Occasionally Wright

March Madness

If you're a college basketball fan and are interested in a little friendly (and free) competition let me know. I've created a division in the Sporting News March Madness challenge and you're all welcome to join up. Email me for the password if you're interested.

How Bad Was It?

Quotes from the University of Virginia's radio broadcasters during the Wake Forest/UVA blowout:

"That'll be Gray's third foul so he'll sit and Skip Prosser will have a chance to go deep on his bench."
"Well if you're going to go deep you may was well do it when you're up 35-10 in the 1st half."

"I'm not sure if I'ver seen one team go into Bonus before the other team got their first foul."

"I know in the radio business you're supposed to say the score a lot, but can we just waive that today?"

"The problem with Wake Forest is they don't have any weak players so if skip Prosser wanted to call of the dogs he can't."

The final score was only 91-78, but that's the closest the game really got after the first 10 minutes, and that was with the walk-on players on the court for the Demon Deacons. The 44-27 half-time score pretty much tells the story. When Wake was mired in their 0-4 slump I was going to write something about none of the Deacs really seemed to want to step up and take over when the game was on the line. Before this year we had Josh Howard, who tended to choke as often as not but at least he wanted the ball. Before him there was Robert O'Kelly (same story except he choked more) and before him there was that Duncan guy. Now it looks like Justin Gray is our man, who has led the Deacs in scoring in their last 2 games. hopefully he can do the same on Wednesday at NC State.

And to put the icing on the cake, it looks like ABC is going to be carrying UNC's trip to Winston-Salem nationwide next saturday, which means it should be on in Canada too. The last time the teams met was the 119-114 triple OT win by Wake Forest in Chapel-Hill so this could be another classic.

Hoops in the ACC

College basketball is ridiculously unpredictable. On any given night just about anyone can lose to anyone else, especially in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Back in December Wake Forest went into Chapel Hill and came away with a triple overtime win. Then last week UNC knocked off UConn. Wake lost to Texas, Duke and Georgia Tech in succesion and now traditionally lowly Florida State has beaten UNC in overtime.

Duke is the only team undefeated in conference play.
Georgia Tech is tied for second at 3-1, with a loss to UNC.
NC State is the other team in sceond with a loss to Duke and wins against FSU and Clemson.
Wake is next at 2-2 with wins over Clemson and at UNC and a loss at Duke and at home to Georgia Tech.
Next up is Virginia who have lost to the teams ahead of them and beaten teams behind them.
Florida State on the other hand is now 2-3 after beating UNC in OT. They also beat Maryland when MAryland was ranked 25th and one of their losses is against Clemson.
Then there's UNC, the darlings of the hoops media. They're 1-3 in the ACC with OT losses to Wake and FSU and a loss to Maryland. Their win came against then #8 GT, and they've beaten UConn, so nobody really knows where they fit. Just call them the Jekyll and Hyde of the ACC.
Maryland and Clemson are 1-3 and 1-4 respectively with Maryland beating UNC and Clemson getting their lone win against FSU.

All it's going to take is for Duke to lose a game or 2 and everything becomes wide, wide open. And Duke still has to go into Lawrence Joel and play UNC twice.

And next year Miami and Virginia Tech get to join the party. Man this is fun.

And the Demon Deacons Lose

Well, Wake lost in Texas. The Longhorns beat them in pretty much every category, from free throw percentage, field goal percentage, rebounds to turnovers. It wasn't a good sign when almost half of Wake's shots came from 3-point land, even if Justin Gray was having a good shooting night (8-18 from behind the arc).

On the bright side, it seemed that the Deacs were pretty uptight through the whole game. Maybe a loss will loosen them up going into Cameron on Saturday. We'll see.

Deacs vs Longhorns

Now this is a basketball game.

At the beginning of the NCAA hoops season I was annoyed that Wake Forest had decided to charge a subscription fee to listen to games via the internet through either their own site or Yahoo! Sports. I didn't pay because I'm broke and I've had to settle for reloading boxscores. That is until I discovered that many of the teams Wake plays don't charge people to listen through Yahoo!. So right now I'm listen to the #3 Deacs take on the #16 Longhorns in Texas. Sure, I'm listening to the Texas radio guys but that'll make it all the sweeter in the end when they have to try to spin a Texas loss.

And man is this a game. Wake has the second highest scoring offense in college balll this year. Texas has the highest. This is run and gun basketball folks. Wake is trailing 27-25 as I write this but every basket seems to be off of a steal or a fast break. Both teams have plenty of depth so no one player is dominating, unless yu count Wake Forest's Chris Paul who is racking up the teals. And Vytas Danelius is back for Wake- he didn't start but he's playing for the first time in about a month after spraining his ankle. He could be a real difference maker by the end of the game.

If you've got ESPN2 you need to be checking out this game.

Sports Shorts

It's been a while since I've done one of these, but here it goes...

