Looking Forward

J.P. Giglio thinks UNC is due for a fall against Virginia this week. On paper, it's a pretty likely situation - it's the game before Duke, this is a young team, and they've been playing above expectations all February. As even experienced Carolina teams are prone to losing focus of late, would it be that much of a shock?

Well, yes. It's almost scary how well this team has bought into Roy Williams' system in the last month, and although things got a little sloppy against Maryland (17 turnovers?) most of that happened after the game was put away. When you add in the fact that this team remembers the frustration of their last matchup, and I doubt they'll be looking ahead. Not on Senior Day, and not for a squad working like this. UNC by 12.

Slow News Day

How slow a news day? My eye was caught by the announcement that Weber State fired its basketball coach after two losing seasons. Which seems a little harsh for a man with an 116-88 record. I briefly wondered if he was the same coach from the tournament I'd rather forget, but no, that was Ron Abegglen. Ron was fired before the UNC game, and now manages a 9-hole golf course in Fillmore, UT, and coaches the high school basketball team.

Like I said, a slow news day.

Five Straight

...Carolina wins over the Lady Blue Devils.

Not that you'd really be able to notice. For all of ESPN's women's tournament pimping, the fact that they didn't show a 1 vs. 2 matchup of the biggest basketball rivalry in the country is rather telling. Here's the rest of their web coverage.

Congratulations to the Tar Heels, for sealing up a number one ranking in the polls, top seed in the ACC tourney, and a number one seed in the NCAAs - one of possibly three for the ACC. And State fans take heart. At least one Wolfpack team was able to beat BC.

Salting Wolfpack Wounds

Well somebody's season is pretty thoroughly ruined, isn't it?

ESPN apparently thinks that given the chance to air Top 20 matchup, the West Coast would rather see a) two channels of "This broadcast is under blackout" followed by the Memphis-UTEP game. Because El Paso gets a big following in California. So I can't comment much on the game. I can give you a little new stadium trivia though:

• 
  UNC was the first visiting team to win at the RBC Center.
  
• Every Carolina coach has won their first game at the RBC Center.
  
• Every Carolina coach also won their last game at Reynolds, though. Except perhaps Tom Scott. Not much historical data about the Tom Scott era on the web.
  

A trip to the NCAA tournament, of which N.C. State is still practically guaranteed, would tie St. Valvano's streak of five straight appearances. Will that be enough to excuse a 5-17 record against the Heels?

And by the way, 6 turnovers? Is this the same team that put up 24, 21, and 21 in three consecutive games against Maryland, Clemson, and Duke?

A Perspective on Perspective

With Virginia's bubble maintaining performance tonight - and an on-fire Cavalier team visiting Chapel next week will not be fun - tomorrow's Tar Heel matchup becomes #2 vs. #3 in the conference. For one set of fans, this team makes or breaks the season. And for the other...

Eh. I want the team to win. I'll cheer in victory and revel in the schadenfreud of Wolfpack dissapointment with the bluest of 'em. Three years working for a company founded and populated by numerous State grads would have put me in that state of mind even if five years in the elementary school lunchroom hadn't already done so. But will this game make or break a season?

No.

And not just because UNC is outpacing expectations this year. I can't think of any year where an N.C. State loss would ruin a season. I can't think of a year where a single Duke loss ruined a seaon, and there have been significantly more of the latter in my postgraduate career. Seasons fall apart cumulatively. A poor showing in the weeks leading up to the tournament. A deep hole early on that cannot be overcome. Preseason potential that arrives in March unrealized.

But one game in February? Even two against a rival, spread across two months? That alone won't break me as a fan. Which is why when the two teams hit the floor tomorrow, only one coach will be in a pressure cooker. Only on team will have expectations hanging over their head. Two teams will be trying their hardest to win, but only one will be able to enjoy the game as it's being played.

And I've got to say, my gut is to go with the team with the only weight on its shoulders being a cotton jersey. UNC by 8.

(And if this holistic psychobabble is less than convincing, the News and Observer has a nice little rundown of the Heels' more impressive stats of late. It's a bit easier to win if you're outrebounding your opponent and cutting back on turnovers.)

If You're a Duke Fan Reading This

First of all, why?

