Sunday thoughts

- UNC looks like they are back to playing the way they are supposed to. No small part of that is Wayne Ellington finally getting hot.

- Duke looked scary good against Maryland. I still an not convinced the are a championship team. They continue to rely on jump shots and without a legitimate inside presence I still don't think they can do that and win it all in March.

- Clemson just gave up against UNC in the second half of their game. Good to see Clemson rebound and play really well against Georgia Tech. I still think they are a good top 20 caliber team but they have to prove it in ACC play.

- Wake Forest lost their first game of the year. It will be interesting to see how they respond against Duke on Wednesday. It will be even more interesting to see what happens if they get beat by Duke on Wednesday. This is a talented but young team and younger teams tend to have a tougher time rebounding from tough losses.

- Two great wins for Virginia Tech this week against Wake Forest and Miami. It is time to start including Seth Greenburg in every "best coach in the ACC" conversation

- State is good enough to be competetive but still lose every game. I get the feeling Sidney is having a tough time winning these kids over. If you put Julius Hodge's heart in Costner's body you would have a top five draft pick. Instead you have a guy who will be lucky to play overseas.

- Goodbye to the entire Carolina Panther's defensive staff. This might be a blessing in disguise but it still is weird when you have a mass exodus like that. We will see how much the Panthers want Julius Peppers back by who they hire. My guess is that Pep is done in Carolina. However, if they can get a slew of draft picks for him it might end up being a good thing.

Some midweek thoughts

-Joe Flacco is a good quarterback but he has a ways to go before he is going to be a big time all-pro quarterback.

-So far this season Gerald Henderson of Duke has proven he is far and away the best NBA prospect in the ACC

-For about ten minutes during the Miami game, UNC showed how good they are capable of being. Welcome back Waye Ellington.

-NC State isn't going to be an easy game for anyone. They still might finish in the bottom half of the ACC but they are starting to put things together and nobody is going to want to play them in the ACC tourney.

-UNC's Danny Green (who I have been a harsh critic of) may have had his best game of the year against Miami, and it became clear that Ed Davis deserves more of Deion Thompson's minutes.

-Georgetown didn't even belong on the same floor as Duke. Can we give the "Big East is the best conference by far" a rest. If they are indeed the best conference it isn't by very much.

-Coach K publicly criticized the Raleigh News and Observer about their coverage of his Duke team. I wonder which part of his leadership seminars include whining and bitching.

-Has there ever been a quarterback go from a flash in the pan NFL burnout (i.e. Mark Rypien) to being a game away from being a Hall of Fame lock? Good luck Kurt Warner!!

-Duke has to stay fresh if they are going to go to Detroit. I still think they rely on the three point shot too much and that usually doesn't translate to late runs in March.

Back to Sports

This has been a tough couple of weeks for me. The Tarheels lost their first two ACC games and the Panthers had a debacle of a playoff game led by the masterful turnover performance of Jake Delhomme. He can turn the ball over with the best of them. Watching Jake Delhomme is like watching a great movie that has a twist at the end which doesn’t make any sense so it ruins the whole movie.

I am convinced that women statistically live longer than men because they don’t watch sports. I feel ten years older after these last couple of weeks and I swear that after Boston College beat my beloved Tarheels my heart actually stopped beating for 30 seconds. I wasn’t even scared; it was welcome at that point; especially after BC turned around and lost to Harvard just four day later.

But the great thing about sports is that there is always another game to be played, another season to be had, another off-season to bitch about the coaches and players and how they failed us, another pre-season to convince myself that this year might be different, another jubilation or disappointment right around the corner. And although sports moments seem to be taking years off my life they are also the moments I live for.

quote of the week

"My wife is such a bad cook we pray after we eat."

-Rodney Dangerfield