Basketball is the world's second biggest sport, but before until now my knowledge of the game went little further than Zac Efron's portrayal in High School Musical and Seventeen Again.
In fact, my knowledge of most spectator sports only stretches as far as the Olympics and the occasional England football match during one of the big tournaments. I'd certainly never been to any sort of live sporting event.
So, in an effort to do something I would never usually do, I headed to Plymouth Pavilions with my brother to watch the Plymouth City Patriots take on the Bristol Flyers.
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The first thing to do was to decide where our loyalty lay. As someone who’s never had any feelings of allegiance towards any sports team, it was a bit of a coin toss.
On the one hand, I'd grown up just outside of Plymouth in East Cornwall and spent a lot of my teenage years in Britain's Ocean City - so you'd think the Patriots were the obvious choice. On the other hand, I'm now a Bristol resident and a regular writer for Bristol Live. Should I be backing the Flyers?
Not being able to make up my mind, I entered with no allegiance and thought maybe I'd base my decision solely on who wore the nicest jerseys - I can already hear the the frustration from avid fans.
We arrived in our seats at 6.45pm and the pre-game entertainment kicked off with a bang. The room was plunged into darkness and the Pavilions' impressive sound system fired up as the Patriots' cheerleaders took to the stage to perform a rhythmic routine complete with pom-poms.
The game kicked off and we evenly cheered both the Patriots and Flyers. But I'm afraid I must make an apology to all the Bristol-based readers. Within five minutes we found ourselves backing Plymouth City Patriots. The excitement of the home crowd was palpable and a sense of pride for the team was unavoidable.
As the game went on, it became easy to pick up the lingo and understand the rules, even with the players darting back and forth between the baskets. I found myself screaming "DEFENCE" with the rest of the crowd every time the Flyers got close to their net and singing along to the loud hype music that played throughout the entire game.
By half time, the Flyers were the stronger team and the Patriots were on the back foot. Not knowing anything about basketball, we thought maybe the Patriots had become too confident following two wins the week before and weren't going to make it this time.
As the players took a break, the audience filled up their glasses and children had a chance to enter the court for a penalty shoot-out. It wasn't long until the two teams were back on the court and the Patriots had scored the first goal of the third quarter.
It looked like it wasn't going to be a walk in the park for the Flyers after all. At this point, my brother and I had settled on our two favourite Patriot players: Antonio Williams and Joseph Hart.
The two men were always in the right place at the right time and wowed the crowd with impressive long-shots and dunks. The final two quarters were tense, resulting in subs from both teams leaving the match - they were down to just five players each.
Being a complete novice, I wasn't sure what would happen if the score ended in a draw but I soon found out we'd go to five minutes of overtime. It's been a fair while since I've had such a intense feeling of excitement, trepidation, and adrenaline all at once.
In the nick of time, the Patriots scored meaning we had to endure another stressful five minutes of overtime, but this time the Patriots had it. Both teams had grown weary without the support of their subs and it seemed the Flyers couldn't keep up in the last minutes.
The game ended with high scores of 103 for the Bristol Flyers and a winning score of 110 for the Plymouth City Patriots. The home crowd erupted and the Patriots' mascot, Pat Riot, entered the court to celebrate the amazing win.
We walked out of Plymouth Pavilions feeling buzzed. What an incredible game.
So, to summarise my new experience. Would I go back to a basketball game? Without a doubt. I was surprised at how competitive I felt during the game.
There were times when I had my head in my hands or my fists in the air and I wouldn't say no to this feeling again - especially when a ticket costs the same as couple of pints. I went in knowing nothing about the game and came out as an expert... ish.
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