Secondly, the New York Times has Mike Krzyzewski's introduction to John Feinstein's new book online. There are a couple of anecdotes about Bob Knight and Jim Valvano I hadn't heard before that doesn't make me like them any better. The introduction doesn't mention Feinstein at all.

Jay Jennings' reviews the book itself and as Deadspin predicted calls it trite and self-plagarizing. Which since it came out four months after his previous book is not particularly surprising.

Keeping it in the Family

Sean Sutton is not the best man for the Oklahoma State coaching job.

Now, I've already laid out my coaching qualifications. And I've never met Sean Sutton. I've never been to an OSU practice, I have no idea how the program is run, and quite frankly, I can't remember the last time I saw one of their games. Hell, I have to remind myself they're not the Sooners.

But I'm pretty confident Sean Sutton not the best man for the job. And the job's not the best fit for Sean Sutton.

Do you know how you hire the best man for a job? You have a search comittee. You interview people. You look at their past experience. And then you pick the best guy. There's a reason why most of the jobs in the country are filled this way, and why no one thinks nepotism is an admirable trait.

Now Sean Sutton doesn't have any head coaching experience, in a large part because he's been sitting next to his dad, waiting for this job. I assume he could have taking a head coaching job at a different school in the last couple of years, and I can't necessarily blame him for not seeking one. It's a rare person who gets to work with family, and if you enjoy it, why give that up to go to elsewhere?

But here's the problem now. The fans and administrators are going to look at the younger man now at the bench and see the last name. Sutton. And they'll see 794 wins. They'll see a coaching philosophy bedrocked in 39 years of coaching. They'll see the confidence and experience he's supposed to have lapped up in his father's presence. And they'll be merciless he if he doesn't continuie his father's success.

When Eddie Sutton notched his first win at Creighton, Sean was a month or two past his first birthday. This is his first crack at a head coaching gig, and he's doing it before people who expect a 9th straight 20 win season. A ninth NCAA tournament appearance. And then a tenth. And then an eleventh.

To some extent Sean Sutton was going to face this wherever he started. Any advantage his name would bring would be equally weighted by the added expectations. But by taking his father's job, by spending time as a Head Coach Designate, he and the OSU administration are promising continuity. There's an unspoken expecation that now will be just then. That OSU's is getting the second coming of Eddie Sutton. And that's what a first-time head coach is expected to do, from the start. That's what Pat Knight will be looking at in Lubbock in a couple of years. It's not fair to anyone involved. I'm loving Roy Williams' work in Chapel Hill, but don't want to see Scott Williams at the front of the bench in fifteen years.

Sean Sutton is not the best man for the Oklahoma State coaching job. And the job's not the best fit for Sean Sutton.

(Note that last I heard Scott Williams was a bond trader in Charlotte. I don't mean to imply he has any interest in coaching basketball, and was using him as an example.)

Journalism

There's a post I've been writing on and off during the day, while I debate whether or not to post it. The thesis being Sean Sutton is not the best man for the Oklahoma State job.

Now it's a pretty dickish thing to anonymously write on the internet that someone shouldn't have their job. Lucky I can back that up with my resume:

• College basketball experience (player): None
  
• College basketball experience (coaching): None
  
• College athletic department experience (hiring): None
  
• Sports journalism experience: None
  

Yes, anonymously writing about Sean Sutton's fitness to coach is falls into an ethical gray area. So I turn to the national media, to see how to properly opine on the state of college coaching:

• Jason Whitlock (10+ years as a columnist) points to the fact that Mike Davis didn't hire a recruit's AAU coach as evidence he didn't have the heart to coach at Indiana.
  
• Gregg Doyel speculates about who will be hired at Iowa, Creighton, Arizona State, Pittsburgh, UNLV, Duquesne,Arkansas, UAB, and Rutgers. All positions that happen to be filled at the moment.
  
• Gregg Doyel also writes that Tubby Smith hasn't "earned the right" to leave Kentucky at the end of the season. (Tubby Smith has said nothing about leaving Kentucky.) I swear, sports writers impose some strange job obligations on athletes and coaches you don't see anywhere else - I didn't consider whether I was going to "leave it is as I found it" when I left my last job. Did Doyel before he left the Charlotte Observer for CBS?
  

