ACC Tourney Daily Diary: Semifinals
Posted by nvr1983 on March 13th, 2010
In our attempt to bring you the most comprehensive Championship Week coverage anywhere, RTC is covering several of the conference tournaments from the sites. One of our RTC correspondents is at the ACC Tournament. In addition to live-blogging select games throughout the tournament, he will post a nightly diary with his thoughts on each day’s action. Here is his submission for the quarterfinal games.
Duke 77, Miami 74
- Miami gave the effort today, but finally ran out of gas. That’s why it is so hard to win 3 or 4 games in as many days. No matter how good these young kids’ conditioning is, fatigue will eventually catch up. It caught up with the Canes today.
- No Duke player has committed a foul. Ever. In history. And if you don’t believe it, just ask them. [Ed. Note: To be fair, no player has ever committed a foul. Just ask Tim Duncan.]
- A lot of opposing fans are going to hate the Plumlee twins by the time they are finished at Duke. Actually, I can already say that a lot of them do…particularly with Mason.
- Best comment of the day. When asked about his technical, Coach K replied, “I don’t call a technical on me. I don’t know why the technical was called on me.” Of course you don’t Mike. You’ve never berated a referee before, have you?
Georgia Tech 57, NC State 54
- Georgia Tech played spoiler last night by upsetting the 2nd seeded Maryland Terrapins, virtually assuring themselves of an NCAA bid. Today’s game guaranteed it, and should have helped improve their seed.
- It blows my mind how an ACC team could have as little talent on it as NC State does. How did this team even win 5 conference games? I’m not sure that there is an NBA player on that roster. I’m not even sure there is an NBDL player on that roster.
- State fans are loyal, I’ll give them that. To follow a program that believes it belongs in the rarefied air of Kentuckyin basketball and Alabama in football rather than the actuality that it is a middle-of-the-road ACC program, how can they not be loyal? I believe that’s called mass hysteria.
- Georgia Tech will provide Duke with a tired opponent tomorrow, which will probably lead to another Duke coronation much to the chagrin of many college basketball fans across the nation.
This sucked and you suck as a writer
I like this site a lot, but whoever wrote these write-ups needs to try again. Particular with the Duke game. Instead of saying anything useful about the game — why Duke struggled to get ahead, how Miami answered almost every run, etc. — we get essentially three comments: 1. the coach (correctly) told a reporter that he’s not the right person to ask about the reason for the technical (with a side comment suggesting that he is somehow guilty, as a coach, for working the refs, as though that weren’t universally understood as part of the job); 2. opposing fans hate certain players Duke players with a passion, as if this were anything new (giving false information at the same time — the Plumlees aren’t twins); and 3. the players and fans complain when a foul is called on their team (this was such a ludicrous thing to say about any particular team that even the editor had to step in on this one). Can I suggest, please, that you avoid sending people to watch (and write about) tournaments when they hate some particular team? We all know that Duke is the team that America loves to hate, for all kinds of reasons, so your writer’s animosity is nothing special in that regard. But the better sites don’t jump on this particular cliché with quite the level of obvious enthusiasm that this writer did. If you must hate Duke in your write-ups, could you do it with a little more class and intelligence?