This could be a movie. A comedy. “Something About Matt.” “Big and Bigger.”
“Meet the Americans.”
The main character is a big Australian basketball player, Ian Crosswhite, who’s stuck in America for Christmas. He heads south of the Oregon border with another basketball player, Matt Short, who’s actually really tall! Much laughter ensues.
So they get to Short’s ranch, where the Australian and the Californian ride side-by-side in a tractor and play baseball on a field that Short actually built with his bare hands, and much bonding ensues. Much laughter follows.
The Australian wears a dazed look on his face as the American’s parents shower him with presents and good ‘ol down home culture. Much laughter ensues.
This isn’t a movie. It’s real life, Christmas 2001.

“It was a bit of a trip-out for me, coming from Sydney, where there’s no tractors and no baseball fields,” Crosswhite says.
Welcome to Matt Short’s world. Ian Crosswhite saw it first hand.
A big man with a small name, that’s who Matt Short is. A big center from a small town.
Just, really, a big man.
 
Yreka, Calif., (population 7,290, “Ranked No. 48 of the top 100 small communities in America!”) is a big part of this big man. It explains part of Matt Short, the man, and all of Matt Short, the basketball player.
“There’s not anything to do but play basketball,” Short says, echoing the words of fellow Oregon small-town ballers like Luke Ridnour. “Me and my friends would just live on these outdoor courts by the high school in the summer, and in the winter we lived at the YMCA and just played like crazy.”
Played like crazy. He still plays crazy, according to his teammates.
“He comes in there with a lot of energy,” Crosswhite says.
“He’s just running out of control, after every rebound and every loose ball,” fellow center Jay Anderson says. “He just plays as hard as he can until he gets tired, and then we take him out.”
Short, a 7-foot redshirt freshman, is just learning to cope with actually playing again, actually being on the court. He was the fifth-ranked center in the West coming out of Yreka High School, but because of poor competition in high school, he was raw, untested. He wasn’t ready.
After sitting out the 2001-02 season to develop, Short’s minutes have increased over this year, culminating in a start at Stanford — where Short played with traveling squads while he was still in high school. He is averaging only 2.5 points and 9.5 minutes per game this year, but Short has a growth curve steeper than Mt. Bachelor.
He’s coming.
“That’s kind of the exciting part for me,” Short says. “I know I can do a lot better, and by the time my junior or senior year comes along, I think I can be a major part of every aspect of this team.
“I’ve got lots of room for improvement, but I feel good about where I’m at and where I’m going.”
 
Greg: You can milk just about anything with nipples.
Jack: I’ve got nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?

— From “Meet the Parents”
Jay Anderson knows this line by heart. Matt Short, well, he struggles with this kind of stuff.
The roommates play a little game. Along with Luke Ridnour, who also lives with the towering twosome, they watch movies. Comedies, mostly. And they memorize the lines.
“I’ve actually got to try to remember (lines),” Short says. “(Jay) doesn’t need to remember them, they just pop into his head.”
“We watch ‘Meet the Parents’ probably twice a week,” Anderson says.
It goes back to the small-town thing. Anderson is from Faribult, Minn., Ridnour from Blaine, Wash., and Short from Yreka. The three towns have a combined population of 31,878.
“A certain type of people come from small towns,” Short says. “People are a little more relaxed in small towns; they’re real friendly, and that’s the kind of player that coach (Ernie Kent) recruits.”
So the small-town boys travel in a pack. They do classes together. Church on Sundays. And, of course, the movies.
“We have a humor that a lot of people don’t understand,” Short says. “Me, Jay and Rid are together 24-7 almost, and you’d think we’d get more sick of each other than we do. But we just do everything together, know everything, almost, about each other.”
“Meet the Roommates.”
 
“Excuse me,” the young girl asks Short, shyly, in the middle of a crowded airport. “Can I, um, ask how tall you are?”
“Seven feet,” he says, smiling, knowing exactly where this is going.
“Oh. Do you, um, play basketball somewhere?”
“Yes, the University of Oregon.”
“Oh. What’s your name? Maybe I’ll see you on TV or something.”
“Matt Short.”
And the young girl’s jaw drops off her face. Then she starts laughing.
It’s happened so much, Short says as he recounts this particular tale, he wouldn’t know what to do if someone didn’t comment on the name. College coaches used it in recruiting letters. The headline writers at the Siskiyou Daily News had the best four years of their lives coming up with new headlines.
“Short in name only.”
“In Short, it’s Oregon,” when he signed with the Ducks.
He gets it. He’s tall. His name is Short. Ha ha.
But secretly, he likes it. His parents and siblings are average height, so he likes to call himself “the tallest Short.”
“It’s different, and I kind of like it,” he says. “It looks good on the back of the uniform.”
It sure is Short enough to fit.
Sorry.
 
Short really does stand tall on the Oregon basketball team. As a player. As a person.
When others talk about Short, their sentences are littered with words like “hustle,” “hard work” and “energy.” From these words, you get the picture of a typical Duck basketball player. All heart. Leaves it on the floor.
Goes hard until he’s tired.
Then they take him out.
Maybe that was born on the floor of the Yreka YMCA. Maybe it came when he was sitting out last year, or when he started for the first time on a Maples Pavilion floor that held the memories of many junior games.
Whenever or however it was born, one thing is for certain.
He really is a big man.