(Note: I apologize in advance for the randomness of what you are about to read and I’d like to thank Zach for allowing something as unstructured as this on the website. If you learn anything from this, don’t write when you’re pissed.)
This may be disgustingly cliché, but I’m going to start off defining a word. Bitter. That’s right, bitter. Why? Because that’s how I was during the whole second half of the NCAA Championship game last Monday night (why just the second half you ask, be patient and you’ll find out later).
Like I was saying, The American Heritage Dictionary defines bitter as resulting from or expressive of severe grief, anguish, or disappointment or marked by resentment or cynicism. I, however, have a better idea. Better is best defined as every North Carolina fan who felt like they were gypped by Roy Williams, Tyler Hansbrough and Danny Green’s dance moves.
That’s right, I said it, I’m pretty (I’d drop an f-bomb right here but I’m trying to calm that cussing shit down) damn bitter. It’s not just that we lost, but the manner in which we lost the game. It was disgusting to say the least. Wild substituting patterns, unforced turnovers, terrible shooting, no intensity, giving up offensive rebounds and only seven assists on 24 made shots. Looking back, I almost think they wanted to lose. Roy Williams didn’t want to coach that game, his players didn’t want to play in it and Tar Heel fans were non-existent. What’s worse? This is the second heart breaking loss in the tournament in a row. I know you remember last years collapse against Georgetown. It was disgusting! That is one of the worse three collapses I had to endure during my life time (the other two being the Raiders in Super Bowl 37 and the Giants in the 2002 World series, and I guess you can add in that USC National Championship game against Texas in 2005 too).
(Just another side note: This weekend they showed some of the better games from this year’s tournament, two of which I didn’t get to see. The first was the Tennessee-Butler game. I really don’t have much to say about that game except I wish I would have seen it when it was actually played. The second was that Georgetown-Davidson game. I watched that game with my friend Davion and we were just in awe of Stephen Curry. I’ve never been so amazed by shots a player could have gotten off but didn’t take. He came off so many screens that freed him up, and back pivoted away from three different defenders freeing himself up, but didn’t take any of those shots. It was disgustingly incredible to watch. There is no way another player will ever get me as excited as Curry did by not taking a shot ever again. But the point of bringing this game up was not to talk about the greatness that is Stephen Curry, but to mention that Georgetown fans have to feel as bad as I do, maybe even worse. They just wasted Roy Hibbert’s and Jonathan Wallace’s final season in a second round loss to a mid-major. I even think Billy Packer, I really don’t feel like looking it up, said “How can you lose to Davidson” in the waning seconds of the game. I feel you Georgetown fans, I feel you.)
However, as fun as it sounds, I’m not here to complain about all of the reasons I should be an emo by now, I’m hear to gripe about this past national championship game, a game North Carolina should have been playing in. I mentioned earlier that I watched the second half of the game. Well, I spent the first half of the game trying to decide if I even wanted to watch this bum ass game. I sat on my couch pissed while watching Jeopardy, checking my Blackjack 2 for score updates wondering if I should change the channel to see if John Calipari or Bill Self got their first titles in place of Williams getting his second.
After Carolina lost, I was convinced that watching the final college basketball game of the season was out of the question, but the basketball fan in me gave in and I watched the second half of the game (note: I went back later and watched the whole game, and unfortunately, it was an amazing game).
There is a conversation about the greatness of each team I remember having long before the tournament started so these two teams playing for the title wasn’t something that was peculiar in any way to me, it just pissed me off. The first conversation I remember having was with my friend Joseph who was complaining about Memphis being number one. He was using that played out “they play in Conference USA” argument, one I stopped using after they reached their first Elite 8. He felt they weren’t a top 5 team in the country and I argued with him for about an hour about how Memphis was for real. By the way, Joseph is both a Duke and a UCLA fan. I just thought I’d throw that in there.
The second conversation I had was about Kansas’ depth and offensive balance. Last season, North Carolina was undoubtedly the deepest team in the country, they just lacked post season experience. This year, Kansas was the deepest team and the scoring among their starters was shockingly similar to the scoring of the Florida teams that won the title the two previous years, I even mentioned this in the February 19th edition of my college notebook. Not only that, but I remember as early as late December or early January telling people that North Carolina would win a national championship this year if they didn’t have to play Kansas. Let’s just say I almost became the biggest bandwagon fan in the world when Davidson had that comeback against Kansas.
It’s hard watching a championship game that you’re team could have played in because you just spend the whole game pointing out match ups they could have exploited. I think if anyone had the right team to completely dominate Memphis, it was North Carolina. Kansas didn’t really win that game as much as Memphis lost it. Sure, Mario Chalmers hit the three point shot (which really might not have been a three, Davion point out that his foot was extremely close to the three point line. I ‘m very surprised that they didn’t go back and check that especially after they went back to Derrick Rose’s three minutes after it was made and changed that one), and they did control the whole overtime period, but Memphis had that game to lose, which would not have happened against North Carolina. I loved John Calipari’s post game interview when he threw Derrick Rose under the bus and Bill Self’s post game interview made me want to vomit.
I couldn’t understand why Brandon Rush attempted so many wide open three pointers this season. I couldn’t understand why no one talked about Sasha Kaun maybe being the best sixth man in the nation. I couldn’t understand why Darrell Arthur couldn’t catch a pass if his life depended on it. I couldn’t understand why Kansas still won despite being down three possessions with less than two minutes to play… I couldn’t understand why North Carolina wasn’t in the game leaving Kansas fans wondering what if.
So, one week later, here are the two things that I’m still seething about.
One is the fact that Roy Williams’ bum ass show up the game wearing a Kansas sweater. Let’s just thank God that I didn’t see his halftime interview because I would have punched a hole through my apartment wall (I’m going to need that deposit money back). I just thought it was insensitive to all of us loyal North Carolina fans. He had to know that we were suffering through a really tough loss for the second year in a row and he’s going to show up wearing that Jayhawk sweater? I’m anti-Roy until he delivers me another championship, and I use to love that guy like I loved no other coach before. I know it was a small gesture to show he appreciated the school that took a chance on him, but he just got his ass handed to him. I mean, we didn’t see Tim Floyd wearing a Kansas State sweater or Bo Ryan wearing a Stephen Curry sweater after their losses did we? Not at all. That was completely inappropriate and it hurt my feelings.
The second thing is I still can’t order Sports Illustrated. I need one of my teams to win a title so I can order a damn subscription to Sports Illustrated and get the complementary yearbook, DVD and commemorative ball. That’s right, I was pissed because I couldn’t order Sports Illustrated and I’ll continue to hold off until one of these five teams wins a championship: Lakers, Raiders, Giants, North Carolina, or USC. Either college team can win it in either football (which I know is extremely unlikely for North Carolina, but if they do I’ll be supporting them) or basketball (which is equally unlikely for USC, but I love the school). I really thought I’d be expecting my first issue of SI since my the last edition of Sports Illustrated for Kids in four to six weeks from now. Thanks North Carolina, you’ve ruined my day once again.
I always talk about how much I love college basketball, but I’ve hated it by April every year of my life (minus 1993 and 2005) because I just expect championships every year and I just end up getting disappointed. Hopefully we return the core of this team, and as far as that subscription, there’s always the Lakers I guess.
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