Tag: ncaa

The ownage just never seems to end for Patrick Ewing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Oof: after a 75-109 record over the last six years, Patrick Ewing will not be returning to coach the Georgetown Hoyas

You know, back when the news broke that Patrick Ewing was going to become the new head coach for Georgetown, I actually thought hmm, this might actually lead to something interesting with the Hoyas.  After all, Ewing had spent the better part of the last 10+ years as an assistant coach in the NBA, even if Michael Jordan was cockblocking him repeatedly from getting a head coach position, surely he would have some experience and merit now and have something to contribute to someone.

And being the Georgetown legend he is, who better else to make a union with than his alma mater that he led to a National Championship back in 1984?  He’s still an NBA legend, and often times, young, impressionable prospects tend to look up to former players, especially with the pedigree of a Patrick Ewing.  I thought that maybe Ewing could usher in a new generation to Georgetown, where his name could easily boost recruiting, and maybe we’d see a new era of college hoops where the big man reigned supreme once again.

Well, we certainly did see a different era of Georgetown basketball over the last years, under the tutelage of Patrick Ewing; one of colossal failure, unfulfilled expectations, and save for one freakish Big East championship run out of nowhere, just a whole lot of what Patrick Ewing has been best known for: getting owned.

How naïve of me, or blindly optimistic I was to think that Patrick Ewing would deliver anything else.

Seriously, Georgetown was always one of those teams where their name alone could draw some recognition.  John Thompson, Jr. built a program whose reputation alone probably won more games than they should have, where the reputation alone boosted performance long after the level of talent probably existed there.  Thompson III continued a fairly consistently good program when he took the reigns in 2004.  They were pretty much always a lock to be in the NCAA tournament, and just about every time I saw their name in the bracket, I’d at least give them a win in the first round, because usually they were reliable for at least that much.

I can’t say I blame the Hoyas for going in the direction of Patrick Ewing, being an NBA legend as well as a John Thompson product, but man did they ever whiff on colossal proportions with that choice.  75-109 is pretty horrendous, and that doesn’t illustrate some of his more punctuated lowlights, like where there was a stretch where he went 0-29 in conference play.  I mean really, Villanova, Xavier and St. John’s were some tough draws over that stretch, but Ewing was also losing to schools like DePaul, Providence and Butler, school most people probably don’t even know are even in the Big East.

His tenure was so bad, Ewing was trying to get the tradition of the post-game handshake line abolished, because after 29 straight conference losses, I think I’d be sick of having to congratulate the winners during all those losses too.

Anyway because this doesn’t need to be a novel like I so often try to remind myself when it comes to my brogging habits, yet another chapter in the book of Patrick Ewing comes to an end, with failure, unfulfilled expectations and just plain getting owned.  Seems like all those times MJ refused to promote him to a head coaching position are validated, considering Pat couldn’t even shape young, moldable talents into winners, so god forbid he have any better luck with a bunch of boneheaded knuckleheads like the vast majority of the NBA is today.

I mean is it really an upset anymore?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although it would be great if this was a sign that the defending ACC Champions of Men’s basketball were waking up and priming themselves for a repeat of last year’s tournament march, I’m not going to hold my breath.  The win against Duke was definitely a highlight of the season, but notching a win against UVA is like a cherry on top.

But seriously, is it really an upset anymore to see the Hokies beat UVA anymore?  It’s kind of like Duke in the sense that historically UVA has eaten Tech’s lunch in men’s basketball, but over the span of the last decade, there have been quite a number of times in which Virginia Tech has basically, troll-beaten UVA, screwing up whatever rankings they have at the time in which they’ve played.  And make no mistake, much like Duke, UVA has almost always been a ranked squad over the last decade, while Virginia Tech sporadically gets hot for brief moments in time, often times against UVA, having beaten them as highly ranked as #2 in the nation.

