For some reason, Duke seems to have trouble playing in away games. They tend to shoot poorly and the other teams shoot better than their average. The difference between Duke playing at home in Cameron Indoor Stadium versus them playing at an opponent’s court is just mind boggling. That was true tonight as well,for one half.
The Blue Devils traveled down to Miami and scored 25 points in the first half to Miami’s 37. Then something changed. Coach K must have pushed some buttons or something because Duke came out on a tear and scored 57 points in the second half while Miami matched their first half score. The final was 81-74. Brian Zoubek had another nice game and Kyle Singler lead the Blue Devils in points. Nolan Smith and Jon Scheyer were very quiet in the first half but came alive in the second. One other nice thing is that everyone got to play tonight. The Plumlee brothers see the court regularly, but Andre Dawkins came in and made a three and Ryan Kelly got some minutes. While he didn’t score, he had some nice assists to Zoubek down low.
Milly was in a good mood today. She was pretty easy to watch and interacted with Amanda and me a lot. She was also very talkative and it was easy to make her laugh. I pointed out to Amanda today that I think he face is starting to thin out and she’s starting to look older. Older for a baby anyway.
One thing she needs to work on is finishing her bottle. Now that she’s so mobile she gets distracted easily when we’re feeding her and she likes to forget the bottle and go do different things. We’ve been spoiled by the fact that Milly has been able to bottle-feed herself for months now, but we’re having to hold her to try to get her to drink at least half of her bottle. The leftovers get mixed with oatmeal or rice cereal and baby food, and she does eat most of that so it doesn’t all go to waste.
It was almost 70 degrees, but once you stepped out onto the beach you could tell it was a few degrees cooler on the sand. Surfers could be seen up and down the strand, some walking back down the beach to counteract the drift as they headed back out to the frigid water, some sitting on their boards taking a break. Of course still more were out past the breakers, waiting for a wave to catch, but it wasn’t as crowded as you’d think, thanks in large part to the water temperature.
Barry and I headed down shore a little. I guess it was the temperature difference causing a fog, but everything in the distance was hazy. There was a dredging ship off the south end of the island that looked like a castle rising out of the mist.
Today was the first day I have worn a hood while surfing, and it was the first time I wore my own gloves (which I picked up on the way to Anna and Barry’s). All that along with my 4-3 wetsuit kept me pretty warm. In fact, I was expecting to get cold at some point, but with the hood, even when I ducked a few waves I never felt like it was anywhere near unbearable out in the water. The last time I went out surfing was probably a couple months ago and I was definitely out of shape. The water was choppy and I had to fight to get out so I didn’t do a whole lot, but I caught a few waves. The main thing was that I got out there, which will hopefully scratch my surfing itch for a little while.
Once I got out for good I sat and waited for Barry for a while before deciding to just head on in. There weren’t many surfers out anymore and I figured (rightly) that I must have missed him on his way in. As I was going to wash off my board I ran into Michael, guy I’ve done Grow Zone with before, and talked to him for a minute or two.
Before all that Amanda, Milly and I went to church then picked up some bagel sandwiches from Atlanta Bread. Back home we watched a bit of TV (The Soup and 30 Rock) before Barry texted me about the waves. After we got back we put Milly down for a nap then watched Saturday Night Live while Amanda heated up some leftover white chili to eat.
We started watching Fringe, but I fell asleep. I was actually planning on taking a nap before Barry texted me. I caught most of the episode though, and it was a weird one. It wasn’t weird in the way that Fringe deals with supernatural things, but in that it was listed as a new episode but obviously was out of continuity. We guessed it was just an episode they taped but never got around to airing.
Once that was done and Milly was put to bed Amanda and I watched Duke take on Wake Forest. It was a very physical game with foul trouble all around. The point differential stayed around four for the most part with the Blue Devils taking an eight point lead off a Jon Scheyer three pointer just before the half. Wake fought back, but Duke ended up going off in the second half once again and the final score was 90-70.
