The Omnigeek

Full Disclosure: I’m a born and bred Kentuckian. I’ve lived here in the heart of the Atlantic Coast Conference for 10 years. I have no loyalty for any school’s athletics in the ACC. I respect UNC/Chapel Hill and Duke’s basketball program for the success that they have earned. UNC and Duke have had success in non-money sports like Soccer, Lacrosse and Baseball and those programs deserve respect as well.

All opinions expressed herein are of course tainted.

What I can’t fathom is why that people here worry about how the conference is seen as a whole. Growing up in SEC land and spending a lot of time around Big 10, Big 12 and Big East teams and fans, listening to news casts and talk radio hosts in these markets, I don’t ever remember much more than a passing mention about how the conference was fairing against other conferences. But that seems to dominate the fans and local media in in ACC land. Maybe these other conferences are secure in their standings?

What should be important and discussed is one simple question “Is my team going to kick your team’s behind next week?”

What I’ve learned since living here is that the ACC has an ego that pretty much isn’t present in other conferences and its bruised. No one at Florida cared how the ACC teams did this past week. They didn’t care how the SEC teams did as a conference either. Its just “How good is Tennessee and Alabama and will they be in our way to a national championship?” Maybe Florida cared how the Miami-Florida State game fared, but beyond that practically no one in Gainesville could even tell you that the ACC was 5-7 on opening weekend.

This morning while driving in to work, 850 the Buzz (WRBZ 850 AM) and Adam Gold made it to my radio. It was so much fun listening to him complain about the ACC’s embarrassing opening weekend. He suggested (and I saw a similar suggestion in Caulton Tudor’s column in the News & Observer) that the ACC should play conference games on opening weekend. What? That has to be one of the craziest suggestions I’ve ever heard.

Why you ask?

The ACC is struggling with football mediocrity. They opened the season 5-7 and had what seems to be several embarrassing losses. But this suggestion would guarantee that every year they would start out 6-6. Isn’t 50-50 the very definition of mediocrity? You want to bring your self-esteem up by insuring that you can never be better than average?

Well when you loose games to “piddly Division I-AA teams” I guess that should be a concern. But lets look at reality. Using the Jeff Sarigan computer rankings (since it gives us a look at the whole 200+ teams in Division I football), this is how things looked going into this past weekend’s opening games:

*NOTE: I don’t feel like analyzing all the schools. These are the key ones for the Raleigh-Durham market. You shouldn’t really care that Virginia (46th) lost to William and Mary (117th).

*NOTE 2: Actually this may have been the biggest embarrassment for the conference. A 46th rank team shouldn’t get their behinds handed to them by a team ranked 117. Maybe we should care about that game after all?

Based on rankings, the above results were almost perfect except for Florida State loosing to Miami. South Carolina (31st) beat NCSU (60th). In fact, NCSU improved in the rankings to 58th in this weeks ratings. The Tar Heals killed the Citadel which a team some 90 ranks above should do. The AP had UNC in the top 25, though Sarigan has them well out of the top 25 at 52nd. We will see what happens when UNC plays a stronger opponent.

There has been a lot of tears spent on the Duke loss to Richmond. There shouldn’t be. Richmond was the computer favorite coming into the weekend. The difference between Division I-A and I-AA is 15 scholarships. A well coached I-AA team with some talent will best a weak-to-mediocre I-A team with surprising frequency. I like the Duke football coach David Cutcliffe. In time he will build a program that wins more games that it looses; however to look past an opponent because they are in the Championship series when they are ranked above you is a grievous mistake.

The Virginia whoopin’ and Miami beating Fla. State are the two real black marks on the weekend. Everything else happened as it should. The one game the ACC should want back is the Wake Forest / Baylor game. Wake Forest was ranked significantly higher (30th vs. 82nd) than Baylor and lost to a surprisingly good Baylor team. Amazingly Baylor jumped to 27th in this weeks ratings and Wake Forest improved as well, rising to 21st in the Sagrigan rankings.

Gold went on to say that the Miami-FSU game saved the weekend for the ACC. I don’t think so. There is no doubt that it was a fantastic game; an instant classic. But the ranked FSU team lost to an un-ranked team at home. How can this be anything other than an embarrassment in Tallahassee and at the ACC offices over in Greensboro? Great game or not a conference striving to be seen as a strong conference can’t have their stars loosing.

Why is the ACC a great basketball conference? Because Duke and UNC kick everyone elses behinds and those two stars get to shine. The SEC is strong because Florida, Alabama and LSU dominate the rest of the conference. Sure Georgia and Ole Miss throw in the “tough games” to help out in schedule strength. But at the end of the day, the Kentucky’s and South Carolina’s are there to be win’s in the other team’s record books. BTW: Kentucky (47th) killed their opening day opponent, the other Miami(OH)(126th) 42-0 I’m just sayin’.

