Yay...it's that time again.

Well, here we are again...wrapping up another year of ACC basketball. You know what that means boys and girls! It's time for the second installment of this year's BATTLE OF THE BLUEZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!

*gag*

Look, we all get it. These are two of the top college basketball programs. They're playing for the mythical "regular season championship" (the true champion being decided, of course, in the ACC tournament...this game is for the #1 seed, essentially). It features great players and great coaches and great fans on both sides and the tickets cost a bazillion dollars a piece and yada yada yada.

We get all that.

It just makes me, and and I think a lot of State and ACC fans, sick to our freaking stomachs.

Say what you will about expansion ruining ACC basketball (and it's hurt), but the real poison to the league to me has been the over-adulation these two teams receive leading up to these games every year. The national sports networks are glad to cram every Duke and Carolina highlight down your throat at every opportunity during the week prior, but did anyone notice (or care) that Duke and Carolina actually PLAYED other games this week?

Apparently the Carolina fans didn't care so much about their game against Florida State, and the Carolina players called them out for it. You think there would've been a different story had Duke's game against UVA been in Cameron? These two games only mattered insomuch as they could've been spoilers for TEH GREATEST MATCHUP KNOWN TO MAN (this month).

Oh, did anyone give a sh*t that Miami--a team picked to finish dead last in the league--all but punched their ticket to the NCAA tournament with a win over Boston College? Probably not. Not hard to fathom, though, since the highlights for the game probably came after some extended interviews with Quentin Thomas and his burgeoning rap career.

Yes, pretty much the rest of the league is here only to prop up The Blues. To increase their RPI, give them some quality wins, a couple of losses to make them seem somewhat-less-than-perfect, and then to GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY when these two teams face one another.

It's the ultimate "The Rich Getting Richer" scenario. With ESPN and every other major sports network fawning over these two, the other 10 teams in the league have been relegated to "also ran" status, and if you're a recruit out there trying to decide whom to play for, can you really ignore the preferential treatment these two teams receive? It's why each and every year Duke and Carolina pick three-four McDonald's AAs, and you might have six or seven sprinkled throughout the rest of the league.

So America, here it is, THE BATTLE OF THE BLUES. Lap it up all you want. You'll get heavy doses of it, for sure.

Me, I could freaking care less. I'd tell both of them to go jump in a freaking river. Is it sour grapes, envy, jealousy? Yeah. But so what. F Duke, and F Carolina.

View the complete entry of "Yay...it's that time again."

Message Board Quote-O-Teh-Day

Regarding Lee Fowler, N.C. State's much-maligned athletic director who made the profound statement in an interview on 99.9FM that "Winning is good, losing is bad,"

I wouldn't trust the guy to successfully manage a Dippin' Dots kiosk, let alone a Division IA athletics program. Yet, there he sits atop all things NC State. Outstanding.

- WolfpackSeven

View the complete entry of "Message Board Quote-O-Teh-Day"

Missing: Brandon Costner

Brandon, if you're out there and can hear the sound of my, uh, blog(?), come home. We miss you.

Kinda of lost in all the warm fuzzies after the near win against Duke was the continued disappearance of Brandon Costner. Zero points on 0-3 shooting. Five boards and not much else.

It's been a hard fall from grace for Costner, who was cementing himself as one of the ACC's bright young stars by this time last year. He had one of the great ACC tournaments of any State player, and had the Pack won against Carolina he probably would've placed himself alongside Randolph Childress as two of the top ACC tournament performers of all time.

But this year has been a "Promise Unfulfilled" year of staggering proportions. Early on there were hints of chemistry issues with he (and McCauley) and the new guard being brought in by Sidney Lowe, particularly with the amount of minutes and attention J.J. Hickson was getting.

I can't speculate as to how valid any of those reports are or were, but they definitely seemed validated by Costner's play throughout the year. He rarely has seemed "involved" in the flow of the game while on the court, and his sieve-like defense has been particularly painful to witness. In the home game against Carolina, Brandon all but pulled up a chair to watch Tyler Hansbrough rotate to his side for an easy dunk.

Coach Lowe has tried desperately to get through to him in a manner of ways; letting him try to play through it, later benching him to try to send a message, then blending him in with other player combinations. Sid has figuratively thrown everything and the kitchen sink to get through to him, and to this point it's not worked.

But with the ACC tournament on the horizon, perhaps the opportunity to shine in Charlotte will awaken the Brandon Costner we remember from last season. If he does find his game there, Lordy Moses, imagine what this team could do! We haven't had a consistent long-range threat all year, and his size and athletic skill presents all sorts of matchup problems on the perimeter.

If he starts hitting a string of threes to open Thursday's game and can continue to shoot well from there on out, just about every other piece of the offensive puzzle for State could fall into place: Hickson will have more space inside to operate and face fewer double teams from Costner's man sagging inside. J.J. would also have more space to pass from the interior, allowing him better opportunities to find other open shooters. Teams would be less-apt to play zone against us.