Despite the lopsided historical record between the schools in favor of UVA, over the last three years, it’s been deadlocked at .500, with UVA now having lost three in a row in Blacksburg.  That being said I bring up the query on whether or not it should really be considered an upset anymore when schools like Duke and UVA come into town and lose, because whatever it is about the last decade or so, Blacksburg is becoming a place where there’s always a chance for Tech to beat even the bluest of bloods.

All the same, much like the aftermath of the Duke job, the fans stormed the court; and I’m looking at the footage of the jubilation, and sure it’s a fun event and all, but I’m just kind of like, this has literally happened for the third straight year; this is not really out of the ordinary and doesn’t really seem like it’s worth storming the court over at this point.  But whatever, all wins are good regardless of whom they’re against, but me personally, I’ve always found it the most satisfying whenever Tech topples North Carolina or Clemson.  Or Notre Dame, now that they’re basically an ACC school.

I love that Duke is Virginia Tech’s slumpbuster

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Through casual following through the ESPN app’s favorite team tracking, was I somewhat aware of how the season of the reigning ACC Champions was going.  I noticed that they had a very strong start to the season, at one point being 11-1, with some notable wins coming against Penn State and UNC.  I was perplexed to why they weren’t getting into the top-25, while teams with way worse records and not that much stronger schedules like UVA and Duke were.

But then I noticed that the L’s started happening, and next thing I know the Hokies lost seven in a row, with two coming against Clemson which annoys me to see that they’re leaning so hard into hoops like Tech did after their football program has been less than stellar.  Suddenly, the record bolstered by a hot start is looking pretty mediocre, and Tech is looking more like an NIT school than the defending ACC Champions.

So my brother being of North Carolina upbringing, bleeds Carolina blue, which automatically means that he like many, hates Duke.  Any time Duke loses, he’ll post to me, or one of our group chats of a website, succinctly URL’d diddukewin.com, to which the site literally only reports a YES or NO with an ensuing link to ESPN’s recaps.

I hadn’t been paying attention, but on the latest of Dook’s fuckups, I was pleasantly surprised to have seen come against, Virginia Tech.  Seven-game losing streak, over.

As the subject of this post says, I love that Duke has turned into Virginia Tech’s slumpbuster for the better part of the last decade.  It doesn’t matter how ranked or mostly unranked Virginia Tech has been, how highly ranked Dook has been or how many Zions or Graysons or Reddishes or whatever highly-touted prospects they’ve trotted out, when Dook has gone to Blacksburg, more often than not, they’ve lost.  Since 2013, Duke has gone 3-5 in Blacksburg, and 5-5 in head-to-head matchups over their last ten.  .500 doesn’t sound that impressive, but consider the fact that we’re talking about Duke and Virginia Tech, and not like Duke and UNC.

Regardless of the stats and numbers, I’m just arrogantly pleased to see that Dook has once again gone to Blacksburg, and left with another L.  I don’t care if there’s no more Coach K, and Jon Scheyerface is struggling to manage the team, I will always take pleasure in Virginia Tech > Dook.  It never gets old, and it will probably never not warrant a post in my brog whenever it happens.  Hopefully the frequency in which it does continues to maintain pace, or get even better.

Figures that of their abysmal 2-7 conference record, the wins have come against UNC and Dook.  Maybe they’ll draw that lucky #7 seed in the ACC tournament again and go gangbusters and repeat as champions, but baby luck is over, and this is more likely than not a pipedream.  But at least we’ve got another win against Dook to highlight the season.

I’m actually surprised that Tech stormed the court afterward.  Considering how often we beat Dook at home, it’s kind of becoming a given, and no more special than beating William & Mary or the Dayton Flyers.  I’m not mad about it, just a little disappointed.  We’ve been there many times now, act like it.

I don’t think many people realize the ownage here

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously after winning a second national championship, there’s been a lot of rhetoric thrown around about the legend of Stetson Bennett the Fourth, about how he’s basically bigger than god in the state, he’ll never have to pay for a meal or a drink in Georgia for the rest of his life, etc, etc.