I don't feel nearly so bad about writing about Sean Sutton. I'm just a bit apologetic that it's not as Carolina-centric as the blog title would indicate. I'll get around to fawning over Hansbrough's Tech performance and the Heels of Fewer Turnovers eventually.

And Speaking of Eddie Sutton

He should be fired.

Alcoholism is a disease, and I feel sorry for the man and wish him well on the road back from this. But he's a prominent public figure and state employee who has committed a serious crime, and he needs to stand up and face the full consequences of his actions. He's done admirable work, especially in giving players second chances and instilling in them a sense of responsiblity. Now he needs to teach by example and show that past success does not excuse present failings.

He should be fired. And if OSU will not do so, he should resign.

Consistency Is the Hobgoblin of Talking Heads

Dick Vitale has a column comparing the fates of Mike Davis and Matt Doherty. The conclusion reached is that neither had the head coaching experience required for such a high profile job, and that Indiana shouldn't have heeded the cries to hire Davis from folks like, well, Dick Vitale.

Vitale also wishes friend Eddie Sutton well and has full confidence in his son and successor, Sean Sutton. Sean has no previous head coaching experience.

"You are quite possibly the worst Wake Forest fan I've ever seen."

A few random thoughts:

Gregg Doyel publishes his hate mail on the Krzyzewski column. I have mixed feelings on the topic that's currently absorbing the blogosphere. On the one hand, it's true that better teams foul less. On the other, some very bright people have pointed out the bizarre discrepancy in foul margin recent Duke teams have had.

The main thing to remember though, is that both blaming the refs and working the refs are small, petty things to do, and Krzyzewski has been one of the most flagrant practicers of the latter. The program should strive to be better than that, but they are Duke, after all.

You can win a gold medal in speed skating and still not be the most famous member of the Dudley High School class of 1997. Funny, that.

Hector's is closing. This time is temporary as well, and at least isn't fire related. Why do I think the East End Oyster & Martini Bar will soon join Caffe Trio in the Big Book[1] of Overly Pretentious and Now Closed Franklin Street Establishments?

(I was a charter member of Hector's Down Under for it's entire mayfly existence, so it's pretty obvious where my loyalties lie.)

John Feinstein introduces me to a scary thought: Maryland fans have crazier coaching expectations than N.C. State fans.

And in the insult to injury department, Sports Illustrated 10 Years of Major Sleepers passes over 2000's 8th seed North Caroilina for 8th seed Wisconsin and includes that damn Arizona team from 1997. Just in case you're looking for something to be bitter about.

[1] Big Book primarily big to fit entire title on spine.

The Last Defeated Team in Division I

The UNC women's team dropped their first game of the season last night. Is player blogging to blame?

My first reaction is to call it a good loss, releasing everyone from the pressure of a perfect season, and providing good late game experience against what will next week certainly be a Top 5 team. Of course, to anyone who just lost a triple-overtime grudge match, that's an incredibly stupid thing to say.

J.P. Giglio likes the increase in competitive balance, but the all-Tennessee-UConn-Duke-Carolina show is a pretty recent development to women's basketball. When I first started going to games, Virginia and N.C. State were the league powerhouses, and upsets were pretty common nationally. After all, a sixteen seed has actually upset a number one on that side of the aisle. There are more awful teams in major conferences than there are in the men's game, which often leads to the impression of a major talent gap, but there's also many more impressive no-name schools on the women's side. Lousiana Tech was often a number one team, after all. There's more competition than you think.

(And lest you think my question was anything other than facetious, Camille Little led the Heels in scoring with 24. But I've looking for an excuse to mention her online foray for awhile now.)

Page N&Ot Found

Chip Alexander has a little fluff piece in the News & Observer that's a fun read. It mainly chronicles Sean May's text messaging during the Duke game, and segues into a standard little ditty about UNC's improvement and potential for the post-season. I don't mean to belittle it - it's one of the best short pieces I've read this year, and folks should take a look.

But that's not the exciting thing about this post. The exciting - for sufficiently small values of "exciting" I admit - thing is that if you're reading this blog in March, and click on that link? You'll read the article I'm talking about.

No really, this is a special thing.