My advice to those pimpin’ the ACC as a whole: Stop. Spend time trying to make your school better and let the conference take care of itself. Once the teams do their job the rest will fall in line.

What are your thoughts on the subject? Leave a comment below!

Raleigh NC — The Carolina Hurricanes have knocked off two teams in their pursuit of the Stanley Cup and they have two to go. In two series they have not had home-ice advantage. In two series they have had to knock off division champions. In two series, the number 6 seeded team has finished off the number 3 and number 1 seeded team. It took dramatic game 7 wins in both series in front of hostile crowds, but they did it.

Now they head to the Conference Finals against the Pittsburgh Penguins and the “experts” are almost unanimously picking Pittsburgh to win the series. In the first round matchup against the New Jersey Devils, the same experts were split as to who would win. Sure the Devils would have home ice and had the all time winningest goalie between the pipes with Martin Brodeur, but Carolina had beaten them several times down the stretch heading into the playoffs.

A sensible person would have noticed at as the regular season waned, the Hurricanes were getting stronger while the Devils were slipping a bit. The Devils struggled after Brodeur passed Patrick Roy as the all time winningest goalie, finishing their last 10 games with a 4-5-1 record. The Canes on the other hand after bringing Erik Cole back at the trade deadline had turned into a machine and finished their last 10 games 8-2-0.

The first round was close. It was intense and it took some heroics that can only be describe as “Magic” to win, including a goal scored with 0.2 seconds left and a game tying and game winning goal in the final two minutes of another game. So with these unbelievable, story-book, magical miracles its easy to get into the mind set that its a “Fluke” that Carolina advanced.

Next up was the number one seeded Boston Bruins. They had the second best record in the NHL with 116 points, a full 10 points ahead of the Devils and 19 points ahead of Carolina. They pitched the best goalie in the league, an incredibly good and physical defense and had a host of forwards that put up a conference best 274 goals over 82 games. They lost 6 games at home all season. Needless to say betting the Bruins in Boston was a hard task.

Most of the media experts gave this one to Boston. Only a couple of ESPN analysts called this one for Carolina. The Hurricanes had not won against the Bruins all year and the Bruins had a fairly easy first round against Montreal with a four game sweep.

On paper, there is no way Carolina should have won this series, but they did, charging out to a commanding 3-1 series lead before the Bruins clawed back to force a game 7 which Carolina again won with another fantasy like over time winner.

So we not sit on the cusp of the Conference finals. Again, Carolina would not have home ice, but what is surprising is that almost everyone is giving this series to Pittsburgh before it even starts.

Lets look at this.

1. Sidney Crosby — clearly one of the two best players in the league. He is the star the league needs to show off and shine. He is the face of the NHL and in the series with Washington where he was going mano-a-mano against the other super-star, Alexander Ovechkin, the league and the TV channels got what they want, including a game where both stars had hat-tricks against each other.
2. The Penguins have another super-star in Evgeni Malkin. He’s dangerous and gives the Pens a great 1-2 punch.
3. On the backside, they have a strong goalie in Marc-André Fleury and a solid defense. They’ve proved they are formidable knocking off the Flyers and Capitals.

So again looking at that, how can a team beat the Penguins?

Before we answer that, lets look at a few facts.

Final Point totals: Penguins 99, Canes 97. Both teams won the same number of games, the difference was two more overtime loses for Pittsburgh.

Head to Head: Penguins 2, Canes 2. Pittsburgh took the first two games, winning 4-1 and 5-2. Carolina took the last two 2-1 and 3-2 in overtime. The Hurricanes, for historical perspective struggled early in the year and changed coaches, turning the team around. The Penguins second win was on Paul Maurice’s debut as the new coach. It wasn’t long after that when Carolina turned its season around.

So based on those facts, one should expect this series to be very close, probably going a full 7 games. But Carolina has a few good things going for it.