And honestly, good on his part, because after living here for 20 years now, I never thought I’d see the day when Georgia would actually reach the top of the mountain much less win two in a row, after the years on top of years I’ve passively witnessed the Dawgs come close but choke, mostly to Alabama.  As a Georgia resident, I am happy to see the hometown team reach the pinnacle of college football not just once, but twice in a row is pretty sweet.

I recently saw this ad come across my theFacebook feed, and was pretty surprised to see the God of Athens going so all-in as the poster boy for Raising Cane’s chicken.  To my understanding, Cane’s has a pretty big, almost cult following in the markets they exist in, but down in Georgia, is Zaxby’s country, their carbon copy franchise.  No seriously, their menus are nearly identical, and I remember the first time I ever came across a Cane’s, it was in Las Vegas, and their menu looked surreptitiously familiar, and my close friend I was with, when ordering her usual Zaxby’s equivalent, I implored her to get the “Cane’s Sauce” and sure as shit, it was the same thing as Zaxby’s Zax Sauce.

I have no qualms with Cane’s, but as someone who discovered Zaxby’s first, between my friends and I, I usually just refer to Cane’s as “Zaxby’s Red” for obvious branding reasons.

The thing is, Zaxby’s is not only based out of Georgia, their headquarters is in Athens, right near the University of Georgia.  I actually interviewed with their corporate offices, but the flaky response to whether or not I’d need to make periodic visits to the office in Athens, which is nearly 90 minutes away from me made me not pursue it, but the point is the fact that Zaxby’s allowed Raising Cane’s to somehow swoop beneath them and sign the kid in their very own backyard, and make Stetson Bennett their poster child is a pretty devastating blow.

Then again, Cane’s apparently has that killer instinct about their company, because while I was interviewing with Zaxby’s, it was brought to my attention that there’s actually one solitary Raising Cane’s location in Georgia; and it happens to be in Athens.  Very cut-throat and guerilla of them to do such, but it was clearly enough for a guy like Stetson Bennett to probably have tried them at one point and have enough of a positive association to the brand to when they came knocking with some NIL money, he signed on.

Although I said I have no beef with Cane’s, I’m still a Zaxby’s first person, because they’re here and available.  When I travel to places that have Cane’s, I enjoy them all the same.  But I have to give some respect to Cane’s for landing such a critical hit to a chief competitor, because as I said, I don’t think a lot of people are going to understand or realize just how much of a big deal it is that Cane’s got a hold of Stetson Bennett and not Zaxby’s.

Stetson Bennett went to Grambling State??

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because that golden G logo next to his name is Grambling State University’s logo, an HBCU in Louisiana.  Pretty big of Stetson Bennett IV to not see color, in spite of having the whitest name on the face of the planet.

Or more likely, pretty bad on ESPN to not consider the copyright infringement and flagrant disrespect to an HBCU by gold-washing the team logos just because it was the national championship.  No shock there that ESPN doesn’t notice stepping on a black school.

But all jokes aside, holy mary mother of god, was that an ass-whoopin’.  65-7 is basically a Madden score when you turn the difficulty down to very easy, turn off injuries and fatigue, and truck the shit out of the AI, whose lone TD comes on a successful Hail Mary because the game’s rubberband mechanics basically make it impossible for someone to get shutout.

In spite of the chips on the shoulders, the media disrespect and all other detractors that should have for all intents and purposes fired them up to put up something of a fight, TCU put up what surely has to be one of the most embarrassing and worst national championship game performances in history. [2011 LSU and 1991 Miami were both shutout, and 2000 FSU scored just 2 points lol safety]  Undoubtedly, it was the biggest blowout in natty history, and outside of Georgia, probably one of the most boring national championship games ever.

Seriously, seven points?  In a natty?  It’s flabbergasting just how wrong everything was about TCU, and hopefully we never see TCU anywhere near the playoff again, much less playing for another national championship.  Frankly, I think it’s time we stop using the phrase Power Five when it comes to talking about conferences, because the Big-12, or the Pac-12 haven’t proven shit when it comes to football, considering notwithstanding that fluky first 2014, every single natty has been won by an SEC school or Clemson.

