Can finally focus on basketball season

The Heels lost a very entertaining Meineke Car Care Bowl yesterday, 30-31, to Dalal Abulhasn's West Virginia Mountaineers. To their credit the Mountaineers, especially quarterback Pat White, made plays down the stretch and the Heels did not.

Despite a phenomenal performance by Hakeem Nicks, who dominated the first half for Carolina, the Heels could not overcome turnovers and dropped passes in the second half. Leading 30 to 24 and driving into West Virginia territory on a drive to put the game away, Shaun Draughn fumbled on the 30. Earlier in the final stanza Greg Little, who had a nice game catching and running the football, dropped a long pass that would have given the Heels a big first down.

Finally, T.J. Yates was intercepted with less than 2 minutes to go on his only bad pass of the game. Those plays were the difference in the game and the loss.

I would have felt better if Hansbrough, or at least Danny Green, were on the field for the football Heels.

Despite the final outcome, the season was a good one for the Heels. We saw Butch Davis point the program in the right direction last season, and the progress continued this year with 8 wins, a bowl game, and road wins at Rutgers and Miami. Best all all, this is still a relatively young team with loads of talent returning. That's true even with Brandon Tate graduating and if Nicks goes pro early.

And despite the final score, Evan and I had a fun time watching the game and tackling each other during commercials.

But before looking forward to the 2009 football season we must turn to the 2009 basketball Heels, who get back in action tonight against Rutgers.

One Quick Nats Note

The Nats did not sign Severna Park-native Mark Teixeira despite putting some serious cheese on the table. I'm not sure he is worth that money, money that the Nats will probably spend on Adam Dunn and hopefully some pitching.

The Yankees upgraded their pitching with CC Sabathia, but even with A.J. Burnett (who only produces in a contract year) and Teixeira I'm not that impressed with the Yankees lineup, projected to be:

LF Johnny Damon (on the downside of his career); SS Derek Jeter (ditto, but not as steep a slide as Damon); 1B Mark Teixeira and 3B Alex Rodriguez (legit threats); DH Hideki Matsui (oft injured and like Damon not the threat he once was); RF Xavier Nady (serviceable but hardly intimidating; I'd go with Nick Swisher); C Jorge Posada (fading fast as most 35+ catchers do); 2B Robinson Cano and CF Melky Cabrera (neither have been focused nor productive the last two seasons; or use Swisher in CF).

Anyway, I'd still put the Yankees behind the Rays and Red Sox in the AL East for 2009.

As for the Nats, though he strikes out a lot and is yet another former Reds player, Dunn would be a nice addition. No one on the Nats hit more than 15 homers last year and Dunn is a consistent 40 homer guy. He'd look good in the four hole.

The Nats would look semi-legit with this lineup: LF Willingham (24 homers with Florida last year); CF Milledge; RF Dukes; 3B Zimmerman; SS Guzman; 2B Willie Harris???? ideally the Nats sign Orlando Hudson and do NOT give the job to Mets reject Anderson Hernandez; 1B Adam Dunn?; C Jesus Flores.

The pitching staff is a bigger question. Former Marlin Scott Olson and former O Daniel Cabrera will likely be the 2nd and 5th starters, respectively, with John Lannan in the rotation as the 3rd or even number one starter. Depending how Cabrera performs in spring training, the Nats could have three rotation - but at least two - spots open, with folks like Colin Balester, Shaun Hill, Jason Bergman, Shairon Martis, Matt Chico and even Mike O'Connor to battling for a spot.

More than anything else

This time of year it's the anticipation, more than anything else, that drives me and others nuts.  

When, oh when, will the Meineke Car Care Bowl finally get here?

What an incredibly lame name for a bowl game.  Will Carolina add that corporate name - or logo - to the 'ring of honor' at Kenan?  Could anything be more crass?  Great to see amateur athletes shilling for companies like Fed Ex, Meineke, Papajohns.com (for my money, if you're playing in a bowl with .com in it you are officially in the lamest bowl of them all), and other leading lights of American capitalism.

At 46 I'm entitled to sound like a cranky old(ish) man, but I liked it better when there were only four New Year's Day bowl games: Rose, Cotton, Sugar and Orange.  There were other bowls, like the Gator, Liberty, Sun and Peach, but for years that was about it.  You could easily and obviously gauge how your season went: if you played on New Year's Day, you probably won your conference and were among the best teams in the country.  If you played in the Gator Bowl, etc. you had a above average season.  Unlike now, where a 6-5 season gets you a code to redeem at a pizza company's website and a reward for being mediocre.