1. Cam Ward. While the Penguin’s Marc-André Fleury is a good goaltender, Cam Ward continues to show he knows how to netmind the big games. He has kept Carolina in many of these games allowing magic to work for them. Maybe its not so much magic as quality goaltending. Three years ago, Ward won the Conn Smythe as the playoff MVP when Carolina bested Edmonton in route to their first Stanley Cup. While its early, if he continues this play, he would have to be in contention to win it again. The goalie edge had to go to Carolina and your team is built out from there.
2. Solid Defense. For the most part, even after two grueling seven game series, the Carolina defensive core is healthy and they contribute offensively. The Penguin’s defense is a little banged up with Sergei Gonchar’s sore knee. With Maurice’s defensive mentality, Carolina should have a slight edge defensively.
3. Lack of star’s up front. Huh? You serious? This is an advantage? Yes it is. Teams have no idea which Carolina forward is going to burn you. You can’t cheat away from any given player because they can all create problems for a teams defense. Yes, you have Eric Staal and many people will be watching the matchup between him and his brother, Jordan on the Penguins, who is playing his best right now, and Sergei Samsonov and Jussi Jokinen have provided most of the offense in the playoffs so far, all four lines can score and have scored. Instead of the goals being clustered around a couple of key players, a well balanced team will create defensive problems that are hard to counter.

So with this, how can all seven ESPN analysts (and this link), two experts from the Sporting News, and many others unanimously give this to Pittsburgh? Sure I’m a Canes fan, but this is too close to call. Surely one of the above experts would have sided with Carolina.

Now I fully understand that Versus and NBC clearly do not want Carolina to advance. The Raleigh-Durham’s tens of thousands of fans means economic disaster for TV. While Pittsburgh’s market is a little larger, they do have Crosby and Malkin which are huge stars. Clearly a Boston / Red Wings or even Boston / Chicago final would have made the TV folks happy. Its been obvious all year given that NBC pretty much only shows Ranger games. And conspiracy theorists will point out the large number of wrong/bad calls going against Carolina as evidence that TV is putting pressure on the NHL to keep the small market teams out of the late rounds of the playoffs.

Well Carolina is probably faster than Pittsburgh and is healthy and playing some of the best hockey as witnessed by their dispatching of Boston.

Why can’t at least one of these goon’s picked Carolina? Well it will be fun to watch them when they are all wrong.

I should be writing a blog post on http://www.robmiracle.com about today’s Kentucky Derby Festival activities. But I can’t. Go see my photos from Dawn at the Downs here!

No I can’t blog now, I’m in major jubilation mode. The Carolina Hurricanes just slapped the New Jersey Devils right out of the play offs in a stunning fashion, 4-3 in game 7 in Jeresy’s own Prudential Center.

Not only did the Hurricanes pull off a stunner in game 4 putting the game winner in the net with only 0.2 seconds left to play, but the Devils held a 3-2 lead with 1:20 to play in the game when Brodeur’s armor came undone and the Canes put two past him within 0:48 of each other to stun the Devils with Eric Staal picking up the game winner with 31.7 seconds left.

The Canes have to deal with the Boston Bruins in the next round, but for now, Canes fans can rejoice in playing some of the best playoff hockey.

GO CANES!!!!!!!!!

Once basketball season ends in Kentucky, life turns towards Kentucky’s other sporting passion, Horse Racing. Kentucky is known as the horse capital of the world, known for its picturesque plank fenced horse farms sprawling over rolling hills of Kentucky Blue Grass.

In Kentucky, horses are raced, trotted, shown, jumped and danced. Horses of all breads and pedigree can be found on farms all across the state. There are however two major concentrations of Equine activity: Lexington and Louisville.

Lexington’s sphere of influence includes Keenland, a popular thoroughbred racing track and home to the annual Yearling Sales, where the best 1 year olds are auctioned off from the breeding farms to the owners who will eventually race them. The Kentucky Horse Park is located just north of Lexington and while a state park, it is home to various major equestrian events and has hosted the US Olympic Horse Trials and will be hosting the FEI World Games in 2010. Lexington is surrounded by horse farms. The major equine research facilities and horse database companies are located there as well.

But this time of year, the attention turns to Louisville when the greatest of horse races is run on the 1st Saturday in May, the Kentucky Derby. Ran at historic Churchill Downs in the center of Louisville, the Derby is led up to by a two week festival for the race.

My wife and I have traveled to Louisville to participate in these events and today, we chased hot air balloons during the “Great Balloon Race”. You can read about the chase at http://www.robmiracle.com. The chase carried us to an area with several horse stables north east of Louisville.

One of our missions this week is to photograph horses when and where we can and well, I had a camera and there were horses. With the Balloon race over, and before having to travel two hours south to visit with my family, it was horse photo time. Strapping on my telephoto lens to shoot horses at a distance, I snapped a few shots of a group of horses in one field. I then moved to a small black plank fenced field that contained a couple of horses, one white, one chestnut.

Immediately, the white horse took attention to me and decided I was interesting, perhaps it was my bright red Carolina Hurricanes shirt (I write this from a sports bar watching the Canes play the Devils) or perhaps it was my movement, or the horse was naturally curious or a camera hog.

