8 posts tagged “acc”
So, as a Tar Heel, the perfect basketball season contains the following:
a) win the ACC regular season
b) beat Duke every time you play them
c) win the ACC tournament
d) go to the Final Four
e) win the National Championship
This year, the Heels went 1-1 versus Duke, so “all of the above” is not an option, but yesterday was another good day as the Heels outlasted Clemson to win the ACC Tournament. They now move onto the NCAA Tournament, where they are the overall #1 seed. And while their possible draw doesn’t look very easy, they do have the benefit of having the potential of playing every game before the Final Four in the state of North Carolina.
More excited though was our dog Eutaw, who is wholeheartedly going to be rooting for the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, who’s team won the America East regular season and conference title.. You see, Eutaw is a Chesapeake Bay Retriever (actually, we’re pretty sure she’s the best-chessie-ever), and the mascot for UMBC is the Retrievers. Eutaw will be glued to the set when UMBC gets set to take on nearby powerhouse Georgetown in the opening round of the tournament on Friday.
There's really not much more that needs to be added to that picture. On Saturday, the Tar Heels beat their despised rivals, the Duke Blue Devils**, at Cameron Indoor Stadium to capture the ACC regular season title. The Heels finished at 14-2 in the ACC, 29-2 overall and #1 in the nation. The ACC Tournament begins Thursday.
My favorite part of the picture is the look on the guy's face below Green's right foot.
** I will say this for the Duke crowd -- they had a very respectful moment of silence for murdered UNC student body president Eve Carson
What's your musical horoscope? (Put your player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.)
I know...I know...the whole “musical horoscope” idea has been done before (and before that a few more times) and like most QotD’s I was willing to let it go. But I thought that this morning I would track what songs came from my iPod as I drove to work and decide what it meant for me today:
God Has Put A Smile Upon Your Face – Coldplay
Yes, He has. In fact, with Thanksgiving last week, I even posted about it. I’m assuming that this is a gentle reminder to always be thankful, not just during holidays with turkey and football. That’s fairly heavy philosophy for rubbing-sleep-from-my-eyes-pulling-out-of-the-garage time.
The Burnt-Over District – Hem
Given last month’s terrible fires here in San Diego County, this seemed a little mean-spirited of the horoscopic muse. And then I remembered that I have to leave early today to meet some workmen that are going to convert our wood-burning fireplace into a gas-burning one. Hopefully that does not suggest that our family room will qualify as a burnt-over anything.
Wildflower – Sheryl Crow
Apparently, while I’m home with the fireplace people, I’m supposed to cut the grass. I wonder how the HOA got that one in there?
405 (acoustic) – Death Cab For Cutie
Hmm… this one’s tougher. I haven’t been in Orange County or LA for a bit and have no plans on going there anytime soon. But I DO travel CA-56 every morning on my commute (was on it when this song came on, in fact) and I decided that “fif-ty six” has as many syllables as “four-oh-five” and that I could substitute...
“Misguided by the 56 'cause it lead me to an alcoholic summer” – yeah, that still works.
Ohio – Over the Rhine
Also a bit of a mystery, since I haven’t been to Ohio in years, but as I was listening to this moving, almost mournful, song I tried to think of why people in the Buckeye State should be so sad today. And then I remembered --- last night UNC beat Ohio State in Columbus, helping the ACC to comfortably win (7-3) the ACC Big-10 Challenge. Again. Go Tar Heels!
Not bad, iPod. Not bad.
As these things usually go, we’d thought that this might be a low-key weekend as we prepared to move over next weekend – and of course, we were wrong...
The Good. We had the final walk-through on the new house -- (which I’m now going to refer to as “The Aerie” which is a reference stolen from George RR Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice Series – but don’t worry, I won’t make anyone "fly" at the open house) – everything went great. The sellers did a wonderful job getting the short-list of things in order and the house looked great. We met a couple of our future-neighbors and they all seemed very nice, though I think the one mom with the eight-year old was a little disappointed we weren’t moving in with any children for her daughter to play with!
The Bach. One of the The Beloved’s Valentine’s presents was tickets to the San Diego Symphony to see a Bach-oriented program – it was Saturday night. We started off by going to what is rapidly becoming our favorite downtown restaurant, JSix. We’ve gone there a couple of times now and have really enjoyed the food and ambiance. The chefs there do a great job of mixing different ingredients in unusual ways and the food is pretty light.
The concert was also a lot of fun. In the past, I hadn’t been too big a fan of Bach or baroque music (I’d always thought it was too plinky), but its one the Beloved’s favorites and hearing her CDs and my learning some appreciation from my new piano teacher (we’re learning and deconstructing Minuet in G in class) has helped me appreciate his music in ways that I hadn’t before. The program covered two Brandenburg concerti (the well-known 3 and less-known 5), a choral cantata and an interesting piece by Anton Webern who “re-imagined” some of Bach’s work in the early 20th century. I thought I’d hate it, but I ended up liking it. Go figger.
