bloody sweep!

i can't believe it's been 11 years since we swept dook. and on top of that, we somehow backed into the 1st seed in the acc despite doing everything we could to give it to one of the teams in the state for lovers.

i suppose i have to comment on the one play that will forever get more attention than the rest of the game. the way i see it, only henderson (and maybe coach k) knows if (or how) intentional the injury was. i will give him the benefit of the doubt that he only went up for a strong hard play for a block and/or foul. when it first happened, i definitely saw it that way. however, on the replay, i had some doubt - the ball was well out of his hands, but given all the likely contact, all players involved had their eyes shut, so i can understand where he may have swung at where he thought the ball was and only found cartilage. but the motion he had didn't seem consistent with going for the ball - i mean how does shoving your forearm straight down help you block a shot? however, i believe him to be a good kid overall (although with horrible taste in schools) so again, i give him the benefit of the doubt.

some other points:

1. coach k suggested that hansbrough shouldn't have been on the floor. bull shit. anyone who's followed the unc-dook rivalry knows that anything is possible. a 4 possessions deficit has been overcome not once, but twice in under 17 seconds in this rivalry. if paulus and mcroberts hadn't have fouled out, they would have been in the game too. and henderson ain't no scrub either, he's probably the best prospect on dook's team. besides, copeland was at the scoring table waiting to come in for tyler, and tyler was too busy missing foul shots and getting rebounds to be pulled out yet.


2. billy packer's game-time comments seemed quite biased in favor of dook. he seemed to think any extra punishment was overkill, even after seeing the replays that made it look pretty dirty. he also made the same point about hansbrough not needing to be on the floor.


3. in the end, kudos to tyler for taking it well - after understandably being upset after painting the floor red, he joked about the bloodshed. both teams and coaches seem to want to put it to rest now, and i hope the media doesn't make too much of this (although i still like the imagery).

anyway, i hope this is the start of a nice 9-game winning streak. we haven't quite lived up to our potential yet, and i hope our we can maintain our focus here on out as we did in most of this game.

also - congrats to our women for winning their 3rd straight ACC tourney! let's see them go on a 6-game streak and claim the title they missed last year.