He got within petting distance and turned his left neck toward me, obviously wanting petted. This horse has spent a lot of time around people. I obliged, petting his neck for a few seconds and as I pulled my hand away, he turned his head toward me and nuzzled me square in the face with his big and very wet nose.

I had been slimed . . . by a horse.

I was stunned for a moment as this came completely out of the blue.

The only thing I could think of was “Lucy” from Peanuts and the dog kisses Snoopy laid on her over the years: “Oh horse kiss. Gross. Bring the disinfectant.” Sherry, my wife was laughing hysterically at the scene and retold the story dozens of times to family and total strangers as the day progressed.

The white horse and his stable mate stayed near by. I regained my composure, switched over to a wide angle lens and shot the horses close up.

We wanted to see some horses and this was definitely “seeing” some horses.

Today the University of Kentucky athletic department and the men’s basketball head coach, Billy Gillispie separated ways. The separation was announced at a 4:30pm press conference after several days of speculation. You can follow the Lexington Herald-Leader’s coverage here!

There are numerous reasons why they needed to part ways but they can all be summed up with the fact that the program was going in a direction that Kentucky did not like and Gillispie was not the right coach to change that direction. Tubby Smith drilled a hole in the bottom of the ship and started it sinking. Gillispie was brought in to try and plug that hole, but the ship was still sinking. Now Kentucky needs to find someone who can save things.

But who will that be?

Florida’s head coach, Billy Donovan has been mentioned. He has built a strong program at Florida, a football school. Donovan is a Rick Pitino protege having been his assistant at Kentucky during their magical run. Is he interested? Would he fit in at Kentucky? Even with his National Championship, he is high profile enough? Can he be consistent? Florida didn’t make it into the NCAA tournament this year. That folks is a huge red flag. If Billy G’s failure to make the dance got him chased out of town, why do we think Billy D will be any different? He does come with strong UK cred having been a well respected assistant.

On the subject of assistants, does Kentucky court Leonard Hamilton, the current head coach at Florida State? He was Joe B. Hall‘s long time assistant at Kentucky? He’s partially responsible for one of the banner’s hanging at Rupp Arena with the 1978 National Championship. On the other hand, 1979 was an NIT year (though in fairness, it was a 40 team field, not a 64 team field, so it was harder to get to the big dance. Again, Hamilton doesn’t have the name power to bring in the McDonald’s All American’s needed to be a consistent Top-10 team. Also a major Geek negative, Hamilton’s Wikipedia page is abysmal. If a coach doesn’t have a decent Wikipedia page, how good can he be anyway?

How about convincing Rick Pitino to come home? Joanne will never go for it. So he would have to commute the one hour drive from Louisville to Lexington. I’m sure a private helicopter would be ponied up to make it happen. Arizona is reported to be chasing Pitino, but I doubt Joanne would put up with Tuscon if she couldn’t handle Lexington. But with Pitino just getting Louisville back to national prominence (sure Louisville wants to be a Football School!!!) he would be a fool to win and run.

Pat Riley? He could do the job, but has no interest in college basketball. He’s too used to life in Hollywood East, er. Miami. Lexington would be too simple for him.

Coach K? He would be met at the border with loaded shotguns. Roy Williams? He is the new evil overload of college basketball (though you have to respect him. He is a very good guy to be the arch-devil…..) but he is so happy at UNC, he wouldn’t give it consideration.

Jim Calhoun? The NCAA is looking at his program at UCONN for rules violations. Kentucky can’t risk that route.

John Calipari? He certainly puts together winning teams. He’s yet to win the big one, and in each of his coaching stints, he’s needed two to three years to get the teams to the NCAA. He has the most wins behind Roy Williams among active coaches. His two college jobs lasted 8 and 9 years respectfully, so based on his history, he may be ready to move on.

Bring Bobby Knight out of retirement?

Who ever it is, it can’t be someone who has built a low pressure school to making the dance. He has to be a proven winner. Someone who consistently, year-in and year-out produces a champion. It has to be someone who can thrive under the extreme pressure that is the Kentucky Basketball faithful yet not mind living in a small farm town. Kentucky doesn’t need a builder, it needs a star and those are few and far in between.

What do you think? Chime in by posting a comment on the blog.

It was a foggy Sunday morning in Charleston, South Carolina. Four white 15 passenger vans rolled into a nearly empty parking lot of an unassuming shopping center. Tucked into one end of the strip mall is a pair of ice rinks and on this particular Sunday morning, two hockey games would be played. This is the story of one of the games and one of the teams.

