Last August, I sat down to interview UNC Sports Information Director Steve Kirschner in his office near the Dean Dome. We spoke about his job as the head PR rep for North Carolina basketball, his experience with the coaches and the players, and the prospects for the 2011-12 team. He was very generous with his time — the interview is comprehensive — and I couldn't help but think of one particular moment as UNC watched its season end against Kansas on Sunday. As we segued into speaking about the current Tar Heels, I told him that I expected Carolina to win a national title, and that if they didn't, the Duke propaganda angle would be that the whole year was a failure.
With 10:56 remaining in an easy win over Creighton, North Carolina point guard Kendall Marshall drove right. As he rose for the layup, Creighton's Ethan Wragge put a forearm into Marshall's midsection. Marshall put out a hand to cushion the fall, but his right wrist buckled as it absorbed the full weight of his body.
The result was a fractured scaphoid — a nightmare for Carolina. Marshall will have surgery to put a pin in the wrist, but he's highly questionable for the rest of the tournament.
You can catch Harrison Barnes at 4:10 p.m. Eastern on Friday, when the no. 1 seed North Carolina Tar Heels face Vermont, a 16-seed. No. 8 Creighton and Doug McDermott are scheduled to meet 9th-seeded Alabama at 1:40 p.m. Eastern today. Shane Ryan profiled McDermott earlier this season.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Wednesday.
President Barack Obama picked his official March Madness bracket, putting Kentucky, Ohio State, North Carolina, and Missouri in the Final Four, with the Tar Heels winning the championship. At least that's what ESPN is reporting; according to several Republican sources, Obama actually picked a Final Four of Harvard, Duke, Kim Jong-un, and the Nairobi Fake Birth Certificate Corporation, with Duke winning it all.
In the First Four in Dayton, South Florida took the fight to Cal early, running up a big lead and winning 65-54. That leaves just one team from the Pac-12 in the tournament, but conference officials are confident that Colorado will restore their honor by winning the national title.
I had to fill out my brackets Monday, so naturally I called my dad in Southern Illinois, because, you know, he taught me how to shoot a basketball (still not good at that, Dad) and I had already grilled my grandmother a day earlier. I think she likes St. Louis University, at least in the first round.
My dad, an Illinois fan, is out on Rick Pitino Louisville, seems very pro-Murray State (he says Murray gives in-state tuition for students from Southern Illinois. Is this true? Someone tell me this is true), and described Wichita State as "motivated." He also had this to say about Wisconsin's first-round opponent: "I did see a Montana game one time." OK then!
So there you go. A little free March Madness guidance from Mr. Larimer. If that's not enough, you'll also find the brackets from other Grantland editors and staffers below. I sincerely hope you win your office pool this year, but only if you've picked Mizzou to win it all.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Monday.
Randy Moss is back in football. The 35-year-old receiver signed a one-year deal with the 49ers after working out for Jim Harbaugh. Sources reported that the workout went really well, except for an awkward moment near the end when Harbaugh shoved Moss to the ground while shaking hands, and Moss responded by aggressively mooning him.
When the games ended Thursday night and I considered the results, my stomach sank. The world craves variety, but the unavoidable, incorrigible ACC had reeled me in again.
If you've read Grantland'scollege basketballcoverage over the past two weeks, you probably think my official title is "junior ACC correspondent." Today, I had actually planned to write about the Spartans of Michigan State, whose easy 69-55 win over Wisconsin served the usual Tom Izzo narrative of a team peaking at the perfect moment.
But how can I avoid the real story? My hands are tied! What can I possibly do when the ACC, like some kind of insane nocturnal mailman, just delivers night after night after night? I heard the knocks on the door, and I tried to ignore them. I promise I did. But this conference can't be stopped. Dormant for so long, the teams of the ACC finally have their revolution, and man are they seizing the day.
Given: Miami is a football school. To the extremes, usually.
But so are 200 other Division I colleges. What distinguishes Miami is not the passion for football, but the utter absence of love for basketball. Earlier this season, the Hurricanes earned a huge victory when they beat Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium in overtime. Going into Wednesday's matchup against North Carolina, first-year coach Jim Larranaga, who inherited a talented team of upperclassmen from Frank Haith, had led the Hurricanes to a 15-8 record. His team kept getting better and better. Miami had won five of its last six. (The Hurricanes fell to no. 17 Florida State on Saturday.) An NCAA tournament berth was very much in play.
