basketball

Chris Knight's avatar

Mario Chalmers (now and forever a Kansas folk hero after his 3-pointer that sent the game into overtime) and Darrell Arthur of the Jayhawks have their one shining moment…

Kansas 75, Memphis 68 in overtime. That was the most thrilling and pure crazy NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship I’ve seen in a way long time! Kudos to Bill Self and his team on a spectacular win.

Congrats also to the Tigers of Memphis for coming this far and driving to deliver what will go down in history as one of the all-time greatest NCAA finals ever played.

And after that game I think we all need a good drink…...

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A longtime friend was banned for life from a sports restaurant last night after breaking-bad on UNC-Chapel Hill, which lost bigtime against Kansas in the semifinal of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. The Jayhawks won 84 to 66. Not once did Carolina take the lead, and at one time they were down by 28 points. Apparently my friend could not contain his relish at the Tarheels going down so hard.

Another friend is reportedly going to burn his “lucky underwear”, which he had worn during every UNC game for the past few seasons.

I’ve already warned Lisa to expect some long, sad faces tomorrow at school. Whether there will be more depression among the students or her colleagues, remains an open question.

And after reviewing both semifinals last night, I’ve my own guess as to who’ll win between Kansas and Memphis tomorrow night. But at this point, it doesn’t really ...

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9:31 p.m. EST: One of the announcers has just said that this game “is over” already, with 7 and a half minutes left in just the first half! Kansas 38 and UNC 12.

Someone who shall remain anonymous has told me that Davidson did better against Kansas than the Tarheels are doing tonight.

9:44 p.m. EST: 40-19, Jayhawks still in the lead with just over 3 and a half minutes in the first half. Carolina is starting to show some pepper here.

9:51 p.m. EST: Kansas 44, UNC 27 at the half. Kansas might have burned much of their juice too early in this game and Carolina is still gaining some traction. All the same, I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the Tarheels locker room right now.

10:20 p.m. EST: 15:54 in the second half, Kansas with 54 and 40 for Carolina. If both teams stay ...

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“Trees will tap dance, elephants will ride in the Indianapolis 500, and Orson Wells will skip breakfast, lunch, and dinner before State finds a way to beat Houston.”

— Dave Kindred
writer for The Washington Post
April 4th, 1983

It became, and remains to this day, the defining sports moment of the modern era.

It was twenty-five years ago tonight, on April 4th, 1983, that North Carolina State won the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship, in what has become regarded by many as the single greatest basketball game ever played and one of the biggest upsets in the history of athletics.

It also produced some of the most memorable sports images to be ever televised or photographed.

What can be said about that game that hasn’t already over a quarter-century? Nobody was expecting the Wolfpack of NC State to take down Houston. Guy Lewis’s Cougars – dubbed “Phi Slamma ...

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Oh yeah, this is the weekend of Easter too, right? And tomorrow is Good Friday. So it really is the High Holy Days, isn’t it?

Okay “High Holy Days” is my own personal nickname for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. It kicks into high gear today and here are the brackets for it courtesy of CBS Sports.

It ain’t looking good for the Knight household though: this year the NCAA honchos have put the three teams we have the most affection for in the same region! Duke (my longtime favorite Atlantic Coast Conference team along with N.C. State), Georgia (Lisa’s alma mater) and Baylor (where Lisa’s brother is attending) are all playing in the West. In fact, if they both come out of their first games intact it’s going to be Baylor and Georgia playing each other! And then of course whoever wins that will be sent home ...

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CBS Sports has an Official NCAA Basketball Tournament Brackets application on Facebook and among other things it lets you rank who your favorite teams are… along with who you loathe the most.

I thought the current standings were pretty funny:

Right now the Tarheels of UNC-Chapel Hill are the top favorite team, followed by the Duke Blue Devils. But in the Despised category, Duke is by far the most hated followed by Carolina, and UNC has almost as many votes as it does in the Favorite chart. Hmmmm…

This might be the most scientific indicator yet of how intense the feud is between Duke and Carolina. Even though it’s a routine part of life here in North Carolina, I must admit it’s still quite neat to see it reflected in this way.

Oh yeah: GO DUKE!! 🙂...

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This may be the dumbest thing that I’ve ever heard from the world of sports journalism: a few weeks ago the National Collegiate Athletic Association implemented new rules for live blogging at NCAA-sponsored sporting events. The whole thing got started when a sports writer was thrown out of a college baseball game for providing an online chronicle of the action as it happened. The NCAA screamed about “infringing” on the rights of the broadcast partners.

In the wake of the uproar, last month the NCAA established some… strange… regulations for live blogging by professional sports reporters at college athletic events:

Football
– Three posts per quarter and one post at halftime

Baseball
– One post per inning, including extra innings

Basketball
– Five posts per half, two posts in halftime, two posts per each overtime

Not only that, but each blog must display the NCAA logo (what the… %@#&?!?!?) and ...

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…is the groaning in agony of millions of people who just watched in horror as their brackets in the NCAA Tournament office/campus pool got completely screwed up by Duke.

Congrats to Virginia Commonwealth though on a good game.

The first half just ended between UNC and Eastern Kentucky and it doesn’t look like the Colonels are gonna topple #1 seeded Tarheels. I still remember when Western Carolina almost pulled that off against Perdue in the ’96 tournament: my sister was a student at WCU at the time and she said she’d never seen a college campus go so crazy, when it really looked like it was gonna happen. So far as I know though, no #1 seed has ever gone down in the first round.

...

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Yee-haw!!! 85-80 over Duke in overtime in the first round of the ACC Tournament.

I’m just now finding out about this! I can’t believe that I missed this game! AAAARRGGGHHHH…

Speaking of N.C. State, tomorrow is March 10th. That’s my Dad’s birthday. March 10th is also the birthday of Jim Valvano. He would have been 61 tomorrow. Can’t believe it’s been almost fourteen years already since he was taken from us. I can’t tell you how many people I saw crying the day he died.

Goodness gracious: has it really been almost a quarter-century since that night in Albuquerque?

Valvano was one of my heroes. And he still is. This excerpt from his speech at the ESPY Awards – just two short months before he died – shows some of why that is…

“When people say to me how do you get through life or each day, it’s the

...
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