But lets back up 48 hours earlier. Two of the vans pulled into the parking lot of the Chilled Ponds Ice Facility in Chesapeake, Virginia to load a hockey team for a trip to Charleston to play in the South East Junior Hockey League’s end of season tournament. The Hampton Roads Junior Whalers Green team had a seven hour drive in front of them.

Their bother team, The Hampton Roads Junior Whalers Blue team had to leave the night before as they had a 5pm game Friday night. The Green team got a morning skate in before they packed up and left a couple of hours later.

Their destination was the Carolina Ice Palace. The top two teams from the tournament would join regular season champions, the Atlanta Knights in Marlborough, Massachusetts in two weeks to participate in the USA Hockey Tier III National Championships. “Three Wins and your In” was the motto of the Green team as they headed down I-95.

At the same time parents, family and friends were packing up their cars to make their journey to watch this end of season tournament. It would be one of the best parental showings of the year for these men between 14 and 21 years of age. Some traveled from as far away as Louisville, Kentucky and West Palm Beach, Florida to cheer their players on.

Text messages from the parents already at the rink were sent to the players on the road to keep the players updated on the progress of the Blue Team’s game. The two teams had not officially played each other during the regular season, but their league records were nearly identical and their scrimmages were split. Either of these two teams could come out of this with a bid to nationals and there was a chance they both could.

After the Green team checked into the hotel and got dinner, most of them migrated to the rink to watch the last game of the day. The Tampa Bay Bolts were playing the Space Coast Hurricanes, both teams had come up from central Florida. At the end of regulation, it was tied. After a 5 minute overtime, it was still tied. The Green team had an early 9am game on Saturday and the lateness of this game was becoming a concern. Surely the ensuing shoot out would be over quickly and they could get back to the hotel. A long shootout took place, going 15 shooters per team deep. Finally a team had an advantage giving the underdog Tampa team the win, effectively eliminating the Hurricanes. The Green team headed to their hotel to get some sleep before their 6:30am wake-up call the next morning.

“Three Wins”

The Whalers would need to win their two round-robin games and win their semi-final game to qualify for nationals. They would not need to win the championship game. Just three wins.

First up was the Tampa Bay Bolts. The Whalers Green team quickly dispatched them 10-2.

With many thanks to the Davies family, the boys were treated to a cookout for a post game lunch. The Davies were staying at a Residence Inn next to the rink, which had a large gas grill in the pool area and some 40 hamburgers, 40 hot dogs and 2 boxes of chicken later, the boys were fed and playing pickup basketball on the adjacent court.

But for one player, Billy Varley, basketball wasn’t his post meal entertainment. It was Billy’s birthday. His mother surprised him with a belly dancer who performed for him. It was pretty clear the boys were having a good time.

A post meal nap was scheduled before the boys had to be back for their 8pm match-up against Space Coast. Two junior hockey games in a given day is taxing to the body. Space Coast had nearly 20 hours to rest between games, the Whalers less than 8.

Everyone was nervous going into this game. Though the Green team was 2 and 0 against Space Coast for the year, the games were reasonably close and in their last meeting a major brawl broke out after the game. Would there be any bad blood?

“Two Wins”

The game started out hard hitting. It was clear these teams did not like each other and that Space Coast was here to extend their season. The teams went to the locker room with the Whalers up 1-0 at the end of the first period. The second period started up with more hitting. But starting 5 minutes into the period and over a period of the next 7 minutes, it was “Good Night Sally, See ya” as the Whalers effectively ended the game. The Whalers found the net 3 more times to end the game 8-0 putting the Green Team into top seed in their bracket going into Sunday.

Earlier the Blue team gave the East Coast Eagles Majors a tight game, but the Eagles prevailed to take the number one seed in their bracket. This setup a match-up between the Whalers Green and the Whalers Blue team in their first official meeting of the year.

With the top two teams getting bids to the nationals, the winner of the Blue-Green game would get a bid, the other’s season would be over. The other semi-match-up pitted Tampa Bay against the Eagles Majors which the Eagles would easily win. The championship game only mattered for seeding in the nationals.

“One Game”

The season was on the line. This had the billing to be a very good hockey game.

Five minutes in, Nate Atangan put the green team ahead. Ten minutes later, Chris Armand, for the Blue team tied the game. It was a hard hitting fast paced game. The Blue team climbed to a 3-1 lead on goals from Barron Sluder and Michael DePatto in back to back goals within 35 seconds half way through the 2nd period. The Green team would not go easily. Atangan picked up a short handed goal to narrow the deficit to one at the 7:32 mark. Four minutes later, Brandon Rumble scored an unassisted goal to knot the game at 3-3. Just before the period expired, Alex Byrne scored to give the Green team a 1 goal lead going into the 3rd period.