The News & Observer, at least since the time it parted ways with The Nando Times, never kept things online. Web pages had lifetimes of mayflie, dissappearing within a week of publication. And this was incredibly stupid. After paying the writers and photographers, after selling the advertising space, after formatting and putting it on the web in the first place, in other words after paying all the costs of running a news operation to begin with, they decided that just letting the pages sit there, attracting eyeballs and Google pagerank and generally generating consumers interest was somehow not cost-effective. Disk space is cheap, bandwidth is cheap, but I still can't revisit what Carlton Tudor thought after the Wake-UNC triple-overtime drama that kicked off last year's ACC season. Because it's not like having more work by your columnist out there might encourage folks to read their new stuff, or even pay to have it delivered to their doorstep or anything.

Maybe it was the onset of newspaper blogging that made them realize that promoting their own articles only work if they stick around. Maybe Carlton Tudor didn't want his entire web presence to be under the name "Toot." I don't know. I'm glad they did it though. I know I'll be more likely to link to them now.

(And with a website like Tar Heel March on your side, that'll bring in a good, 2, maybe 3 readers a decade. The Daniels' are going to be rolling in the dough.)

Grumble

On the bright side, UNC did not lose to the eventual national champions. They lost to a team with no bench, a lackluster half-court offense, and a late-game performance that actually had their coach yelling more at his players than at the refs.

And yes, Carolina fans are supposed to feel good about this.

This is still a team of freshmen, and in crunch time, they played like freshmen. Frasor blunders into a Williams block on a must score possession, Green fails to pay attention to the score and clock, and there goes the ballgame. On the other hand though, when the game went south early in the second half, they had the bench that could come in and turn it around, and better yet the presence of mind to capitalize on that momentum shift. This is the first game in a while where it really looks lke the team is improving. And with the top two teams in the ACC cutting it closer and closer with each passing game, this is shaping up to be a very interesting end of the season run.

Some Historical Context

You know ESPN will show highlights of past UNC-Duke games tonight. And they'll overemphasize the last second shot from the Pete Gaudet Era. So here are three games from the ESPN era that don't get that kind of replay, but should:

March 10, 1991 Just another ACC championship for the Tar Heels. Sure, winning by 22 points is nice, and the trophy looks good amongst all those other ones, but what sets this one apart is a couple of lines in the box score:

Name       MP  FG   FT   R  A  PF Pt 3FG  T  B  S
Cherry      1  0-0  2-2  0  1  0  2  0-0  0  0  1
Hurley     36  0-4  2-2  0  3  1  2  0-4  5  0  2

Yes, that's Duke starter Bobby Hurley and UNC end-of-the-bencher Scott Cherry putting up nearly identical stats.
North Carolina 96, Duke 74

February 1, 2001 Say what you will about Matt Doherty, there's one thng you can't take away from him. He was the first visiting coach to win on the newly-renamed Coach K Court. (And what does it say about you when the university won't take the time to spell out your entire name when they honor you?) And he did it with less talent and more Duke cheerleader jokes than had ever been done before.
North Carolina 85, Duke 83

February 5, 1998 If you see an Antawn Jamison clip, it's probably this game. Duke came to Chapel Hill ranked number one. The voters had UNC one place behind them.

That oversight was soon rectified.



ESPN doesn't show Duke highlights from that game. There were no Duke highlights from that game. The team that thought itself number one in the country came to to Chapel Hill and lost by 24.



Here's to more of the same tonight.

Or In the Words of Charles Kuralt

I was asked to speak here tonight, because during the bicentennial I was the guy who stood there in front of the President of the United States and said that I was there to speak for all of us who could not afford to go to Duke . . . and would not have gone there even if we could have.

We have great affection for Duke University. All of us in this room know how important it is to our state, and know how important the rivalry is. And if there had never been a Duke (which of course there was not, during most of the distinguished history of the University of North Carolina); if there had never been a Duke, we would have had to invent it.

We would have made it a place with severe gothic arches and ivy growing on the walls, to persuade the more naive undergraduates that they had been admitted to Yale after all.

And we would have given it a towering national reputation (in some odd things, like parapsychology and the rice diet), but a national reputation.