I mean I know I’m coming off as a mega SEC blowhard, but the numbers are the numbers.  All of my zero readers know that I’m really an ACC blowhard, regardless of how much Virginia Tech pretends to be a football school. Any single SEC school would have put up a better fight against Georgia than TCU did, and so often times is the case, after an SEC school routs a non-SEC school for a natty, there’s always some player or coach that makes the backhanded remark about how conference games are more competitive.

For context, unranked Florida and Missouri put up 20 and 22 points against Georgia earlier in the year.  Georgia Tech put up 14 points.  Even Kent State hung 22 on Georgia and they’re not even a Power-Five Three program.

I mean everyone has bad games, but this was the national championship.  This is the game where nobody should have any bad games, this is the game where everyone has been duking it out for the last six months and where real contenders should be showing why they’re contenders.  It’s not even that I’m happy that as a Georgia resident, Grambling State Georgia won another natty, I’m just disappointed that TCU shit the bed so embarrassingly bad.  Of course I was hoping Georgia would beat them, but when they basically didn’t even try, it’s tantamount to as being as meaningful as a win as beating a bunch of blind paraplegics in any sort of physical contest.

Whatever though, the only reason this post even came to fruition was the hilarious observation that I’m sure that only I noticed, that Stetson Bennett IV was shown on screen as playing for Grambling State.  Being the logo master that I am that collated all the logos and team colors for NCAA.com, only a snob like me would have.

What an incredible way to New Years

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve made it pretty clear that I am no fan of Ohio State, especially when it comes to football.  I won’t call them “The” unless it’s in irony and with the intention to mock and ridicule, and few things make me happier during any given college season is seeing them get lose, be it to Michigan, Oklahoma, or better when it’s against some unheralded school.

However, regardless of my bias against them as a program, there’s no denying that they are talented and are always a threat to win a National Championship.  And the way that the media has been overwhelmingly favoring Georgia over them for the CFB semi-final Peach Bowl, I couldn’t help but have this sinking feeling that it was all tempting fate a little too hard, and it was a ripe scenario where Georgia was going to get their shit pushed in and choke hardcore to a program that should frankly never be overlooked.

I didn’t watch the game at all, but I was casually following the gamecast, because it’s not so much that I’m any bit of a UGA fan as much as I like that they represent my home, as much as I was just hoping to see Ohio State lose.  And as much as I didn’t like seeing it, I wasn’t really at all that surprised to see just how tightly TOSU was playing them, and when they went into half with TOSU up by a hair, I spoke with my one friend who actually liked sports at our chill New Years Eve gathering, about how I just had a bad feeling about this game.

When TOSU was up by two scores in the 4th quarter, I had the split feeling of being disappointed that Georgia was on the verge of choking against another team notorious for choking in TOSU, and how they were no longer buoyed by the baby luck that brought them, the Braves and Virginia Tech successes over her first year of existence, which is why they were crashing back to normalcy.  But at the same time, a degree of satisfaction at being right at the prediction that TOSU would pull the upset, because this is exactly what happened in 2014 when TOSU was so overlooked in favor of Alabama, before they steamrolled them en route to winning the first-ever CFB natty, but when it came down to it, I still would’ve preferred to see Georgia win, because seeing TOSU is always a treat.

But then fates intervened again, and TOSU just had to pull another TOSU and threaten to choke themselves, in a battle of notorious chokers.  Georgia would threaten, but it looked like TOSU got the stop, and forced Georgia to settle for the seemingly fruitless field goal that didn’t change their need for two TDs, but at least put them into a position where the second one would be a game winner and not a game tie-er.

Next thing you know, Georgia gets a stop, scores, and then gets another stop, and suddenly in crunch time, Georgia’s in a position to take the lead, which they do, with less than a minute to go.  In a battle of two programs notorious for choking, it was a war of who was going to fuck up last and go home as a result, and it was looking like it was going to be TOSU. 

But as many football fans know, 0:54 seconds might as well be 54:00 minutes, and before you know it, TOSU has gotten down the field, passed the arbitrary television field goal range marker, and they’re suddenly in a position to possibly win the game with a field goal.