Christmas Redux

We had our typical Manuel-Merow Christmas yesterday: Alison and the kids stayed in their pjs all day playing games and hanging out. This year that mainly meant playing Mario Kart, Wii Music and Mario and Sonic at the Olympics on the Wii, Ariadne playing brain bowl and a fashion show game on Nintendo DS, and Evan goofing off with all things Star Wars (light sabre, model x-wing fighter, etc.).  The kids had a great day, and were smiling from 8 am to 11 pm when they finally went to bed.  I'm usually a Christmas outlier: I take a shower and usually go for a walk - and go outside! - after lunch.

Another Christmas tradition was watching some NBA basketball.  The Celtics and Lakers played an entertaining game with the Lakers ending the Celtics' win streak. I didn't have much rooting interest in the game, but still can not root for the Celtics.  

The Wizards lost again later that night to the Cavaliers.  Washington, especially Antawn Jamison, played great and had an eight-point lead with two minutes to go until the referees whistled three questionable calls against the Wizards.  Another tradition, home teams led by a superstar getting the calls. 

A few more Christmas Day hoopservations:

• Does anyone look more European than Pau Gasol?  The terrible shaggy haircut, 'I still live with my parents' beard, soccer-ready upper body?
• I think that game featured two NBA players - TWO - without ANY tattoos: Leon Powe and Derrick Fisher. Had to be a record.
• The Wizards need a point-guard.  They had trouble all day getting the ball to their best players: Jamison and Butler.  Mike James scored a lot yesterday, but they need a one who can initiate their office and get those too lots of looks.  They don't have that now.

Tyler Hansbrough

I was 'Obama-wins' happy on Thursday night when Tyler Hansbrough broke Phil Ford's scoring record at Carolina. As it happened, I was in the car so had XM on and got to listen to Woody Durham call the record-setting basket.  

But there were two reasons I was so happy.

One, Hansbrough is Hansbrough. I'm not skilled enough to add anything to his resume, but he really is not only the epitome of Carolina basketball, but of sport itself.  Sport is still important for a number of reasons - fun, exercise, competition - but to me the essence of the endeavor is selflessly giving everything you've got for a greater (team) goal, and of course stepping up. Is there an athlete ANYWHERE who more honestly pays homage to that ethic? When you watch Hansbrough play you are watching pure, honest effort, the essence of what sport should be about.

The Carolina part is there to make that glow even shinier.   His effort is for a greater team and institutional goal - Carolina basketball.  And Hansbrough has a lot of Dean in him - a hyper-competitive yet humble athlete.

Two, it was a brief but great celebration of Carolina basketball complete with Phil Ford on the floor.  For all the Tar Heel heroes - Jordan, Worthy, May, Noel, Hansbrough, Cunningham, McAdoo, Scott, Rosenbluth, Jamison - and despite being number two on the scoring list, Phil Ford will simply always be the greatest Tar Heel of all time. He never won a national championship (but made the 1977 Final Four) and washed out in the pros (after being named rookie of the year) due to drugs (thanks again hippies!) and alcohol (which also cost him the Carolina job; Dean had groomed him to be his or Guthridge's eventual successor) Phil Ford still reigns.  Perhaps those setbacks make him that much more heroic in a Faulkneresque way.

Kudos to Tyler Hansbrough.  Anyone who plays that way and outscores a Who's Who of college basketball cements their place near the top of the list of all-time greatest Tar Heels, the ultimate list in college basketball. Roy Williams spoke for millions when he said there will be no one sadder in college basketball when Hansbrough leaves Chapel Hill than ol' Roy - and the legion of Tar Heel fans across the universe.  

[Note to self: next time you type 'has a lot of Dean in him' you should end the entry right then and there.]

Carolina 'Clip Reel'

While home sick yesterday afternoon - I think just my second sick day (where I was actually sick in the last 20 years) - I discovered this great collection of Carolina YouTube clips courtesy of ESPN: The Magazine: http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3699803

It's an Orthodox thing (or is it an Ottoman thing?)

With the Carolina hoops team on exam break, but mainly for the issues themselves I've been focused on the riots in Greece and the Blagojevich story in Illinois. The stories are linked, and not just by Orthodoxy; Blagojevich is Serbian Orthodox. [I've also spend lots of time thinking, and making calls, about who will be the next Secretary of the Interior. Here's hoping my man Raul Grijalva gets named to that post this week, but that's for another blog.]

Back to Greece, which is a strong democracy but a troubled one. The riots demonstrate that the motherland lacks some of the democratic institutions we take for granted. A healthy democracy has healthy institutions: courts, bureaucracies, press, organized and active civic and charity groups (everything from the Salvation Army to Sierra Club), elected bodies on a local, state and national level. Greece has most of those, but you need all of them to be more than a country that has regular elections and peaceful transitions of power - no small feat that, and I don't mean to down play those two accomplishments - and one that has a flourishing democratic culture and a free, mobile and open society.

These riots have shown that when it comes to the democratic and modern state bureaucracy Greeks have NO faith that government policies and hiring will be done equitably and fairly. It's not just government; the same is true in academia where bureaucracies care more about their jobs then they do about educating young people. That is why so many successful Greeks - in Greece, not the diaspora - are products of American, British and German universities.  There is a good commentary on this in The Economist (shout out to Bill Wood for the link).

The problem is not new, and seems to be a stubbornly persistent relic of the Ottoman era. Over the summer I read Thanos Vlekas, considered the first modern Greek novel.  Published in the 1850s, the book chronicles the trials and troubles of a hard working Greek farmer who consistently gets screwed and imprisoned at various points in his life by the bureaucracy, army and land owners in the newly independent Greek state of the 1830s.  Bribes, connections and nepotism were de rigeur in Ottoman-ruled Greece, and bribes and nepotism are still very common in Greece, even after almost 30 years in the EU. It appears the Greek public is finally fed up. 

That Greek culture of inertia is one reason Greeks in America are so different from Greeks in Greece. Nothing is more Greek-American than being an entrepreneur, so much so that the Greek diner or pizza place is a prominent part of the American tapestry.  The opposite is true in Greece where it is harder to have your own place and make you own way.

  
But before we get too smug here in America we have to talk about fellow Orthodox Christian Rod Blagojevich. That kind of stuff still happens in Chicago and elsewhere. Here in Washington, newly appointed school board chair Michelle Rhee is having the same problems with the District's entrenched education bureaucracy that students in Greece do.  A chart in today's The New York Times implies that Rhode Island is the most corrupt state in the U.S.  And by no means are Greek-Americans immune; over the years I imagine many Greek-American businessmen and women have paid bribes, etc. for building permits, etc.

Corruption is everywhere, but the reason residents of Illinois aren't in the streets is that unlike Greeks, Americans generally have faith in their elections, elected officials, and institutions. After all, Blajojevich got caught and we just elected Barack Obama. Things change here.

More importantly, the corruption in American is usually episodic, not systematic like it appears to be in Greece. And those episodes have NOT hindered the mobility and liberty of most Americans.  That it one reason why Greeks have been in the streets this week and folks in Illinois have not. 

A good day in Greece

While the riots continued in Greece today, though it appears at a much milder level, there was some good news from Athens today as Panathanaikos defeated Anothisos 1-0. The victory not only qualifies Pana for the sweet 16 knock-out round, but InterMilan also lost so the Greens won Group B of the UEFA Champions League.

Panathinaikos got off to a terrible start, losing their first two games, but rallied late to win their last four games including two on the road.

The knock-out round starts in February.

The stands looks packed for today's game, so I guess only Olympiacos and AEK fans were in the streets.

Not a Great Day for Greece

The rioting in Greece has now gone on for three days. The shooting of the teenager in Greece was a terrible tragedy, but the riots that have lasted for half a week are way out of proportion, at least in my opinion.

As is usually the case, the shooting triggered action on the simmering complaints about the Karamanlis government and recent corruption scandals in Athens, and gave the lefty-wing crazies an excuse to riot. And as you know, Greece is home to some of the western world's most active and organized anarchists (ironic on many levels). So instead of marching peacefully or holding a sit-in or calling into a radio show/write a letter to the editor, etc. etc., protesters turn to bricks and molotov cocktails, much in the same way anarchists "greeted" Bill Clinton - and embarrassed Greeks around the world - when he visited Athens 9 years ago.

Parts of the Greek left are incredibly stupid. They should be proud of fighting the Nazis during World War II as the resistance was led and primarily made up of Communists. But once the Cold War started it seemed obvious that Greece was finally and firmly part of the west, and that the west was better than the communist east. Many leftists and students in Greece continue to romanticize communism and oppose anything to do with the west - NATO, the EU, alliances with the United States - despite the recent and terrible histories and experiences of neighbors like Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, etc.

The east-west schizophrenia goes back hundreds of years to the Byzantine empire, the fourth Crusade of 1204 (where western Crusaders sacked and conquered Constantinople rather than march on Jerusalem) and being torn between looking west to Rome - and beyond - or being more comfortable looking east even if that meant being part of the Ottoman Empire. Of course, the dirty little secret of Greek history is that most Greeks at the time of the fall of Constantinople certainly preferred the Ottoman Empire to being subservient to Rome and the Catholic Church.

The end of World War I, and the way the western powers handled the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus of 1974 feeds that lingering mistrust of the west.

Anyway, that's a long winded way of saying there's a lot of stupidity coupled with institutional memory in the streets of Athens, Thessaloniki, etc. this week.

