I'm Back; Hide the Women and Children

Well, well, it’s good to be back. Sorry for that little hiatus there, I was just very lazy. That, and I’ve been playing too much Lord of the Rings Risk with Schling and Kyle. You are probably wondering if I am referring to a Lord of the Rings version of the classic board game Risk. You would be correct. You are now probably wondering if this makes me a huge loser. You would also be correct. A huge loser that loves playing LOTR Risk. Game is freaking sweet. If I can only hold Minas Tirith for one more turn…

Anyhoooo, this past Sunday featured one of my favorite days of the year: the Duke-Carolina basketball game. Besides the awesome result, did anyone noticed the abundance of Reggie Cleveland All-Stars on the court? To borrow from Bill Simmons, Reggie Cleveland All-Stars are athletes whose names make them sound like a person of a different race (e.g., Reggie Cleveland was a white pitcher; Patrick O’Bryant is a black basketball player). Almost all of them were black players with white sounding names. To recap we had a Gerald (Henderson), a Nolan (Smith), a Lance (Thomas), a Larry (Drew), a Wayne (Ellington) a Ty (Lawson), and an Ed (Davis)…all black. Wayne Ellington sounds like some pompous English aristocrat to me, not a sharp shooting badass from Pennsylvania. And thankfully Ty Lawson plays basketball for Carolina and doesn’t host terrible reality shows like Ty from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Just because it’s hilarious, this is the lame Ty’s opening line from his Wikipedia page

Gary Tygert “Ty” Pennington is an American television host, model, philanthropist, and carpenter.

I wonder if he has all that printed on his business card.

“Here you go, little buddy. Have fun with that free teddy bear, but I’ve gotten run over to the job site and install some flooring in my new Sears wardrobe for Extreme Makeover: Douchebag Edition.”

I hope a lot of yall caught the Virginia regular season finale against Maryland on Saturday. The Hoos ended the season on a high note, and even though we finished 11th in the conference with only 4 wins, we protected our home court against both the Terps and the Hokies. What made the victory on Saturday even sweeter was that Mamadi Diane ended his career in fairytale fashion. This is a guy who had increased his scoring average from 6 to 10 to 12 from his freshman through his junior season. Coming into 2008-2009, Diane figured to help carry the load for an extremely young team. Instead, he absolutely fell off the face of the Earth. Leitao started cutting his minutes so much that at one point he registered 4 straight Did Not Play – Coach’s Decisions. Heading into the Maryland game, Diane had averaged only 4 points and 13 minutes per contest. In the previous game against Clemson he played only 3 minutes.

Yet something crazy happened on Senior Night at the JPJ. Maybe he felt a rush of confidence. Maybe he thought, “F-it, this is my last game, I’m gonna fire away”. Whatever it was, Diane went off on Maryland to the tune of 23 points, including 3 of 4 from long range and the game winning 3-ball with 39 seconds left. A staggering performance in his last game. Here’s Leitao’s reaction:

"I just told the team that when that 3-pointer went up the first thing I said was 'poetic justice' and two, that 'God works in mysterious ways.' There was no better way to finish off one's career and season."

Don’t overlook how improbable this was. Before Saturday, Diane had been 5 of 39 for the season from behind the arc. That’s 12.8%. Amazingly bad. Then he goes out and drops 3 outta 4 from long range…on Senior Night…including the last one to win the game? It was preposterous. Preposterously awesome.

My week wouldn’t be complete without its regular Peter King bashing. Fortunately he makes it very easy. This is how King started a paragraph in his weekly Monday Morning Quarterback garbage.

“The Kings are relocating to Boston. We've sold our home in Montclair, N.J., and moved to the South End. It's still a little stunning, even to us, because we've loved our lives in Montclair more than anyone could love living anywhere.”

The last sentence in particular is hilarious. He states “we’ve loved our lives in Montclair more than anyone could love living anywhere” with such authority that it might as well be a universal truth. Some things in life are certain; death, taxes and Peter King loving where he used to live more than anyone on the Earth has loved living where they do. Keep in mind that Montclair is in northeast New Jersey. I think someone saying that they have loved living in northeast Jersey more than anyone has ever loved living in the rest of the world proves what a moron they are.

I can always count on Steve Czaban for additional King bashing material. Czaban is a radio host for Fox Sports and hates King as much as I do. He summed it up nicely when talking about whether Terrell Owens should be in the Hall of Fame:

“Wait until Peter King weighs in, and then go the other way.”

My thoughts exactly.

So this is weird. Does anyone remember a sports columnist for the Cav Daily named Joe Lemire? He was a 4th year when we were 1st years, and wrote a decent column. Nothing spectacular but solid most of the time. The most I remember about him was his bright red hair. Well, apparently he had some talent. I went to SI.com the other day and his mug was staring at me in the face.
Not only was in on the Sports Illustrated website, it was a front page story. I have always ridiculed the Cav Daily (except Attention Surplus Disorder of course), so who knew someone could be something from it?

Well, that’s it for this week folks. Back to conquering Middle Earth with plastic action figures.