On The Plate ... 2/9/06

Giving Up Game-Tying Dunks Blows

Vanderbilt (74) at Alabama (77). Looks like a respectable score, doesn't it? Wrong. If you look a little deeper you'll come to find out that Vanderbilt was up 2 with 2.3 seconds left and 'Bama threw a length of the court pass to an unguarded SOB who promptly dunked just before the buzzer. Absolutely vomit-inducing pathetic. The rest is history…the Dores have lost 4 in a row and now need spiritual intervention to turn what was once a promising season around. Even better news? Kentucky comes to Memorial Gym on Saturday looking for revenge. Remember that in January Vandy won at Rupp Arena for the first time since Moses parted the Red Sea. Great for me. Yippee, now UK gets to tear my heart out, like they always do at Memorial Gym. And don't forget the fun fact that the Dores lost to Georgia last Saturday in the same gym located squarely on that brilliant campus in Nashville. How do you spell disappointment? V-A-N-D-E-R-B-I-L-T.

Note to self: don't get out of your head all weekend long and expect to do anything productive soon afterwards, except to get out of your head on a Tuesday night. Note to self redux: don't get out of your head on a Tuesday night and expect to be able to write a column anytime soon afterwards. And by afterwards, I mean days.

No, I didn't see a minute of the Holy War. No, I didn't see a minute of Maryland/UVA. And no, I didn't see a minute of Duke/UNC. I don't even remember who played this past weekend. (That's a f'ing lie… 'Nova almost gave me a coronary, Duke's almost-L to the Noles nearly gave me unbridled joy, Wisconsin's loss at Purdue hurt my brain, Taquan Do Dean's buzzer beating triple was glorius, Georgetown's W over Pitt frightened me silly, and, as I have already mentioned, those GD Dores gave me acid reflux in losing at home to the Dawgs.) Last night, however, I was able to stay awake long enough to watch Northwestern upset Iowa which destroyed what was drawn up as a GD geniusified parlay. Good times. F.

Tonight I get back in the saddle…I'm heading to MCI Center for St. John's at Georgetown…and I'm dressing like the Red Man in a Lou Carnesecca sweater. Not the Red Storm. Red Storm is so degrading to all natural disaster victims.

Things will happen. Stories will be written. And my "early February I hate everything" annual depression will cease to exist. And that's a good thing…I really need to stop listening to Guns N Roses' "Coma" every morning on the Metro en route to work. It can't be healthy.