If you're a Canadian hockey fan you already know this, and if you're an American fan you should know it, but Canada lost in the World Junior Championship Final on Monday to the United States, 4-3. Thanks to my loss of full cable I don't have TSN so I only got to watch the forst and last games, the second of which I lost at MacLaren's on Elgin in my new Team Canada away jersey that I got from my girlfriend for Christmas. I'm not going to say much about the loss and I haven't been forced to read any commentary on it yet. All I know is that it was a tough loss to take. Maybe we would have benefitted from some tougher games before we got to the final. The guys really didn't seem to know what to do once the Americans tied the game at 3 and I got the sens they didn't know how to deal with adveristy as a team. Nobody stepped up when it mattered, but mabe that' a bit harsh seeing as how they're all under 20. I suppose I should congratulate the American team (which was a very solid team) on their first ever tourney win, but it's bittersweet knowing they won because we choked. The last 2 goals were complete garbage but that's not their fault. We have noone to blame for those except our own team. So that's that.

In the NHL my pool team is struggling. Hopefully a week or two of attention can fix that. Oh yeah, the Bruins are struggling too. No big surprise there since it's past November. Rumors are going around that Boston might go after Vancouver GM Brian Burke when his contract expires in July. That'd be a great move for them. I'd really like to see Sinden and his boy O'Connell disappear completely but I'll be happy if half the team is gone. The defense and goalies can't stop any goals and the forwards can't score any. Something needs to improve quick. The Thrashers are doing decent but Savard might be out until February with a concussion and Ilya Kovalchuk isn't making much noise these days. Lucky for them that Florida and Tampa Bay are slumping just as bad. Carolina is gaining some ground on all 3 though so the Southeast Division could get interesting. Ottawa is back to being the hottest team in the league but I still have no desire to shell out for one of their games. They could score 10 goals in a game and I'd still be bored watching them. By the way, did anyone notice that San Jose has a 6 point lead for the division title in the Pacific Division? I didn't either.

In college hoops, Wake Forest is 10-0 after a pounding of Brown last night. Good work guys. Unfortunately their next 4 games are against Clemson, then at #16 Texas, at #2 Duke and then a home game against Georgia Tech. If Wake comes out of that 13-1 I'll be thrilled. 12-2 would be perfectly respectable too. Clemson can be a giant killer, but we should beat them, and Texas hasn't done anything special yet, but Wake on the road can be scary. Going into Cameron Indoor on the other hand will be a serious challenge, and GT won't be a cakewalk either. I was thrilled when UNC's bubble burst in the Wake/Carolina triple overtime epic that many are already starting to call one of the best ACC games ever. I missed it of course, since this is Canada, but it was re-aired on Fox Sports South on New Year's Eve and my girlfriend's mom taped it for me, so I'll be watching it sometime this month. If the local ABC affiliate shows the Wake Forest/Duke game on January 17 I'll be one happy Demon Deacon.

In closing, I got Players: The Ultimate A-Z Guide of Everyone Who Has Ever Played in the NHL by Andrew Podnieks for Christmas. It's a great hockey resource filled with cool stories. I also bought WWE Unscripted, a coffee-table type book filled with interesting pictures and background stories straight from the wrestlers themselves. If you're ever bored in a bookstore and in a browsing mood you should take a look at it, even if you aren't a wrestling fan.

Welcome Back Roy

Welcome back to the ACC Mr. Williams. Let us introduce ourselves. We're the Demon Deacons and we're not afraid to come into your house and steal a win. We'll see you back in Winston-Salem on February 7.

ACC! ACC!

NCAA basketball is in full swing now so I'm adding a NCAA sports category to my archives. And to me, NCAA means ACC basketball. Right now that means the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, that anuual event in which the 9 ACC schools play 9 Big Ten teams for bragging rights. Usually they do a reasonable job of matching up teams so as few teams as possible come away looking fooolish, but this year the ACC ran away with it. Yup, that's 5 straight years. Georgia Tech (6-0) clinched it with a win over Ohio State (2-4) and Duke poured some salt on the wounds when they thumped Michigan St 72-50 in Michigan. Going into the game the two teams shared the #6 ranking. Somehow I think that's going to change.

Andy Katz and the ESPN gang have everything you need to know about the Challenge, which the ACC won 7-2 over here.

In case you were wondering Wake Forest is still undefeated in the Challenge after throttling Indiana 100-67 Tuesday night, and throttling is putting it nicely. Thanks to the fact that I was in Athens, Ga. I was able to watch the game and if memory serves me Wake led the entire game. Chris Paul is for real, Eric Williamsn is going to be a power to be reckoned with on the inside, and Wake can score from every position. Bring it on UNC. We'll see you in the ACC opener on Dec 20. It's a shame that one won't be televised up here.

For the record the ACC now has Duke, UNC, Georgia Tech, WFU and Maryland in the Top 25 and with all of them having solid wins this week they could all go up barring major upsets. Expansion? We don't need no stinking expansion.