There was a controversial call about halfway through the second half. Mason Plumlee was going up for a fast break dunk and was fouled pretty hard by Wake’s Ish Smith and ended up hurt for a few minutes. While I think the foul was out of control, I don’t think it was an intentional foul, which is what it was ruled, even after review. Duke was already starting a run at that point, but as my brother-in-law pointed out multiple times via text throughout the rest of the game, it was at a debatably crucial point. Duke was already starting to gain momentum and that helped, but it didn’t help to the tune of 20 points.
Jon Scheyer was kept to single digits (nine), but Kyle Singler had 21, Nolan Smith had 20 and Miles and Mason Plumlee combined for 30 (19 coming from Miles!). Duke also only hit four of 13 threes. What’s promising about this and the last game is that Duke is no longer a team that “lives by the three and dies by the three.” Once they do start hitting them again though, man, they’ll be deadly because of another great thing shown in this game: Duke can score in the post. The third big point that I am really excited about it just how tough this Duke team is. The Demon Deacons were very physical. Mason got hurt and Kyle got fouled once and landed on his face. 6′4″. 190 pound Andre Dawkins went up to block and foul the very physical 7′0″ 230 pound Chas McFarland. It’s a tough team that does not back down.
Retribution for ‘99 and ‘04! Okay, not quite. The Huskies still owe the Blue Devils two NCAA championships, but still, Duke beat Connecticut pretty handily this evening. It was an ugly brawl, Singler was in foul trouble and only made two field goals, the three main big men (Miles Plumlee, Brian Zoubek and Lance Thomas) all fouled out, Duke shot 29%, officiating was horrendous and my team blew an 18 point lead to win by nine, but the game made a statement. People have talked about how soft and unathletic Duke is, especially in comparison to a team like UConn, but Duke killed them on defense and rebounding. It was a statement game and a really good win. This game also makes Duke 5-4 all time versus UConn.
Last night Michael and I watched a movie called Baghead. I really kind of liked it. After we watched it I slept downstairs last night because I was coughing and didn’t want to disturb my two favorite girls.
Amanda and I met with Sarah (who actually went to Duke and helped in the athletic department I believe) and Mike Erreca for lunch at Arnold’s. Sarah, who is a friend of Amanda’s from high school, brought her parents along and Karen (who works with Sarah’s mom) showed up too.
I met Mike and Sarah (funny, I just realized they’re not the first Mike and Sarah we know, and in fact you could say they’re one of three if you include a past relationship) at their wedding, but I really enjoyed talking to them. I think Mike and I have a similar sense of humor.
Everyone loved Milly, of course. She was passed around the table a couple of times and behaved herself pretty well for the most part.
After we finished and hung out a bit, talking, Amanda, Milly and I were invited over to the Barbee house (Sarah’s parents) to help them get rid of some of their leftover Thanksgiving dessert. Amy Farmer called as we were leaving Arnold’s to say that she was heading back home, but she was nearby and stopped off in the parking lot to see us. Then, on the way to the Barbees’, Amanda saw Brad Failor, another old friend of hers, outside of his house, so we turned around and talked to him, his wife and his brother for a few minutes.
I really liked the Barbee house. It’s very open and uses a lot of wood. While helping them get rid of their desserts, I dipped my finger into some cranberry sauce and let Milly have a taste. She become like unto a crack addict for it. I mean she really liked the stuff.
Once we got back to the Mercer house Amanda and Karen took off to do some shopping in Jacksonville. Michael and Jenn were already there and I think Phil was in the shop. Milly took a very short nap before I gave her her 4:00 feeding, including some rice cereal. It was the first time that I think I came close to making it properly. Before it was way too runny. It was a little on the thick side this time, but she ate it all up after her bottle.
Milly and I watched the Duke-UConn game, but she started getting fussy so I put her down for a nap a few minutes before Michael and Jenn got back. She didn’t stay down long, but she was in a good mood when I got her back up. Amanda and Karen got home just a little before the game ended and we all ate pizza for dinner.
A little later Amanda, Karen, Michael Jenn and I played Scattergories. I thought I stood a good chance of winning, but Karen beat me by two point. The rest of the order of winning continued in age order, from oldest to youngest.