There was Duke's stunning comeback at North Carolina and — on the very same night — Florida State's improbable loss at Boston College. The two results may have changed the complexion of the conference race, but they only added to the increasingly exuberant ACC script. With Michigan State's ugly win over Ohio State on Saturday, the suspicion is proved; the Big Ten might be the best conference in the country, but the ACC is the most exciting.
In hindsight, there were signs that the rebirth was coming last March, when three ACC teams made the Sweet 16 for the first time in six years. Florida State was the first school not named Duke or North Carolina to accomplish that feat since 2006. But the Noles fell to Shaka Smart and VCU, and Duke and Carolina were gone before the Final Four, casting doubt on the legitimacy of the ACC's depth.
For a conference so top-heavy over the last decade, this year's resurgence is a shock. But five key factors have put the ACC back on the precipice of dominance and made it the most fascinating, anxiety provoking, and entertaining conference in the nation.
The thing with objectivity, in sports journalism as in life, is that it's a myth made to sustain something that's already dead, and was never truly alive. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. Lying to you or lying to themselves, but lying either way. Everything is subjective, including your reaction to this opinion. Welcome to being human — the water's fine.
Sports fans can be a savage lot. When it comes to cruelty, is there any group more relentlessly inventive? Chanting in unison, they pick at the heart of the enemy. But in my book, there's one chant more brutal than any other. It's worse than insulting someone's family, worse than hurling the most unspeakable epithet, and worse than mocking a personal handicap. This one cuts the deepest.
"Mason Plumlee is a man!" I shouted at my girlfriend. She rolled her eyes, but I felt like it was something that needed to be said.
A year, ago, I couldn't have conceived that I'd be complimenting the tow-headed giant. This was the second coming of the hated Miles, the middle of the Flying Plumblebee trio, the guy who was bound to let you down just when he'd fooled you into believing. It was normal to spend entire games thinking up derogatory nicknames for him. (“Plumblef*** the Younger” and “Mason Clumslee” are two that come to mind.)
But now? Now, Mason is having the best season of his life, a coming-out party of epic proportions. He's the best Duke player on the court game in and game out, and on Wednesday night, he refused to buckle in a hostile road contest against the hated Maryland Terrapins. The dark days are over. Mason Plumlee is a big manly son of a bitch, and shall henceforth be known only as "Plumdog Billionaire." Jai ho, you crazy Devil.
In exactly seven weeks, the 2012 NCAA tournament will begin in Dayton, Ohio.
1. That is sooner than you think.*
2. It's only true if you count this newfangled "first four" as the start of the tournament.**
3. Wow! Seven weeks!***
*Unless you have a pretty firm grasp on how long a week is. Then it's exactly as long as you think. But if you think seven weeks is like four months, get ready for a big surprise, brother.
**Nonsense. The first round is nonsense and we all know it. Here's a great use of the word "nonsense" in Internet cartoon form: nonsense.
***That's sooner than you think!
What this means is that we should start speculating about which teams will take the four 1-seeds. If we wait much longer, we'll be totally unprepared to speculate when the time comes, and then they'll have to cancel the whole tournament.
So let's count down some contenders, followed by the current top dogs in the 1-seed hunt.
The 12 schools of the Atlantic Coast Conference came into league play in various states of ripening or disrepair. Virginia was riding one of the best starts in team history and had surprised everyone by cracking the Top 25. North Carolina had survived a shaky start and was finally starting to look like the national title hopeful we'd imagined in November. Duke had gone the opposite direction, as the luster of early wins faded in the face of recent humiliations. Florida State spent its first 14 games learning that great defense might not quite be enough this year, while others, such as Maryland and Wake Forest and NC State, made strides that will either prove to be omens of rebirth or ignes fatui, false lights in the dark.
When the first six games had passed, most of the questions still lingered. Here are some quick (and not so quick) thoughts on each.
Duke and North Carolina are the high royalty of ACC basketball, the dominant forces that have won two titles each in the last decade and reside comfortably in this year's Top 10. At the moment, their control of the conference is unchallenged. The bona fides:
