Thursday, March 10, 2011

the return of mephistopheles


There's no good reason a team with a bunch of almost-nobodies should finish the ACC season one win shy of .500 and then get a first-round win in the ACC tournament to boot, so the basketball gods decided to do something about it. Or Basketball Satan. I don't know what other reason there could be for a 50-second sequence in which the easiest tasks become impossible and the impossible shots find only nylon and a game that would be won 999,999 times out of 1,000,000 is lost. Tony Bennett has this team overachieving ahead of schedule, and verily this angers the medieval sensibilities of the basketball gods, and draws their wrath. Their sanity is restored by insane happenings.

Poor Sammy Zeglinski. Our very own Faust could do miraculous things with the shot clock under five and staring down a double-team; in this situation, Zeglinski was money, all year, every time. Then Mephistopheles returned to earth with under a minute to play against Miami and claimed his price, and Zeglinski could do nothing but helplessly fumble the ball out of bounds. Zeglinski's miracle touch was given to Miami's shooters instead.

So that wasn't even remotely fun, but in the big picture - or even the medium-sized picture - it means nothing. Hopefully there's still a CBI in the future, if for no other reason than to make sure the image of Mu Farrakhan and Zeglinski fighting over a rebound that neither one gets isn't the last one of the season.

1 comment:

Dave said...

This team deperately needs the CBI now. This Miami loss is so painful, psychologically damaging, confidence busting, what-have-you: I don't want our players stewing over this loss all offseason. They need to get back on the court NOW, and get this horror show behind them.

Not to mention, Sherrill and Farrakhan deserve a better sendoff.