Two minutes into the 3rd Period Brandon Rumble gave the Green team the most dangerous lead in hockey . . . a 2 goal lead. The game moved back and forth until a 5 minute major penalty put the Green team on a power play that would consume most of the remaining 3rd period. The Blue team killed it off and with about 2:00 left, the Green team took a penalty that gave the Blue team some life. With the goalie pulled giving the blue team a 6-4 man advantage brought the game to a 5-4 score just after the penalty expired with 11 seconds left on the clock. The Green team killed the last 11 seconds. Joy was on one end of the rink, sorrow and sadness on the other.

In a great show of sportsmanship, instead of shaking hands, the players were all hugging each other. This was extra special since the referees were not allowing post game handshakes in many of the games. To see these guys being so emotional to each other after such a hard fought game was amazing.

The sun was out. The fog has been burned away. It was a glorious day for the Green team.

From the beginning of the year, the Green team was focused on making it to the Nationals. Instead of “We’re going to Disney World” the chant was “We’re going to Natties”.

The team headed to Hooters to celebrate achieving their season goal. More birthday embarrassment for Varley and the captains were forced into doing the hula-hoop.

There was another game to be played and congratulations to the East Coast Eagles Majors on their bid. It was an amazing weekend for the boys. They happily piled into their van’s for their seven hour drive home knowing their season was extended as they were:

Going to Nationals!

Its time for the NCAA‘s Big Dance and time for Billie Gillispie to dance out of Lexington.

“March Madness” is a wonderful time of year for sports geeks.   This week, hundreds of thousands of people will be filling our their “Brackets”, studying records, trash talking their friends as they all enjoy four weeks of basketball tournaments.

The first week has just finishing up as each conference plays out their conference tournaments.  For some conferences they will get to send only one team to the 65 team national tournament so winning your end of season conference tournament is their only way to the show.  Other conferences, primarily those of the bigger schools will get to send multiple teams to the tournament so their best teams, win or loose, still get to play.

And of course some teams are always expected to be there, such as Kentucky.  Its been 17 years since Kentucky last failed to make it to the NCAA tournament.  That was their probation year, a time most Kentucky fans would like to forget.  It ended the Eddie Sutton era, leaving the program with a NCAA death sentence for violating recruiting rules.  But on the other hand, it meant the beginning of the Rick Pitino era which brought the Wildcat’s back to national prominence.

But Kentucky’s record would have gotten them into the tournament that year, had they been eligible.  You have to go back to 1979, 30 years ago to find the last time they missed the tournament on their record.

Thats a pretty good showing.  There are a lot of schools who would love to have Kentucky’s dominance.  But as most people know, the Wildcats have been on a downward slope and are at risk of allowing the UNC Tar Heel‘s to claim the most all time wins.

This slide started when Rick Pitino left Lexington to go back to the pros.  Kentucky hired Tubby Smith to replace Pitino and Kentucky won a national championship.  Of course it was a team of Pitino recruited players.  Smith was allowed to explore other opportunities in 2007 and was replaced by Billie Gillispie.

Most Kentucky fans had been calling for Tubby to be dismissed for several years when it became apparent that he was not recruiting the level of talent to keep Kentucky at the top of college basketball but they were still making “the show”.

Gillispie had shown an ability at Texas A&M to bring a program in trouble back to life and this is what made him an attractive coach to Kentucky.

But Kentucky needed more than a turn around.  It needed an image recovery.  College basketball success is based a lot on recruiting the best talent.  The best talent goes to schools who are always the best.  But with the downward spiral, the best recruits were not choosing Kentucky.  There was hope that Gillispie would be able to do this.  But he hasn’t.

Most of you might be saying, its just his 2nd year and he’s still dealing with a lot of Tubby players.  True that, but he’s not got the clout to get the big recruits.  He’s not been able to manage his talent well and now unless there is some grace of the NCAA bracket gods, Kentucky will be not be going to the big dance.

UPDATE: The basketball gods did not shine on Lexington and UK did not make the 65 team field. Is it too much to ask for UK Basketball to be in the top 65 teams in the country?

Are we to the point where Gillispie needs his walking papers?  In most cases, no, two years isn’t enough time to do anything.  But this isn’t most cases.  This is Kentucky.  They need a big time coach with a big reputation that can get the caliber of players necessary to dominate.  I don’t know who that is but the powers that be in Lexington need to be giving a serious look if they want to remain the Mecca of College Basketball.