There’s been some really good basketball over the past 24 hours. I mean, Duke dominated UNC-Charlotte (101-59) tonight in Nolan Smith’s return to action, which I DVR’ed since we were going to small group, but right now I’m watching Memphis, unranked, trailing by only five points to Kansas, the number one team in the nation right now. Elliot Williams, who transferred from Duke this season to be at home for his very sick mother, is doing really well.
Unranked Gonzaga only lost by four to Michigan State. UCLA lost last night to Cal Furman. UCLA isn’t ranked right now, but it’s UCLA. 19th ranked Georgetown beat Temple by a single point. As I mentioned yesterday, UK won by a basket in double overtime last night against Miami (Ohio).
Wow, Elliot Williams hit a three to bring the Memphis-Kansas game to within a point with just under 17 seconds left. Josh Pastner, the new Memphis coach, reminds me a little of Greg Zugrave. He’s a young guy, looks like someone I’d maybe hang out with. Maybe it’s the curly hair.
Both teams are now out of time outs as Kansas burned their last one to save a clock violation for inbounding the ball. One foul shot made by Kansas and Elliot misses a final three pointer for the loss. He had a career high scoring night though, so good for him.
Speaking of career highs, Nolan Smith and Miles Plumlee both had those too. Jon Scheyer has still had no turnovers on the season despite playing the vast majority of available minutes. Duke started 14-2 and didn’t much let up.
Work was busy. Kirsten wanted to see Milly, so she babysat all on her own while Amanda and I went to small group, and she did a good job. She really loves that baby. Kirsten never seemed all that excited (I mean, outside of a normal level of excitement) about Milly coming, and she was very hesitant to hold her early on, but she seems to not be able to get enough of her. She’s also going to go ahead and start helping out on Mondays. I thought she was just going to be here from 12-5, but Anna told me today that Kirsten would come over at 9am. I’m pretty excited about that. I mean, I love being able to see my daughter during the day, but she tends to distract me from work.
When we left the house we first stopped by Target to grab some more baby pants then we picked up some Chick-Fil-A for dinner before heading to the Nowak house for small group. We got there early because Amanda and Sarah were discussing Mia’s baby shower.
Today being Amanda’s day off, she gladly got Milly up this morning when she woke up. Milly was pretty cheery, as she usually is in the morning.
After doing a bit of work I headed out to run a couple errands, including picking up some jumper cables. I was planning on driving to Seth Holloman’s place this afternoon, but to do that I had to go ahead and get my car running. I hadn’t started it in quite a while, and when my car lies dormant it somehow uses up its battery charge. Anyway, I was going to get a medium grade cable, but they only had low and high grade cables. I didn’t want to spend too much so I got a lower grade one. Didn’t do the trick, of course, so I called Seth and asked if he’d pick me up.
Amanda was going to take Milly by her work and dressed her all in pink for the occasion. Pink shirt, pink pants, pink socks, pink jacket and pink bow. They left at about 3:00 and Seth and his dad came to pick me up at about 3:45. We stopped to pick up Randal Kennedy, another Duke fan, then, after a quick stop at BoJangle’s and a close call that nearly gave Randal a heart attack, we continued on to Durham where we met up with Seth’s aunt and uncle (I believe).
I met Tedder, another guy from the Duke board, and his wife. Seth and I also talked to another guy, Paul, who is the one who is providing us with tickets to next week’s football game. After a bit Seth and I went back to our seats.
We had some really sweet seats, I must say. In Cameron there are two levels- on the floor and the upper level. We were right at the very front of the upper level, which probably wasn’t more than 15-20 feet up from the hardwood. Aside from being at midcourt we couldn’t have asked for much better seats.
This was the first basketball event I’ve been to at Duke since 1995 or 1996, so I was pumped to be there. I wasn’t disappointed either. The Countdown to Craziness is Duke’s (hopefully annual) basketball season kickoff. This had some skits and games put on by the students prior to the Countdown, then they showed some pretty funny videos by the team.
