I hope JB doesn’t mind if I post a separate rant. But after such a great football/basketball combo weekend, I guess things naturally had to get worse. Of course, it happened on a Wednesday. Wednesday has always been a bad luck day for me. Nothing seems to go right, a fact that I took special note of as my 20-minute commute home from work extended to nearly two hours, thanks to HALF AN INCH of snow in the Raleigh area. Good thing I left at 3:00 instead of waiting for rush hour. But I digress, this is about sports, here.
I confess that I didn’t see much of tonight’s game. In all truth, I considered it optional viewing, like a December cupcake contest. After all, we just beat a legitimate Top 10/15 team in Georgia Tech, and we were matched up against the worst team in the league. A Virginia tech team that failed to make the Big East tourney (only the top 12 out of 14 get in!) in what, 5 of the last 6 seasons? We had dinner at some friends’ house, and rude guest that I am, I did turn the TV on to get a score update around 8:15. Good news – Pack up 9 with 15 minutes to play. I listen to a few minutes on the radio en route back to the house – State goes up 11 with 6 minutes and change to play. I spare my bored wife and children and relent to music. I get my kids in the bathtub, and flip on the TV out of curiosity as to the final score. To my astonishment, VT has the ball down only 1, 27 seconds to play. In moments, they lead, and Sendek calls the dreaded timeout (why oh why can’t he use all of his up in the first half like Gillen?), guaranteeing not only failure, but also that the rim shan’t be tarnished by leather any further.
For those of you kids keeping score, that means our quest to 9-7 (and a solid NCAA berth requiring only one upset to make the Sweet 16 – which is ESSENTIAL in my view) now mandates a 9-1 performance in realistically winnable ACC contests (assumes losses at UNC, GT, and Wake, where any team outside of the Top 5 would be an underdog). It doesn’t look good, to say the least.
And although this is only idle talk and innuendo at this point, my meager efforts to thoroughly discredit the “Mike O’Cain to be considered for offensive coordinator” rumor have failed. This is alarming and devoid of all logic on many levels. Can you imagine a former head coach returning as an assistant to the institution that canned him? Even worse, to work FOR THE VERY MAN that replaced him? That would be unheard of even if O’Cain had distinguished himself as a coordinator elsewhere (instead of being fired after ONE SEASON in that capacity at two sister ACC schools). Of course, there is also that minor matter of burning bridges with NC State, its alumni, and fans – a process that actually started well before that fateful Thanksgiving weekend. Anyone remember “this one’s for all those people who think I can’t coach?” There are 50,000+ who will be in the Carter-Finley bleachers next season that remember (and only 1,500 or so remember that fondly). If Chuck Amato wants to suck all of the positive energy out of the program, following the commitments of blue chip athletes like RB Toney Baker and OL Curtis Crouch – then by all means, hire Mike O’Cain. If not, then a half-eaten ham sandwich would be a more logical choice. Even then, you’d have 30% of the fanbase declaring “As long as Amato thinks that sandwich is the way to go, that’s fine by me. In Chuck we trust!”
It’s hard being a Pack fan sometimes. Maybe I’ll pop in my 1983 tape. After all, it’s only 18 minutes until Thursday (my good luck day).