Billy, you’re a nice guy and I believe there are a lot of colleges where you could do a great job.  Kentucky isn’t right for you.  Lets recognize this and get you to a school where you can be successful and get a coach in at Kentucky who can be what Kentucky needs.

We’ve all heard the description of this basketball rivalry.  Two teams who in recent years seem to stay at the top of the college basketball pack live a mere 9 miles apart and is considered to be the best rivalry in all of college basketball.  They play each other twice during the year with a potential 3rd meeting in the ACC playoffs and a possible 4th run-in during the NCAA championship.

But today at the Dean Dome (Dean Smith Center named after the Evil Overlord himself — remember I’m a Kentucky fan!) the powder blue clad Tar Heels host the Blue Devils or as they are known affectionately as the “dookies”.   Today’s game will determine who wins the ACC regular season title.  This title doesn’t mean much other than seeding for the ACC tournament later this week.

In an interesting twist, because of the ACC’s quest to be a football conference and the growth to accommodate their BCS dreams, all basketball teams do not play each other twice during the season.  This has created some very interesting scenarios for the sports geek to ponder with the ACC Tie breaking system.

If UNC wins today, they win out right, two games head of Duke.  Duke is a game behind UNC going into today’s contest and if Duke wins, they will be tied since they have split their head-to-head match ups.  The tie breaking scheme is basically one of looking at head-to-head match-ups until one of the teams has an advantage.

The process is complex and given that I don’t give a squat about the ACC or its member teams, I’m not going to delve into it any further than saying today’s game should be a good one with the title on the line. If you’re interested in more details go see this forum post.

Now Kentucky has struggled and as much as I like Billy Gillespie, the coach, they are on the outside looking in at the moment and may not make the NCAA tournament.   If I were writing the contract for the coach as Kentucky, this would be a reason to fire clause.  The other two are never loose to Tennessee or Vanderbilt.  But I’m not the AD, so I don’t get my say in these matters.

At the end of the day, UNC will probably gain another 4-6 wins on Kentucky before the season is out, halving the lead the Wildcats have.    Therefore I need Duke to win today.

So why for the life of me, when I went to get a glass for ice water this morning and I was looking at a plastic cup did I make the conscious decision to choose a baby blue cup from a UNC game over one from a Carolina Hurricanes game?

Am I loosing it?  Could I actually start liking UNC?  Or is it a case that I really loath Duke and UNC is the lesser of the two evils?  Why am I so tortured by this? I swore when I moved to NC that I would not become a NASCAR fan and well hell would freeze over before I ever cheered for an ACC school.

I’m going to watch NASCAR and ponder this….

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A couple of weeks ago, my wife received a pair of free tickes to see the UNC Tarheels play the Virginia Cavilers at the Dean Smith Center on the UNC Campus.  The arena is named after their retired Hall of Fame coach Dean Smith.

No one can argue that Dean Smith was a great coach.  He has a national championship under his belt, coached the likes of Michael Jordan and James Worthy.  His famed “Four Corners” offense, where he intentionally tried not to score is directly responsible for the “shot clock” in College Basketball.  Even as a Kentucky fan, growing up in the Adoph Rupp era, attending the University of Kentucky during the Joe B. Hall era, you have to appreciate his accomplishments, even if he is the Evil Overloard  of Tarheel nation.

But free tickets are free and it was an experience my wife, the “Queen of Free” wanted to have while we live here.

Now we have been here in ACC hell for nearly 10 years.  I call it ACC hell because this has to be the most arrogant conference in all of college sports.  And you ACC fans who hate Billy Packer, the long time color commentator for CBS for the ACC being as strong as it is.  It could be game between Indiana and Notre Dame and all Billy Packer could do is pimp the ACC.

With the exception of UNC everyone else’s basketball programs are no where near the level the fans believe them to be.  Duke has its moments and has probably benefited most from Packer’s free advertising.  But UNC has always been there near the top and from a Kentucky perspective, they are the enemy, the biggest threat to our way of life

All teams ebb and flow through the years.  Some coaches will do well, others will not.  Some recruiting classes are stronger than others and this is to be expected.  But to be a top program you have to be there, every year.  You need multiple national championships and you need them in different eras and you constantly have to be posting strong winning records.

So as I was picking out my clothes to wear today, I called down to my wife “I don’t have anything Navy and Orange do I?” since that would be the Virginia colors.  “Do I have a UK cap?”.  It brought a chuckle to her, but I couldn’t dare wear anything close to resembling light blue.  So I found a Navy sports shirt with red trim.  She went with a very neutral white color.

