Throughout the 2013-14 season, UKathletics.com and CoachCal.com will be here to serve as your primary source for Kentucky basketball coverage. From feature stories to game coverage, video and more, we pride ourselves on being your one-stop shop for all things UK basketball. However, nobody can paint the picture quite like the people who create the artwork. Throughout the 2013-14 year, the players who make the stories will share in writing a season-long blog to share with the Big Blue Nation their experiences, their thoughts and how the year develops in their own eyes. This week, EJ Floreal writes about his Blue-White Scrimmage dunk that had everyone buzzing, accepting the challenge of playing at UK and learning one of his teammates is a distant relative.By EJ Floreal (Follow on Twitter)What’s up Big Blue Nation? How are you all doing?I know I’m still hearing about it, so I have to start out talking about that dunk in the Blue-White Scrimmage. If you watched it, I actually stuttered. I was kind of nervous to back-cut because I thought that maybe Willie would make a good move and then I’d just be in the way, but I went and back-cut. He threw me the ball and by that time I was just thinking, “I’m going to dunk it at Rupp.” When I went up, I didn’t know who was in front of me. I actually thought it was Dominique or something so I was like, “I’ll be fine.” But when I landed, it kind of seemed like everyone breathed in and then exhaled. Usually I scream after a dunk but I couldn’t scream. I was just in shock when I saw it was Julius and Aaron was over there, eyes wide open. Alex couldn’t believe it. KP (assistant coach Kenny Payne) looked right at me and he was just smiling. Hoody went crazy. I’ve dunked on some people, but no one that big, not like a 6-9, 250-pound dude. I didn’t expect that at all. When I came to the ground, I didn’t know if I should mug or flex or something, so I just looked shocked. Just watching the video and seeing people’s reactions on the court and on the sidelines and even the fans, you could just tell that everyone was really shocked.After the game, we all talked to Julius about it except for me. I kept my mouth shut because I knew he would come back at me the first opportunity he got. Andrew was giving him the most. He was talking so much. He kept telling me, “You should be going crazy. Stop trying to act all humble.” I kept saying, “It’s just a play, it’s just a play.” They were all looking at Julius like, “Rise and shine, Ju.” He kept smiling. He couldn’t really do anything because it did happen, but he just smiled and shook his head a lot.Just in the locker room, KP and the other coaches were giving him a lot of stuff because him and Coach Payne are really close. Coach Payne was just like, “How does it feel to be on the other end?” Julius brought up when Coach Payne got dunked on by Rex Chapman way back when. They kept going back and forth. Cal actually acknowledged it in the postgame meetings. He was just talking, saying, “You’ve been doing really well, you’re going to get more opportunities. You’ve just got to wait your time.” That was good to hear because I’ve been working hard. I came here because I wanted to be challenged and so far that’s what I’m getting. Something that I am really excited about doing every day is the one-on-ones before practice. If you watch, I don’t back down from any of them. I’ve gone against Julius, Aaron, James, Marcus, Dakari, Willie and I haven’t backed down against any of them. I go out there and compete and I’ve won a couple. Any opportunity they give me in practice, I try to make the most of it. Even in a game, like you saw when I got in against Transy, I immediately got a steal and got a bucket.I need to talk about that play too, because I’ve heard a lot about it. I got the steal and I knew right when I got it, “I’m going to dunk, I’m going to dunk, I’m going to dunk.” I tried to take off really hard so I could completely fly, but I guess I stepped wrong. I just stepped in a hole. I couldn’t extend to dunk it, so I just had to lay it up and get the two points. My phone was blowing up and everyone was just like, “Why didn’t you dunk it? I know you could have dunked it. You could have freaked it, top 10. What were you doing?” I talked to Tod and I was like, “Should I make a public service announcement?” I asked Marcus too. They were like, “Just do it for the fun of it.”

My knee buckled on the fast break or else I think everyone knows I woulda dunked that….if I culd of had that one back…still fun tho !

— EJ Floreal (@BouncyE_24) November 2, 2013

I made a general public statement of what happened on Twitter and then people started responding that we would rather have two points than a mistake anyway. It was all fun. I wish I could have dunked it. That would have been cool, my first dunk in a game uni, but I got the two points so I’m not really that worried. Hopefully I get another chance soon. I’m excited for the regular season to get started on Friday, but at the same time it’s kind of hard just knowing that I won’t get as many opportunities with the better competition we play. But I’m excited. Even if I’m on the bench, I want to learn everything I can. Especially that Michigan State game, being able to watch Andrew and Aaron go at it with Keith Appling and Gary Harris and seeing our bigs battle, just gaining experience from everything. I’m excited just to be able to be a part of this and learn everything. Not many people get the opportunity to be around this many great elite players and this many great coaches, so I’m just trying to take advantage of it.I came here to improve, so any chance I get that’s what I’m doing, whether it’s working out with Julius and Coach Payne or Dakari and Coach Payne or just by myself shooting with one of the managers. If I don’t have like a night class or a lot of homework to do, I’ll try to get in the gym and just work on stuff that I really have to work on. I try to get workouts from the coaches to do by myself. I try to have a manager come and do it with me. Away from basketball, I think a lot of people know me and James are close. Something people don’t know that I haven’t really said yet because I don’t think a lot of people would believe it is James is actually my distant cousin. People always thought we were related because my grandma’s maiden name is Young, so we just looked it up last week and we happened to be distant cousins. It’s a long, long way, but it’s still pretty cool. It’s a small world. I guess that might be a reason why we’re so close and share so many interests. We kind of hit it off from the start.When he first came for media training, we were talking and bonding and laughing. Right after that I went to his room and we started playing video games, and ever since that we’ve been really close with each other. He might be my cousin, but James is terrible at the NBA game we play. I beat him three times in a row and then he wanted to play soccer and hockey games and he beat me, but nobody plays those games. So congrats to James. I’d have to say Dominique is the best at the basketball game because he’s the smartest player. He just exploits your weaknesses. It’s been fun hanging out with all the guys, but me, Tod and Marcus, us three are really close. We’ve actually been to Tod’s house to eat dinner, and we go to the movies too. We always like to be around each other. We’ll always be joking around. We gave ourselves a nickname but I’m not going to say what the nickname is.I guess I’m close with Marcus because of the Cali bond. I knew him before, not really as well as now, but we knew of each other. We played each other a couple times. We always go out and get food or we’ll go watch movies. He won’t go watch scary movies with me, which sucks because I love scary movies, but we’ll go see like comedies and cartoon, kid-ish movies because everyone else thinks they’re too grown to watch those.Anyway, I can’t wait for the season to start. I’m really excited. I hope I can dunk on some more people like Julius. Just kidding with you, Julius.