After that Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley were introduced as guest coaches for the Blue-White scrimmage and the players were all introduced to their own individually-picked music. Brian Zoubek came out dancing to Ice Ice Baby and Job Scheyer came out to All These Things That I’ve Done by The Killers. It was the “I got soul but I’m not a soldier” part.
The Blue-White scrimmage featured two halves, or games, really, with two different teams. In the first one it was the presumed starters versus the rest of the team, and it was sort of a blowout. They switched things up in the second, and even though Seth’s uncle and I both said we thought the white team would win, it ended up going to the second team. It came down to the wire though, with Nolan Smith hitting two free throws to end a tie with less than a second left in the game.
After the scrimmage was a dunk contest. Really, Olek Czyz should have won with his 360 between the legs tomahawk dunk, but they called the round a tie between him and Andre Dawkins and ended up giving them both the win after another round. Nolan Smith unveiled an old-school Johnny Dawkins (no relation to Andre) jersey during the dunk contest.
The Plumlee brothers looked pretty good, Andre Dawkins looked good, of course Scheyer and Singler looked good, but I’ll give most improved to Nolan Smith. Transfer Seth Curry looked pretty good after he got into his groove, but unfortunately we’ll have to wait until next year to see him in in-game action.
Here’s a pretty good video recap of the event. you can actually see me and Seth towards the top left corner in all of the shots that are on the left side of the court that show the upper section. I’m the last guy in the corner with a blue shirt on, and you can see me clapping a lot of the time. Seth is to my left (camera right).
I got home… I don’t know, sometime after midnight. Maybe close to 1:00? Amanda wrote a good night message to me from Milly on the mirror in the bathroom, which was really sweet.
I went surfing this afternoon. Lars Boscaljon had texted me early in the day and said the report looked good, so I picked him up and we headed out to Wrightsville Beach. Michael Mercer met us out there too.
It was a little crowded, but it wasn’t so bad that we had to avoid running into other surfers. The waves were a pretty decent size- larger than I’m used to seeing out at Wrightsville, but not monster by any means. They broke a little hard though too, so we all ended up going under more often than we’ve had to lately (whether because we were wiping out or having to duck dive when paddling back out). That lead to a lot of numb heads, and it got to be a bit much for Michael, which I can understand. Later on, after showering off in Anna and Barry’s outside stall, after I got my suit off and turned off the water I was starting to feel physically ill from the cold.
All that said, we all caught at least one decent wave, and I was glad to be out there. I don’t know if I’ll be in as good a shape as I’d like to for Costa Rica, but having gone out now and then in a wetsuit, gloves and booties hopefully will have paid off at least a little.
Back home, Amanda (who was sweet and had some hot chocolate ready for me when I got home) and I watched Duke beat St. John’s at Madison Square Garden. Duke only won by seven points at 76-69, and they had a 12 point lead in the second half. That’s worrisome. They looked really good at times, but it seems they stopped playing as hard on defense at the end and the stall ball (which I’m not totally against, for the record) looked like it took them out of their offensive rhythm. After dropping four of the last six games a win is definitely welcome, but winning by seven to a St. John’s team that, let’s be honest, isn’t really good, doesn’t bode well for the tough remaining ACC schedule for Duke, which starts when they host Wake Forest at Cameron on Sunday.
There was some good in the game though. Freshman Elliot Williams started and played a lot of minutes and, though he made some mistakes, he still had a pretty good game. It was a bit of a coming out party for Elliot Williams, and I hope we see more of him in the form he was in tonight. Miles Plumlee got some time too. He scored a little and made some good stops. Jon Scheyer, who started as the point guard tonight, is getting his game back too, even though he missed some clutch free throws at the end (which is uncharacteristic for him).
Lance Thomas had a good game as well, and I think he’s really bringing an intensity that the team needs right now. He’ll get in their faces and try to get them fired up. He also had this one crazy pass from under one bucket all the way up the court as he was falling on the ground. The pass found Elliot Williams, who got a bucket from it. It should definitely be on the SportsCenter’s Top 10 tonight. Of course, Kyle Singler and Gerald Henderson had good games as usual.