The Ugly. One of the only things on the agenda for Sunday was watching the Tar Heels – Hoyas East Regional Final in the NCAA tournament. First off, it was a fantastic game – exciting, great plays, and intense. UNC led for a good chunk of the game (though rarely “comfortably”). When they were up 10, with the ball, with 6 and a half minutes left, I was feeling pretty good. Then the Heels went ice-cold, slowing the game down, but inexplicably choosing really poor quality shots. The Hoyas, in contrast, stepped it up big-time. It was painful to watch, because you knew they only needed one or two more baskets to withstand the G-town push. The overtime was a foregone conclusion. Sigh.
I was able to assuage my distress by a great combo of us taking the dog to the beach and having homemade fish tacos for dinner (and the wine helped too!). We also watched the opening episode of "Planet Earth" on the Discovery Channel, which had incredible cinematography.
Graduate school (especially in chemistry) is a funny thing. Everyone works hard, no one gets paid very much and there is this strange masochistic machismo revolving around working a lot of hours. Its not terribly uncommon to put in 6 and a half day weeks, so that the total hours worked in a week approached 75-80. Oof -- boy, those were the days...
I got my degree in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina and the folks I was in there with were like that too, but there was one day when reactions weren’t bubbling, instruments weren’t pinging and scientific journals sat untouched in the library (yes, pre-internet, we actually WENT to the library…) and that day was was the first day of the ACC Basketball Tournament.
On the Friday that the tournament began, we would head down to He’s Not Here (found in the picture by the lone tree in the dirt yard), a bar located between Franklin and Rosemary Streets and start camping out around 10:30 in the morning. The Citysearch summary of He’s Not Here is pretty much dead on:
He's Not Here is reminiscent of the back yard of a frat house, without the broken glass. A giant magnolia tree droops over one corner of the bar's outdoor courtyard. This place is best on a warm evening: The moon rises, the fireflies flash their mating signals and the co-eds come out in their shorts and flip-flops. It's enough to make you ignore the stale beer smell and cigarette butts.
The first tip-off was usually at noon, and the four games would be played in succession well into the evening. It was college basketball nirvana – raucous bar filled with partisan Tar Heel fans, bar food and beer. By the end of the day, you were tired, drunk and hoarse, but it was all worth it. (Things are a little different now, the conference now has 12 teams and so there has been a “play-in” day on Thursday for the last several years, but when I was at UNC there were only 8 teams, so everything started Friday). The tournament of course continued into Saturday and Sunday, but Friday was the real holiday.
GO HEELS!
The Tar Heels outlasted an emotional but ultimately over-powered Duke team in Cameron Indoor Stadium tonight -- sending thousands of blue-painted privileged kids out into the chilly Tobacco Road air with yet another home loss on their record in the ACC season. Yeah, too bad for them.
As a proud Tar Heel alum, I've been following the season with interest this year, but haven't really felt the need to comment on many games. As always, the match-up with Duke is always one to pay a little extra attention to.
I'd hoped for a Tar Heel whitewash -- UNC is considerably more talented than Duke this year. But the early minutes when Duke came out of the gates draining basket after basket, you knew this was going to be one of those games. Down by 10 early in the 2nd Half, the Heels steadied the ship and began chipping away at the Blue Devil lead finally taking the lead with about 5:00 to go.
I've observed that on several occasions this year, the Heels have let opponents get out in front of them only to fight their way back -- sometimes successfully, sometimes not (see VaTech, and NC State games). Let's hope they can shake that by the time ACC and NCAA tourney time comes around.
GO HEELS!!!
The sixth-ranked Tar Heels rode a big second half from Tyler Hansbrough to beat the soon-to-no-longer-be #1 Ohio State Buckeyes in the final game of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. The Buckeyes had led for most of the first half, but the Heels came out strong after the break (when I started watching....coincidence??) pulling away by 10 with about 6 minutes to go and holding on until the end. The Heels look pretty good -- but I'll tell you freshman Ty Lawson has got to be one of the fastest players with the ball in his hand that I've seen in a while.
The ACC polished off the Big-Ten this year eight games to three (by my count). This was the 8th year for this head-to-head conference challenge.
The ACC is 8-0.
This week, the NCAA basketball season got underway in earnest -- always a fun time -- full of hope and curiosity as you begin to gauge where your alma mater(s) are compared to the competition. Who's going to be "tough" this year? Can anyone be this year's George Mason? et cetera. And the best thing is: compared to the mess that college football is every January, you know that come March you'll get all your answers.
Of course, the most important question of any basketball season is: who will win the ACC? Having gone to grad school in Chapel Hill, I am of course a little biased to North Carolina. This year's team should be another strong one, with 4 of 5 starters returning from last year's 23-win team, plus a strong freshman class. A couple of early games against Ohio State (Big Ten -- pffft) and Kentucky will be an interesting barometer for this team. Of course, all that really matters is beating Dook. The Heels opened up the pre-season NIT by beating up on Sacred Heart.
My other alma mater, where I went to college, is the University of Delaware, which is unfortunately not quite as much of a basketball powerhouse. The Fightin' Blue Hens opened up their season tonight by taking one on the chin against Marist. Despite making the tourney a few times early in this decade, expectations are low this year for the Hens. They have a new coach (an assistant from St Joe's in Philly) and are not predicted to contend in the Colonial Athletic League.
It's good to have college basketball back. Go HEELS! Go HENS!
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