8 posts tagged “north carolina”
I almost turned it off.
As Kansas was routing a flat-footed and confused North Carolina Tar Heel team in the first half of their NCAA national semifinal game Saturday, I nearly turned it off.
Watching the perfect storm of Kansas playing superb and inspired basketball and the Tar Heels playing a sloppy, poor-shooting, and poor-decision-making type of game rarely seen, it was ugly. Like 28-point deficit ugly.
It was a strange game – almost simultaneously, the teams switched personas – UNC becoming disciplined and efficient, Kansas seemingly falling apart. The Heels cut the lead to 5. It was hard to believe.
But they couldn’t get any closer than that as KU regained their composure and again the tables turned as the Heels got a little too desperate a little too early and the Jayhawks rode to a pretty easy victory in the last few minutes.
Strange game in that no stretch of it was very competitive – KU dominated, UNC dominated, KU dominated, end. Disappointing end to a very good Tar Heels season – certainly not the way they’d want to go out, and you have to think a lot of this will be laid at the feet of Roy Williams for not being able to focus his team better during the Kansas onslaughts.
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
I don’t talk about politics here very much. Which isn’t to say that I don’t find politics interesting. We talk about it at home all the time, which often makes for spirited happy-hour discussions.
One thing we agree on is that the Democratic Party has got to be losing its collective mind if it thinks that front runner and presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton has a good shot of winning the Presidency a year from now. They have apparently ignored a poll taken in the spring in which 50% of adults (including 45% of women) said that they would not vote for her. Period. (Or maybe they think her charming personality will win people over in time.) Now you can win the presidency with a minority of the popular vote – George W. Bush did that in 2000, as Bill Clinton did in 1992 -- but I wouldn't think that's your first-choice strategy.
The Dems must feel that the polls are somehow wrong or that they will change.
And they’re right. They probably are wrong.
I was in graduate school at the University of North Carolina in 1990 during a US Senate election between incumbent Jesse Helms and Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt. Helms had been around for 20 years and was the dominant political voice in the state. He was incredibly polarizing. People either loved him or hated him. Unapologetically, he’d just tell you what he liked and didn’t, what he’d vote for and what he wouldn’t. Helms was never much of a friend to blacks or gays and to me he was the archetypal conservative Southern politician of that era.
Gantt was African-American and attacked Helms for his record on race and gender equality. It seemed that after the Reagan-Bush 80s, there was beginning to be some interest in having the pendulum swing back to the left. Polls throughout the summer and fall showed Gantt with lead – anywhere from 5 to 9 points. It looked liked the end for Helms.
On Election Day, Helms won 53% to 47%.
How could this happen? Where did Gantt’s lead go? How could all these polls be so wrong?
The truth is that people lied to the pollsters. When it came down to it, they told pollsters that they would vote one way (i.e. vote for Gantt), but when the ballot got marked as many as 10% of people voted the other way.
I’m sure people have written books and op-ed pieces and given speeches on what this sort of behavior says about society and how we deal with media-expectations and why we choose to vote the way we do.
But the kernel of truth is this: Hillary Clinton is polarizing (though not for the same reasons that Helms was – I’ve yet to get a sense of what she really thinks because it changes so often). A huge chunk of the electorate has already said they simply will not vote for her.
The question is: how many of those that said they might, when it really comes down to it – won’t?
Janie tasked me with coming up with 10 things that most people don’t know about me. I had made a similar attempt at something similar a while back, but I’m game, so lets see…
- Like Janie, I share the same middle name with one of my siblings. Though its not Lyn. Its Francis. It was my dad’s first name. And he had HIS dad’s first name as a middle name. Must be a Betz-thing.
2. I once sang “Country Roads Take Me Home” doing karaoke during a business trip to Japan.
3. At a grade school recital rehearsal (I think it was 3rd grade), I was stung by a bee, passed out, fell off the riser I was on, falling onto the stage floor. This prompted Ephraim Nieves to shout, “O my God, he’s DEAD!”
4. I once drove from Chapel Hill, NC to Camden NJ and never once used my turn signal. (It was a Jersey-driver test of honor sort of thing)
5. Eight states left! Based on Cori’s post the other day, I looked into World66 and was surprised when I input the states that I have been to. I know I was in Oregon during a family trip when I was a tyke, but I don’t really remember it, so I didn’t think I should count it.
6. My brother gave me my first driving lesson in his slick 1977 Monte Carlo (it had a landau roof -- classy). The first thing I did was drive up onto the curb and nearly into a telephone pole. My dad completed my driver’s education.
7. I participated in high school musicals. The photos from my senior year performance in “Pippin” are ashes.
8. I interviewed for a position at DuPont after I earned my PhD with the one of the biggest hangovers of my life (my old college roommate lived about a block from the hotel I stayed at – we stayed up drinking). During the seminar portion of the talk, I couldn’t get nervous, b/c I was so focused on staying coherent. I aced it and got the position.
9. In grad school (and at various places since), my nickname was “Bubba”. A good percentage of people that know me, still use that as their primary way to address me.
10. The first movie I can ever remember going to see (I think I was ~5 yo) was Disney’s “Song of the South” -- apparently I went around singing Zipidee-doo-dah for weeks.
Open tagging-season for all that would like to participate!
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!!!
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!
My Groups
-
Earth Science Updated: 1 minute ago
-
conservation of wildlife Updated: 2 hours ago
-
Me and My Monday Updated: 3 hours ago
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