We would have sent Richard Nixon there to study constitutional law. Best of all, we would have sent one of our own, the beloved Terry Sanford, over there to keep an eye on things.

And finally, we would have built the campus close to our own, so that those over-serious people, heads of great utilities, and rich people, could come here for parties. And I say that Julia and Hugh have shown true Carolina spirit in inviting them to this one.

We should all thank them for this, for bringing us together. There aren't many things that bring us together, but Julia and Hugh can do it.

But I can not help adding that this is the same Julia Morton and Hugh Morton who had a dog named Dutchess. Dutchess would roll over on her back, and stare blank eyes at the ceiling, and raise her four paws stiffly into the air, when asked, "would you rather be a dead dog or go to Duke."

--Charles Kuralt, Remarks On The Occasion of Julia and Hugh Morton's 50th Wedding Anniversary

Apparently There's a Game Tonight

This year is apparently not one of those where ESPN hypes tonight's matchup beyond all reason. Maybe they only do that for games in Cameron, maybe a #2 vs. #23 game is good enough to not be sold on tradition, or maybe the game falling on a Tuesday is just throwing everybody off. No matter what the reason, little ink is being spilled in advance of the 21st Blue Devil visit to the Dean Dome.

There is always Ian Williams' seminal editorial which as evolved from sporadic reprinting to being an annual tradition. I can't think of a better way to start the day.

I don't have a Road to Damascus story about the Blue Devils myself. I grew up a Carolina fan in Raleigh, where you fought out your collegial allegiances with your milk choice in the school lunchroom - Pine State's regular milk was Wolfpack red and their skim milk a heavenly Carolina Blue, and chocolate milk was a mighty theological debate around the first grade minds of Lacy Elementary. Duke was the third leg of the triumverate, but their colors weren't brown, and besides, who was a fan of a team that never won a championship?

Duke hatred just kind of seeped in. My family moved from Raleigh to more neutral environs of the state, some schmuck turned around the program in Durham, and more and more navy-logoed sweatshirts began cropping up. You'd meet the occasional kid who planned on attending Duke, and just overlooked it as a personality flaw - a gaucheness you didn't mention in polite company. Come application season, you'd even toss off the college application for the place; it was good practice for the real application essays that loomed ahead, and there was joy in feeding their acceptance letter to the dog. But even that was more going through the motions than a genuine hatred.

Outsiders in the media try to frame Duke hatred as a jealousy of success, or a class struggle sort of thing. And maybe it is to those folks who's Duke vitrol is a Vitale response. But if you matriculated in Chapel Hill, those reasons are alien to you. Success? A popular T-shirt in the mid-90's carried the slogan "First one to three championships win." It was about damn time that coach down the road stopped whining to the refs and made a rivalry about of the damn thing. Class? The only people in the city limits who felt they failed in their college choices were in buses chartered by the Duke fraternity system, stumbling down Franklin Street enjoying a rare glimpse at a social scene. No, Tar Heels hate Duke only after their capacity for pity has been exhausted. After reading one too many articles canonizing that funny little Gothic place that sold its soul for cigarette money a hundred years ago. After that last floor slap, that last New Jersey accent asking whether grits can be singular, that last conversation with someone who thinks their T-shirt makes them special. That's when the hatred starts. That's when we experience the sweet-tasting schadenfreude. And that's when we pick up the missionary zeal that drives us out into the world, to say "No, that extra thirty thousand a year doesn't make you special," and "No, in the real world you actually have to do something worthy to achieve merit," and most importantly, "No, put aside the petty grudges and small complaints, and know that this is what it really means to hate Duke."

Meanwhile, In Less Important Sports

A Tar Heel alumnus just ran further for a touchdown than had ever been done in a Super Bowl.

Just thought I'd mention that in case there's a tailback sitting around that wants to attend Tailback U. The East Coast Tailback U., at least. Congrats to Willie Parker, Jeff Reed, and Greg Warren.

52

Not much more to say about that. Expect more hype next year when the opportunity to pass the Princeton-Brown home streak comes up.

