pilot of World War II, it was not fear but beauty that seemed to drive him. Blood and guts existed; he chose to look elsewhere. The blood and guts are still there but in the sky, above it all, you can feel things no one else feels.

via Tennessee Basketball

To fly above everyone else, all of whom are ants, is a unique feeling. Millions experience it every day via air travel. Presumably many thousands have experienced it by being the pilot. It is an ingenious miracle, only to be topped by the smooth feel of a Japanese bullet train. But even that cannot help you fly above it all.

via Karthik at WBIR

To truly shoot off into space, you must slip the surly bonds of Earth, those which hold us down day over day. To touch the sky, you have to be one of a chosen few. You have to be pretty miraculous in your own right. I have not seen this many times in life, and I have definitely not seen it in the life of writing about basketball. But I have seen it now.

I have seen things. I have seen a second-team All-Big Sky player come in for a graduate transfer year, barely on the NBA Draft board whatsoever. I have seen him gradually get more and more hype. I have seen him deliver on it by dumping 28 points on a then-AP #4 team on the road in an exhibition game. I have seen him deliver by dropping 24 on the road at a future 6 seed.

And then, I have seen him fly. I promise. With my own eyes, human flight is real. I have seen things I never ought to have seen.

same (Andrew Ferguson, UT athletics)

This is the impossible man, Dalton Knecht. I have never, and will never again, not as long as this newsletter covers Tennessee basketball. Not as long as I am conscious, which after yet another special performance I question if I am. Maybe I, too, have slipped the surly bonds of Earth. I am not alone. Many of you who watched a 39-point outing against the best defense Tennessee may play all season would agree. You have felt yourself loosen from your seat and float, well above the ground, to dream things you never allowed yourself to dream.

I will never again see a player who had zero Division I offers and scrapped it out at a JUCO for two years go from the best player and a Big Sky second-teamer on a 12-20 team to at worst the runner-up for National Player of the Year. It has never happened. It may never happen again. The list of transfers this successful in the last decade is just Oscar Tshiebwe, and Tshiebwe transferred into Kentucky as a very successful starter at a Big 12 school. The Big 12 is not the Big Sky.

There are stats aplenty that I could use here, and this is after all a blog about stats. But sometimes, I don’t think they can describe the story to you best. Maybe it’s just pictures, those which we have captured of a comet rocketing through time and space.

via Vol Hoops instagram

A miracle of Thornton, Colorado, itself high above the sky. Maybe there he learned to float, to float well above us all. He is in space now. May he only come down for tipoff of the next game.

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence.