Category: College Basketball

Giving the Mundane Its Beautiful Due

Eyegal said it in passing just as the Duke v. Bradley game was set to tip off last night. It was one of those comments designed not so much to inform as to query, and I recognized it as such. I was preoccupied with Duke point guard Kyrie Irving who was sitting out the game with a toe ailment and the effects that would have on my beloved Dukies’ offense to pay it much mind. But I suppose I paid it enough since I did answer back, and if that wasn’t enough, there’s always this blog post.

“We’re starting to get some Christmas cards,” she called out from the kitchen.… Read the rest

Count Your Blessings

“Name them one by one,” the song says. So here goes:

1. I’m running, not far or fast, but pain-free for the first time in quite a while. I’ve shifted my foot strike from my heel, which is where it’s been since fourth grade, to my forefoot. “Barefooting” as it’s sometimes called. I don’t exactly run barefoot on asphalt (ouch!), but I do use a “minimalist” training shoe, the Nike Free. This is supposed to be more “natural,” the way you were meant to run back in the day when your survival meant eluding a predator such as a saber-toothed tiger or that annoying herd of mastodons that lived over in the next valley.… Read the rest

by Michael Brown
Posted on November 24, 2010January 2, 2022
10 Comments on Count Your Blessings

I Dream of Sausage (and BACON!!)

All day long I dream of sausage (and BACON!!). I just can’t help it.

It started last Friday on the drive from Huntsville to Durham, North Carolina where we witnessed a Man (as in Saban)-made disaster: a towering tsunami sweeping over and flooding the horseshoe-shaped bowl of Wallace Wade Stadium, turning it into a mini-Bryant Denny for a day and coloring it all houndstooth and crimson.

I should have been focusing on the game at hand, but I couldn’t avoid looking ahead after I spied those bronze memorials of a mama pig and her little piglets in the plaza in downtown Asheville.… Read the rest

NCAA To Rescind Duke’s National Title

In response to a Rasmussen poll indicating that 95% of the American people responded “Hell yeah!” to the question “Wuz we robbed?,” the NCAA this morning will make the highly unusual move of rescinding the Duke men’s basketball team’s 2010 National Championship.

A 9:00 AM press conference is set to begin in front of Butler University’s historic Hinkle Fieldhouse, site of the legendary 1954 Indiana high school state championship which featured fascist/communist South Bend Central High vs. All-American, God-loving, patriotic lil’ ol’ Milan AND the setting for the climactic scene of the movie Hoosiers.

Get it?

But rather than awarding the title outright to Butler, early indications are that NCAA officials will instead do a “Take Two!”… Read the rest

Former Duke Greats To Officiate Title Game

In a rather anticlimactic move, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee announced this morning (off the record, of course) that the officiating crew for tonight’s title game between the fascist (or communist if you prefer) Duke Blue Devils and the clean-cut, All-American kids from Hickory High Butler University will consist of former Duke greats Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill.

“Might as well go ahead and say it out loud,” an unnamed NCAA source wearing a Duke coaches polo said. “Everybody knows we stack the deck for the Devils, anyway, although we kinda dropped the ball on that from 2001 until now.”… Read the rest

All Eyes Are On Alabama, And It Feels So Right

Bama washington If you’re going to stand in line in subfreezing temperatures in order to enter the holy of holies of college basketball, then you’d better know your stuff because every other Cameron Crazie wannabe standing in line with you sure will.

Well, mostly anyway.

When it comes to football, we were a motley crew, united only in our love for Duke basketball. Clemson, LSU, Georgia, Alabama, Penn State and Rutgers were just a few of the schools represented in our little knot of frozen fandom near the front of the line.

Kid Clemson, the guy in the Tiger hoodie in front of me, was a veritable walking encyclopedia of sports statistics.… Read the rest

Twitter Me Blue

I learned a very valuable lesson yesterday. If you’re going to be using an iPhone in subfreezing temperatures, make sure it’s fully charged. You might even want to wrap it up in a heated, insulated blanket between uses while you’re at it.

I barely had time to snap a photo or two of the Duke University campus when it completely flatlined. Can you believe that? Sure you can! It’s an iPhone! My itty-bitty blue United States map was lit up and everything, and then it just up and disappeared like the lost continent of Atlantis.

Guess I can’t blame that one on AT&T since it was a hardware issue.… Read the rest

by Michael Brown
Posted on January 4, 2010January 2, 2022
8 Comments on Twitter Me Blue

Signs and Wonders Never Cease

Cameron The first time I saw Cameron Indoor Stadium, I walked right past it without even trying to go in. I figured anything that storied and sacred was probably locked. I was seventeen years old and too wet behind the ears to realize that in order to gain entry to the places you wanted to go in life, sometimes all you have to do is walk up to the door and knock.

Instead, I walked over to the tennis courts and watched the men’s team practice. It was September 1979, and my father was having coronary bypass surgery at Duke Medical Center on the other end of the quad. … Read the rest

by Michael Brown
Posted on December 31, 2009January 2, 2022

UNC’s Williams Arrests Cameron Crazies

Roy Williams University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill security officers and local police S.W.A.T teams descended on Duke University early this morning in a daring “snatch and grab” raid to round up all Cameron Crazies who have ever said, or who in the future will ever say, anything negative regarding Roy William’s Tarheel men’s basketball squad.

The Crazies, sans wigs and facepaint since they were arrested while sleeping, are currently incarcerated in a barbwire-enclosed, gulag-style holding area outside the Dean Dome while Judge, Jury and Executioner Coach Williams decides between firing squad, gas chamber or lethal injection as the method of mass execution.

This preemptive strike at the heart of his archrival’s fan base comes on the heels of the ejection of a “drunk” and “abusive” Presbyterian College fan (who admitted to having a grand total of TWO beers prior to the game) from the Dean Dome by coliseum security at the behest of Coach Williams.… Read the rest

What Ever Happened To Don Meyer?

Well, for one thing the former NAIA national championship-winning basketball coach at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee and now HC at Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota recently passed Bob Knight’s 902 career victory total to become the all-time leader in men’s college basketball history.

And for another, he did that while recovering from a near fatal car accident and battling inoperable cancer.

Having a bad day? Don Meyer would say that there is no such thing as a bad day.

… Read the rest

Dickie V.–You’re Out of Your Depth, Dude

To date, I haven’t jumped on board the “Dump Dickie V.” bandwagon. Yes, unlike fine wine, he has grown worse with age. His clownish antics have grown stale, absolutely.

But I’ve always regarded him like that buffoonish, annoyingly loud, but relatively harmless, uncle at the holiday family gathering who just won’t shut up already with the lame jokes and tall tales but still slips the little kids a piece of candy from his pocket because underneath it all he’s a decent guy with a good heart.

Until now.

Here’s Dickie V. talking about football, of all things, during last night’s Kentucky v.… Read the rest

On Living A Quiet Life, Part II

Warning: The following photo is considered by some to be like a Playboy magazine in that it must be kept behind the counter and away from curious, roving eyes:

No really, I’m not kidding.

I know a lot of Southern Baptist and Church of Christ men really like Sarah Palin and think she would be a great President Vice President, but would they typically let her speak during their services or teach a class with men present?

What’s that you say? Well, okay then, how about pass a communion tray? Hmmm…serve food at a church potluck? That’s what I thought.

And on another front of the Culture War, the same people who “stumbled” over the retro Starbucks mermaid logo are back again, and this time the Duke Blue Devils are in their crosshairs (h/t Greg):

Okay, I think they’ve really crossed some kind of line this time.… Read the rest

Tarheels Launch Preemptive Invasion Against Duke

Concerned over rumors of a resurgence in Duke University football and the potential loss of the coveted Carlyle Cup, the UNC Tarheels launched a preemptive strike against the Blue Devils this past Saturday.

“Operation Eat Mor Chikin” began just prior to the kickoff of the Blue Devils home opener when two UNC paratroopers landed on the field at Wallace Wade stadium shouting “Mission Accomplished!” as soon as their boots touched the ground. That mission was to kidnap new Duke Head Coach and offensive mastermind David Cutcliffe and to commandeer his WMTs (Weapons of Mass Touchdowns).

The operation went awry, however, when the twelve Duke students who actually showed up to watch the game and the lone Blue Devil security guard, Barney Fife III, chased the interlopers from the field.… Read the rest