Sports Illustrated is running an excerpt of a book I was previously unaware of, To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever. It's a pretty unoptimal portion of a book to excerpt - I yearn for the day the media realizes that recounting conversations on message boards is right up there with telling someone about your dreams in that it's never going to be interesting to anyone outside your own mind - but the microcosm of Duke hatred in the interview is nicely comfortable, and I'll at least flip through the book to see if it's worth my dime. I also stuumbled across this, and need a few minutes to stop laughing uncontrollably. Talk amongst yourselves.

Expect more rivalry stoking as the week goes on.

Maryland at the Half

I stand corrected. When Maryland triple(!)-teams Hansbrough, they can shut him down. Good outside shooting and David Noel are keeping UNC in the game, but there's way too much sloppy play going on - while the turnovers on passes inside are a necessary evil in keeping Hansbrough and Sanders in the game, the overthrows on breaks and failures against the Terrapin press are rather disturbing. Still, they made to the break only down two, despite a significant stretch where Maryland was scoring by just outhustling the Heels to offensive rebounds and second chances, and this team is known for improving in the second half. I think they'll pull it out.

David Noel is sure playing like the guy who remembers leaner times against Maryland, isn't he? They might not remember him but he had a good stretch here last year during McCants' absence. here's to a second half like the first for him.

Miscellany Before Maryland

I'm watching my first Duke game of the year - with the exception of the last minute or so of the near upset by Virginia Tech - and I'm struck by a couple of things:

Duke doesn't really have a half-court offense. They jumped out to a big lead at the end of the first half, but it was all by capitalizing on turnovers, which the Blue Devils do very well. Once they're facing five defenders on the other end, the most they seem to do is give Redick a perimeter screen before he launches a three or tries to beat his man off the dribble. It's a pickup ball strategy, and doesn't seem to be to difficult to beat.

(Of course, there's been practically no interior passing to Williams in this game, which is a credit to Smith and Hinnant. Perhaps against teams without a big frontcourt there's more of a system. If not, Williams is damn impressive to put up those numbers without much help.)

I don't know whether the Marshall-Redick jawing will get much play tomorrow - as of this typing there's a minute and half left and both Smith and Marshall have picked up fifth fouls on blocking calls - but I was amused at least. ESPN had already shown multiple instances of Duke players chest bumping during their run in the first half. Redick and McRoberts look particularly stupid doing it in my opinion, and I have no problem with an opponent mocking a team's celebratory tactic. Also note that the predicted offensive torrent from Redick that the ESPN broadcast crew would be the response never happened, even after Marshall fouled out.

ESPN has spent the entire game cutting to "celebrities" in the crowd (Doug Flutie, Bob Kraft, Tim Russert, Bill Belicheck). Is UNC the only place where non-basketball famous faces can't get tickets to the Duke game? You never see Donald Trump taking up camera time at the games in Chapel Hill like last year in Cameron, after all.

Vitale and Patrick's criticism of BC joining the ACC for mercanary reasons might sound better if it wasn't coming from people who make their money from college basketball, working for an organization that funnels millions into the sport. Just a thought.

Although the refs' loose calling of the game bit Tyrese Rice in the last 15 seconds (Why was he going for two anyway?) it was pretty illuminating to watch Duke players flop repeatedly on no contact. And by illuminating, I mean absolutely hilarious.

There are a couple of things I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around. First, that it's the halfway point of the season. In my mind, that doesn't occur until the first UNC-Duke matchup. Of course, the fact that UNC and Maryland are a game behind the rest of the league isn't helping. And about that mid-season list: Not only is Guillermo Diaz head and shoulders above Anthony Morrow, but Robert Hite should be on the list. And Greg Paulus shouldn't be sniffing at an all-ACC team at the point - put Tony Bethel or even Vernon Hamilton on there instead. They're doing more for their teams than Paulus.

The other thing I have trouble grasping is that Maryland is third in the ACC. The loss to Temple and the loss of their co-captain, combined with the general despair coming out of College Park doesn't bring to mine a denizen of the top 25% of the league. So it's not a surprise I think UNC will win easily tomorrow, although Mike Jones (MIKE JONES!!!) is only getting better, and Nik-Caner Medley is holding the team together on sheer force of will. But Carolina's outside game is getting better, and Maryland doesn't have the bodies to collapse on Hansbrough.

Oh and if you want the Maryland refresher course on UNC, the Washington Post is happy to provide.