So, I guess we’ll see how the team shakes out on Sunday.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that I really like having Bobby Knight as an announcer for the game. Not only does he know what he’s talking about, but he really breaks plays down for the average viewer (like myself) who doesn’t know all the ins and outs and little things that go into making some plays.
Don Senick and Laurel Hughes were wedded this morning. Amanda and I picked Billy Supplee up and headed downtown for it. One thing I decided to do was to look at Don as Laurel was walking down the aisle. What I remember best was that he just shook his head as if in amazement.
The ceremony was only about half an hour and was capped off by communion, which I thought was a nice touch. Afterwards they held a reception at Roudabush. There was a little dancing and quite a bit of milling about. Amanda and I sat at what seemed to be the “Tribute” table, in that everyone there either work at or was married to someone who worked at Tribute Properties.
They had a pretty good spread of food and cupcakes with sugar surfboards on them instead of cake. We took off around 12:30.
We dropped Billy back off at his apartment then went on home. Duke played Maryland at noon and I had set the DVR, so I was able to watch the whole thing. A rarity in cases where I’m missing the game, I happened not to have looked for updates to the score online, which I’m glad I did. It allowed me to enjoy the game that much more.
What can really be said about it? Duke murdered, I mean absolutely chopped, stabbed, mutilated, castrated, humiliated, beat them down, and left the Terps for dead. They had one guy, Landon Milbourne, score 19 points. The next highest scorer was Dave Neal with 5. Duke had all the starters out somewhere under the nine minute mark and still won by 41 points. Brian Zoubek had a nice game and was a point and a rebound shy of a double-double. Literally everyone on Duke’s team got to play, including Steve Johnson. I really like the the freshmen got to play. Even Olek Czyz, the new Martynas Pocius, logged almost double-digit minutes. Miles Plumlee showed some good defense, but just needs to go stronger to the basket. Elliot Williams kept attacking the basket aggressively, which was great to see.
The final score was 85-44. It was the worst Maryland loss since the ’60’s and the worst loss ever under coach Gary Williams. The best part of the game to me was on one possession Gerald Henderson was heading down the court then lobbed the ball towards the goal for Kyle Singler to finish with a dunk. Then on the very next possession, Singler stole the ball and tossed it up court to Jon Scheyer who then touch passed it across the court to Nolan Smith who then tossed it behind himself to Gerald Henderson to lay it in. What an awesome sequence and great show of teamwork! Cameron was rocking after that and Brian Zoubek grabbed Henderson, who was just grinning from ear to ear, and gave him a big bear hug. Everybody was just pumped! (In the video clip above, it’s the part from about 1:40 to 2:00.)
Another fun thing about the game is how Maryland’s Greivis Vasquez, a notorious trash talker, had claimed before the game that Cameron Indoor Stadium was his house. Gary Williams sat Vasquez for the rest of the game after being whistled for an intentional foul (since the game was well out of hand at that point anyway) after making four points on 2-10 shooting. The Cameron Crazies were shouting, “Nuestra casa!”
On a sadder basketball note, Kay Yow, former NC State Women’s Basketball coach, lost her struggle with cancer today. From a USA Today article:
In 38 years of college coaching, 34 at N.C. State, Yow had a 737-344 record, four Atlantic Coast Conference titles, 20 NCAA bids and a 1998 Final Four appearance. She coached the U.S. women to the 1988 Olympic title and was a member of the Naismith and the Women’s Basketball halls of fame.
Basketball games all over the country, including the Duke-Maryland game, held a moment of silence for her. The one at Duke also honored Bill Werber, who died at the age of 100 on Thursday. He was Duke’s first All-American basketball player and also played baseball with Babe Ruth.
After the game I tried to doze off but Amanda made me get up and go shopping with her. We needed to go get a birthday present for Michael so we went to Independence Mall, Circuit City and Best Buy. Circuit City’s liquidation prices still aren’t very competitive, in my opinion. One of the things Michael wanted was Wall-E on Blu-Ray. It was priced higher at Circuit City but ended up being $1 cheaper with the discount. The TVs and other higher ticket items, cameras and the like, still have a way to go before they’re competitive, I think.