The key question to ask Brandon is: "Are you will to give it everything on the defensive end?" To this point he seems stubbornly content to only play on one half of the court, and we're not a good enough offensive team to overcome 5-on-4 basketball on the other end. If he gives enough defensively to simply not be a liability (forget lockdown defender), and shoots as well as we know he can, this team could do some great things.

View the complete entry of "Missing: Brandon Costner"

From the PackPride.com vault: 2004

In the second installment of "From the PackPride.com Vault," we run down the articles posted in 2004. It was a good year for posting on PackPride, and my most prolific year to date with seven articles. I had a good run from about mid-February through March where I posted one article a week. But when the basketball season ended, so did my run of articles, and I haven't matched that pace since. Time gets shorter when you get married and have kids, I suppose.

In any event, here's a look back at 2004:

Football in February (02/12/2004)

If you’re a fan of Wolfpack football, then you have to love Chuck Amato these days.

Defusing a Potential Powderkeg (02/17/2004)

NC State’s Scooter Sherrill learned an incredibly important lesson this past week. There’s a very fine line between “humorous trash talking” and “potentially devastating PR blunder.”

Fond memories of The Trailer in the Sky (02/24/2004)

As has become a recent tradition in winter, it seems, Carter Finley Stadium is undergoing another wave of offseason destruction and reconstruction.

The Shakiest Bandwagon in the South (03/05/2004)

Let’s face facts, folks. It ain’t easy being a Wolfpack fan. It may seem like an easy proposition. You simply pull for the Red and White all the time, in every game, and it’s a done deal, right?

Take A Look At What Case Built (03/10/2004)

Dr. James Naismith may have invented basketball in Springfield, Massachusetts, but the game was honed and polished in the high school gyms of Indiana.

Learning to Eat When You're Full (03/15/2004)

“When we hungry, we eat!”

Third Quarter's the Charm (10/05/2004)

Here’s a memo to the coaches and coordinators of the Pack’s future opponents. Go ahead and save yourself the trouble of planning for the third quarter.

View the complete entry of "From the PackPride.com vault: 2004"

'83: Should we just move on already?

As I was riding into work today I was listening to 850 The Buzz, as I'm apt to do, and the topic of conversation centered around the '83 Championship.

This year, of course, is the 25th Anniversary of said title. Tonight, WRAL plans to run a special at 7:30 on the title run and all the magical moments that surrounded it.

It was a special time for my university, and it's one we--as State fans--always will treasure. But I think I have to agree with the hosts, Adam Gold and Joe Ovies: It's time to move on.

We've been living in the past for too long. When I started at State, '83 was just over a decade away. Now it's a quarter-century. I was at Technician when we put together a 15th Anniversary piece, and I remember thinking then that 15 years was a long damn time away. Now it's a decade longer.

We need to focus on the here-and-now, because that's all we have to show to potential recruits. We can point to some trophies in a glass case--so can San Francisco and Oklahoma State. But kids today know nothing of our past success, unless they just so happened to grow up State fans with parents who shared it with them as a child.

Cold reality: In a year or so, a college freshman will have been born in the 90's. Given that our last real solid team--with Corchiani and Monroe--was the 1990-1991 squad, the entirety of these kids' lives will have been lived AFTER our last great team. Even scarier: The kids born during the year of our last ACC title, 1987, are beginning to graduate college this year.

It sucks, because it means I'm old.

It also sucks because it means there's no legitimate reason a top-flight recruit should know of State ever having been a great program. No more so than they should think the same way of Houston. We haven't posted any measure of real, tangible success (read:titles) in their lifetimes.

All we have are old trophies and great memories, but those can't recruit for us anymore. We have to sell what we have, not what we had.

Unfortunately, we're competing against programs in the area that have tremendous built-in recruiting advantages. Duke and Carolina don't have to recruit at all, really--they choose. I could sign three McDonald's All-Americas with my eyes closed at one of those two programs. The hype for the Duke-Carolina games seems to get bigger each year, and has turned into its own self-hyping phenomenon. Are we surprised that the two top programs in the league by a good margin are Duke and Carolina, and have been for a decade?

All that success builds the recruiting pool for these two schools across the country. Hell, one of the top point guard prospects in the country, John Wall, is right in Carolina's backyard in Cary, and despite his own admission that he grew up a Carolina fan, he wasn't offered because they ALREADY have too many top-flight PGs on their roster! When you have the luxury of not offering the best talent in the country because there's no room on your squad, a trained monkey could coach your team to 20-win seasons year-in and year-out. (Which makes you wonder about Matt Doherty...)

All of this is to say: we've got a tough fight ahead of us, and it's not made any easier by where we're located. But, we've got to shed this anchor of the '83 championship, because all it's doing is weighing us down at the moment. The more we scream about past titles and miracles and magic, the more desperate we appear to the outside world--including recruits.

Sure, show them the trophy case. Make your point about returning to that level of greatness. But if Sidney's wise--and we're wise as a fanbase--the '83 and '74 championships will be near the end of the recruiting tour, not near the beginning.

View the complete entry of "'83: Should we just move on already?"