We traveled to Chapel Hill to a park-n-ride spot on Highway 54.  If you feel you must ever attend one of these evil events, I highly recommend using park-n-ride.  Its $5 per peep, but you don’t have to deal with traffic at an on-campus arena with no practical parking.  The UNC campus is a bunch of twisty passages all alike.  Being dropped at the door and picked up at the door is a very handy option.  For the $10 we paid, we were handed lovely Tyvek green wrist bands, which I found out later is how you find the right line to get into to find the right bus.  So far, this is a positive event.

Once we arrived at the arena, it was a short climb of steps through people holding up various numbers of fingers, people begging for tickets. Why can’t they just go to the ticket booth?  There were quite a few open seats in the upper deck corners.  Now at this point, I was tempted to sell out gift tickets, pocket the money and call it a successful day.  But I didn’t want to deny my wife her experience.

The entry lines were dividied into people with bags and people without.  Since we packed light, we headed into the non-bag line and was quickly ushered into the arena.  Once inside, the small concourses caused the sea of powder blue lemmings to pack together like penguins huddling to keep warm.  The line for the ladies room was at least 50 people deep.  As we moved from gate A around to find our seats, there was plenty of chances to look down upon the hardwood and see the pre-game activities.

We took a full tour around the arena as we were looking for a co-worker of my wife’s who was working a concession stand.  We never found him, but we ended back in to the Blue sardine packing company again.  We grabbed a bite to eat and headed to our seats.  Now at this point, I was feeling a bit of awe about the building, but it was only a tinge.

Our seats were upper deck on the asile and for the most part had a pretty good view when the man in front of me sat back in his seat, but he leaned forward most of the game and his melon blocked about 1/4th of the court.

The game for the 1st half was pretty boring and we spent most of the time checking out the people than the game.  The endzone students who bounce the whole game was better in person than it appears on TV.  The section of students besides the band who stand the whole game was a nice touch.  The band sounded good and though none of the dancers, grouped into 4 groups along each edge of the floor were in sequence with their dance steps, they at least were well cooridinated with the music.

Half time came and they were honoring members of the Basketball Hall of Fame.  The problem I have with this is that they were inducted years ago.  How many times are they going to honor James Worthy or Billy Cunningham or the Arch-devil overlord himself, Dean Smith?  The latest inductee was several years ago.  Now supposidly there is a new banner or something, but the banner was already revealed and it was something to show on the big TV screens and get these UNC legends some more face time.  Seriouslly, WTF was that about?  Someone explain it to me.

Now Coach Roy Williams, one of the HOF inductees, must have had a “Come to Jesus” talk with the players at the half because they came out and made Virginia look like a pickup team.  We enjoyed the two “line changes”, where they brought in their subs late, to get about a minute of play time each.    (This is why we like hockey.  Everyone pretty much has to play…..)

After the game, we went down to the floor level and actually stepped out onto the hardwood.  I was hoping I would get a feel of emotion from being there.  It was cool, but that overall feeling of greatness just wasn’t there.

We colleted a set of the nice plastic cups, 4 small and 4 large.  It should serve at torture for my NCSU loving son and my die-hard Duke co-worker.  Free game, free glassware!  On the way out, one of the concession stands had left a bunch of hotdogs on the counter, more freebies.

We met a parent of a hockey player who played with our older son so the line for the shuttle bus passed quickly as we reminised and caught up on our kids.

My soul did not rot and there is no risk of me becoming a UNC fan anytime soon.  I would go back again should more free tickets come our way.

That said, here is my list of sports venues tha speak too you based on their history and feeling of the ghosts watching over you.

1. Rupp Arena, Lexington, KY.  Home to Kentucky’s Legandary basketball program.
2. Joe Lewis Arena, Detroit, MI. OMG what a feeling you get when you walk into that building.
3. Hershey Arena, Hershy Park, PA.  Wilt Chamberlain’s scored his famous 100 points here, but it was the hockey ghosts of minor league hockey that spoke out there.
4. Wrigly Field, Chicago, IL.  While the Cubs are championship free, you know some major baseball love has been felt there.
5. HSBC Arena, Buffalo, NY.  While very new in the scale of arena’s go, you feel it when you walk through the doors.

Now I will admit, Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, the old Chicago Stadium and the Boston Gardens should be on this list, but I’ve not had a chance to visit them.

But I’m glad I went.  It was a good experience.

I grew up in Sports Mecca where I’ve witnessed first hand the magnificent glory of champions. Champions who have won because they were the best and champions who have won because they refused to loose. That mecca is a wonderful world known simply as Kentucky.

Today I’m committing a sin so large that I may never be forgiven.
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