Wahoo Wire

Day 1, Session 1

1. The Location

I grew up living near Foxboro, Mass where the New England Patriots play but this sight is still the weirdest experience: to be driving on a two lane road with residential houses on both sides when suddenly, BAM! An enormous parking lot with an arena in the middle.  Never fails to get a “huh?” out of me.  I also figured on being able to hang out in the area near the Coliseum between games.  You know, get some food, go to a bar, mingle with other fans.  Nope.  Unless I want to go to the Player’s Club, where the “most beautiful women from the Triade welcome ACC fans.”  My girlfriend is shaking her head “no.”

2. The lack of canned music

Great aspect of the games.  We heard two songs over the speakers during the entire session (one before each games’ bands set up).  They had Harry Kalas narrated highlights from ACC Tournaments past (saw 1998 before our game…very epic) followed by the BC and UVa bands going back and forth with songs for 20 minutes straight.  Loved it.

3. Pro keys

I don’t get why they’re there…there’s no pro basketball team here.  Sort of a related note: where’s the purple and green court?!?  This blue and green stuff isn’t what I remember from my childhood.  Very disappointed.

4. No Sylven = more ‘Rome

Sylven didn’t play against Duke, Jerome had a double-double with 21 points.  Sylven didn’t play against Maryland, Jerome had 17 points and a ton of boards.  Sylven didn’t play today, Jerome stepped up again with another big performance.  During the season, when the team needed to settle down after a spurt by the opposition, guys stood around and waited for Sylven to do something.  Now, they dump it into Jerome.  While Sylven does score quite a bit, he can force it on occasion and doesn’t draw many fouls against big guys (see his performances against Clemson and Wake).  Jerome can score on 7 footers and get fouls on them as well.  It has made a big difference in the last two games, let’s hope it continues into tomorrow.  We have a low post threat!  Woo!

5. Speaking of Jerome, he won the Skip Prosser Award

Named for the late Wake Forest coach, the award goes to the top basketball student athlete in the conference.  Way to go Jerome.

6. The Virginia Crowd

There were a lot of Wahoo faithful in the Coliseum today (essentially the entire back section to your left if you’re watching TV) and we were quite loud if I do say so myself.  It stunk that our band was on the other side of the arena but we still got some good chants going.  The players were clearly pumped from the fan support with several of them waving their arms for more noise during the final few minutes.  Let’s hope we can fill it up tomorrow with Durham being less than an hour away from here.

7. No out-of-town scores in the building

How does this happen in this day and age?  We had no idea about the GTown upset over Syracuse until we got back to our hotel and turned on ESPN.  As fun as going to the games are, it kind of stinks that you can’t watch the other games going on at the same time…but to not even be able to get a score update was really lame.

8. Dino Gaudio has to be on the hot seat

Last year against Cleveland State and today against Miami…bad losses.  Like really bad losses.  And in big games.  He doesn’t seem to be able to motivate them well for games against lesser opponents.  Miami looked like a top ten team in this game and they are far from that.  And to add insult to injury, Wake got torched by a freshman from Winston-Salem.  Can Dino get a recruiting do-over?

9. UNC fans feeling awkward about playing on Day 1.

This was just funny.  They weren’t being loud or obnoxious because they know there’s a distinct possibility that their season could be over by 9 pm tonight…and they’re embarrassed about it.  I am rooting for them tonight because I want all the lower seeds to win, but seeing them was like seeing a 16 year old eighth grader walk into his Spanish class on the first day of school.

10. The Hoos live to fight another day.

Always nice to see the team perform well in the ACC Tournament since it happens so rarely (last win came against VTech in 2005-2006…yikes).  Let’s hope we can keep it up and ruin Duke’s chances for a Number 1 seed.  Go Hoos!