Greek police should not shoot and kill teenagers, but the Greek left needs to understand that Greece is firmly ensconced in the western world, a world of liberal democracies and civil societies and the European Union, not a third-world country where seething mobs influence politics and society.

I'm embarrassed by the police and the rioters.

More Carolina Sports

Big soccer weekend for the Heels.

The women advanced to Sunday's championship game after defeating fellow number one seed UCLA on Friday 1-0. Carolina scored on senior midfielder Yael Averbuch's first half penalty kick and held on for the win. Averbuch is Carolina's all time leading scorer, quite a feat when you consider the who's who of women's soccer who have played in Chapel Hill.

Carolina plays Notre Dame for the second time this season in soccer and the fourth time this fall (men's hoops, and football). Notre Dame is undefeated and untied this season, and is the only team to defeat Carolina so it should be a great game. The Fighting Irish will be favored, but the Heels will be playing in Cary in front of a sell-out crowd of 8,000 mostly Heels fans.

The men play today - in Chapel Hill against Northwestern - for a chance to go to the final four next weekend in Texas. The Heels limped into the NCAA tournament but have gotten hot at the right time.

Go Heels!

Two random notes

• We TiVO the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and were catching up on some old shows including one that featured 'LA punk legends' X. It was the original line up, with John Doe - best rock and roll voice of ALL TIME - Exene Cervenka, D.J. Bonebreak, and my man Bill Zoom on guitars. They were promoting their new greatest hits record, and played "New World." The lyrics, which were written for Ronald Reagan, still resonate 20 years later. They still tour quite a bit - I've seen them at the old and new 9:30 Club - but it was great to see them on TV.
• One last pop culture note: I've gotten way into 30 Rock lately, having watched the first season on DVD and catching other episodes on-line or via TiVO. Star and fellow Greek-American Tina Fey is on the cover of Vanity Fair, and in the interview mentions one of the traits she picked up raised as a 'Greek girl' is a predilection for cheetah prints.
  

Heels Handle Spartans

I really enjoyed watching Carolina thoroughly dominate Michigan State last night in the ACC-Big 10 challenge. It was a phenomenal performance by a squad that is playing NBA-quality basketball. To beat a team like Michigan State - quality program, perennial contender, pre-season final four favorite - that bad on the road is impressive.

This team just looks different than most college teams. Though it's only December and Hansbrough has only played in four games, the Heels are in sync and playing a high level of college basketball. The fact that Hansbrough, Ellington, Green and Lawson have played together three to four years makes this talented team a scary one. And I think it's noticeable because in this day and age teams don't stay together very long, at least teams as talented as the Heels.

Last night's game unfolded much like the win over Notre Dame, a top 10 opponent that hung with the Heels early only to be overwhelmed by Carolina's talent and effort.

And as it was versus Notre Dame, the two most impressive talents on the floor were Tyler Hansbrough and Ty Lawson. Hansbrough was methodical and unstoppable as he posted another double-double. Once again he showed off his improved range, hitting a number of jumpers, and on the boards he is simply more determined than most players. Determination alone will make him a success at the next level.

On Lawson, I'm not sure where to begin. As good as Hansbrough was, Lawson was even better. Steals, assists, three-pointers, fast breaks, drives to the hole, etc. etc. etc. Lawson is playing with a focus and maturity that seems unstoppable right now. He's not just a fast point guard tailor made to run Roy Williams' offense. Lawson has grown into a complete basketball player and point guard.

Heels High Notes

• Great to see Wayne Ellington break out of his mini-slump. He looked great in the first half, hit shots from all over the floor, and finished with 17 points.
• I continue to be impressed with Ed Davis, who finished with 10 and 7 in only seventeen minutes. This guy is this year's Marvin Williams. What a weapon off the bench.
• My favorite play last night - among many including the two fast breaks started by my man Danny Green - was Will Graves' dunk off an in bounds pass. It was a great Carolina basketball play. That was not a play designed for Graves, simply two basketball players being smart on the floor, pure Carolina.
• Got to see Sheed in the stands!
• Once again, the ACC won the Big 10 challenge 6-5. The final tally should have been 8 to 3; Virginia Tech should have beaten Wisconsin, ditto Georgia Tech over Penn State, and Miami would have won if McClintock hadn't slapped an Ohio State hoopster. But even with those losses the ACC won, and the top two ACC teams - Carolina and Duke - humiliated the top two Big 10 teams on the road.
• Finally, Carolina's women's soccer team is back in the final four for the 24th time in the 27 history of NCAA women's soccer. They play again on Friday night, in Cary, on ESPNU. The Heels are shooting for their 22nd NCAA championship.

Go Heels!