All the while, the clock is ticking down towards midnight, where my friends are all watching Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Years Eve, as tourists in Times Square who have been likely standing there since 5 am, with pee jugs all hidden from cameras, are pretending like they’re having the greatest day of their lives, while the most exciting college football game in recent history is happening 15 miles away in Downtown Atlanta where not any one of us wants to be remotely close to.

The countdown to midnight starts taking up the screen, and I’m watching on my phone as Gamecast seems to be frozen forever, presumably where TOSU is setting up for the game winner while Georgia is presumably burning their last timeouts in an attempt to ice the kicker, and as we get to the last ten seconds of 2022, the snap and the kick are happening, and by the time the kick sails wider than I-285, and the refs are signaling NO GOOD, it’s suddenly 2023.

Seriously, it’s bonkers to me just how perfectly timed everything occurred, where Georgia completes a legendary comeback and survives the upset, at the very same time when the ball drops in Times Square, and the Peach drops less than a mile outside of Mercedes Benz Arena, and there are probably 100,000 people going apeshit gonzo in the 30303 zip code with thousands more around the Georgia, Ohio and sports bars across the nation, all while the new year changes, with millions more celebrating that.

I could only imaging the insanity that was occurring in Downtown Atlanta after the new year had lapsed.  Jubilation over survival and being on the winning side of an epic bowl game, all capped off with the celebration and jovial happiness of many others for bringing in the new year in memorable fashion.  With the cherry on top being THE Ohio State getting jobbed in a humiliating manner.  As much as casuals will throw the kicker under the bus, frankly he should never have been in a position where he was relied upon to deliver the win.  Watching the highlights of the game after the fact, TOSU’s defense got absolutely shredded in those last two drives, and they’re the motherfuckers who lost the game, not the kicker.

Whatever though.  TOSU loses, Georgia gets to defend their championship and go for two, and the New Year was brought in with good company and a chill and relaxed evening.  Seems like a fun start to me.

Year’s End: Was 2022 a bad year?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My fantastic mother-in-law signed me up for some virtual races that give medals for Christmas, but among them was a run called F*CK 2022.  The medal of the run is a middle finger which of course I’m cool with, but what got my brain churning was the idea that there being a race with this theme, there has to be some overwhelming sentiment that 2022 was anything but a good year.

Which brings us to the question in the subject of this post, was 2022 a bad year?

Honest question, because I’ve been living in a pretty small bubble since 2022, and my exposure to the news and happenings of the world outside of it are more limited than ever, and I’ve become one of those grownups who lets theFacebook feed me curated news and really only hear of things from that, Apple News and the shit that my friends talk about in a group chat. 

I don’t watch any television beyond the specific things I want to watch, which most certainly does not include any form of television news and I don’t venture out on the internet to all the news websites and Atlanta-centric sites I used to, so I’m going blind to even local things.

In the past, I felt it was important to be well informed and knowledgeable of news and current events, because if anything at all, that could make me better at conversation, but I really just like being in the know of things.  But after the rise of COVID and having kids and having kids in the age of COVID, it’s just not as important, and far behind the priority of making sure my kids are safe and fed every day.

Needless to say, my bubble has shrunken to where I have to ask other people if they think a year was bad or not, because I don’t really think my opinion holds any weight.  Because within my bubble exists pretty much just my kids, mythical wife, sports, wrestling and working for the sake of making money in order to live, and just about everything else exists outside of it.

Throughout the last few years, I’ve created living documents for every year, where I’ve literally narrated a tiny blurb to summarize every single day, of notable things and happenings, because I’m of the mindset that something important happens every single day, be it as small as one of my kids successfully eating something new, or as momentous as Russia invading the Ukraine and daring the rest of the world into another World War.

Some years have been really sad to look back through, because there’s a mass shooting every single month, or the deaths of notable people in the world, but as far as my interests and explorations of the world via the internet go, combined with the happenings of my daily life, I don’t think I’m wrong in thinking that something important does happen, every single day.

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