Back to BC

First of all, a message for Dick Vitale, Mike Patrick, and ESPN. Those guys in the funny clothes running up and down the court? That's what people are tuning in to watch. They're not merely visual noise to complement your pontificating, and they're not pretty faces to focus on while the action happens elsewhere. They're the game. That's what people want to watch.

To not even know who had the ball on the inbounds until after David Noel scored with 5 seconds remaining is criminally bad announcing. The multiple fast breaks that weren't televised becuase the camera was focused on whichever face had made the previous play shows a complete ambivalence to the game at hand. No one cares about your archaiac views on jump balls, no one cares about the Carolina-Duke tournament records at this juncture, no one wants half the screen obscured by whatever meaningless statistic you're pimping at the moment and I'm sure as hell no one gives a damn about J.J. Redick. You are there to serve the game, it's not there to serve you.

Now about that game. If you needed any more proof on how important Reyshawn Terry's beome to this team, the team's performance in losing him for most of the second half is the gold standard. Other than that, it seems every semifinal team reverted to midseason form in exhausting second halfs. Wake returned to bad shots and poor play, BC to overly physical inside play - a different style of refereeing and this becomes a UNC rout - and Carolina returned to uncontrolled freshman play relying entirely on Noel and Hansbrough. And with the latter handily tied up by the Eagles' frontline, the resulting deficit couldn't be overcome no matter how poor the free throw shooting.

(On thing I had no problem with - contra the talking heads - was the decision not to foul on the posession with a minute to play. The defense had stepped up and shut down the scoring options, and had they not allowed the tip-in at the end of the play, they'd have been facing a one-point deficit in the waning seconds. As it was, the last thirty seconds was brilliantly played by a young team that just couldn't compensate for previous mistakes. Hopefully it will serve them well in the coming weeks.