(Editor's note: Tulane senior guard Grace Daley will share a weekly diary with ESPN.com throughout the season. For more information on the Green Wave, visit Tulane's official athletic site.)

Dec. 9, 1999

Greetings Green Wave fans. OK, I've got some good news and I've got some bad news. First the good news: We had a nice win against Georgetown at home, a fun win against Texas A&M on the road and today is officially the last day of classes! It has been a fantastic week!

OK, now onto the bad news. Final exams are coming up just around the corner! I have two Shakespeare classes, a Chaucer class, Latin American studies and a Native American literature and culture class.

My favorite has to be the Native American class. I recently did a term project that debunked one of the biggest myths of the game! To think, all this time I thought that James Naismith and his peach baskets were the real origin of basketball! To the contrary, however, I learned that Mayan Indians were playing a similar game long before Michael Jordan was conceived or the old-school players were lacing up their Chuck Taylor's! The stakes were a bit higher back then though.

In Mayan basketball, the losing team died -- the players were sacrificed! And a loss was even harder on the coaches. I once heard a coach say that a player's career could end in a heart beat, but coaches could go on and stay in the game for as long as they want. Well, in Mayan basketball, the coaches of the losing teams were decapitated!

And I'm not done yet. You fans aren't getting out of this unharmed! The winning team got all of the clothing and jewels of the spectators! How about that?!

I'm kind of happy about the way the game has evolved, but it's also nice to know that if the stakes were still that high, the Tulane women's basketball team would be alive and well because we're undefeated at 6-0 right now! That being the case, our fans would be out of quite a bit of clothing and jewels!

We play again on Monday, at home against SMU. I'll give you a little clue as to how to dress for the game -- wear your old clothes and leave your jewelry at home! :-)

OK, hope to see ya there! Time to get back to reading now ... and I will make sure I enjoy this little break from classes! Not too much though, because as Shakespeare most eloquently put it, "If all the year were playing holidays, To sport would be as tedious as to work."

I'll catch you all on the rebound!

TTFN -- ta ta for now!

Grace