Dave Sez

Turkey Bowling

TechSideLine.com has an interesting article up today reviewing ACC bowl performance over the past 13 years. Why 13 years? Because that's exactly the length of the current Virginia Tech bowl streak. So, it's a bit of a self-serving sample, but it's still a good review of recent history.

The Hokies have been to a bowl in each of the past 13 seasons, but have gone only 6-7 in those games.

Florida State has also been to 13 consecutive (24 actually) bowl games, including an incredible 11 BCS games in that period. The Seminoles have 8 wins and 5 losses in those games.

Surprisingly, Virginia ties Miami for third place with 11 bowls. Miami's number was hurt a bit by probation, but is boosted with 6 BCS appearances in their 11 games.

Boston College's stats stick out for this reason - in their 9 bowl games, they have 8 wins! That's an amazing percentage, and those 8 wins tie FSU for the most over this period.

Curiously, bitter rivals UNC and NC State have performed nearly identically, with 8 bowls and 5 wins.

Bias Video

I wrote an article the other day about the twenty-year anniversary of the death of Len Bias. In that piece, I tried - probably unsuccessfully - to describe just how good he was in college. Well, thanks to Bill Simmons' latest piece, I now have a way to show you. YouTube (a fantastic website) has a great five-minute video of Len Bias highlights. A few in particular you should look for:

• The infamous Carolina dunk. In the midst of single-handedly upsetting the Heels in Chapel Hill (in what would be their first-ever loss in the Dean Dome) Bias hits a long jumper and then promptly steals the inbounds pass and throws down a nasty reverse dunk. It was one of the greatest I'm-going-to-win-this-game-myself-and-there's-not-a-damn-thing-you-can-do-about-it moments I've seen in college basketball.


• The black and white picture of Bias going up for a rebound. Check out the muscles throughout the guy's body! And remember, this was years before basketball players started bulking up. His build was extraordinary in those days.


• The shot-block at about the 3:15 mark of the video - look where his hand is!

As an added bonus, check out this other Bias clip on YouTube. It's another UNC-Maryland game, this time in College Park. Bias has his shot blocked by Sam Perkins and then Michael Jordan goes the other way. MJ punctuates the fast break with his infamous rock-the-cradle dunk that we all now recognize from his NBA days. At the time, that dunk was not only never seen before (although I think he might have done it first against Clemson), but never even contemplated. And folks will try to tell you that Jordan wasn't awesome in college.

The ACC in the early 80's was simply incredible.

Ice, Ice Baby

StateFans Nation found a nice article at rivals.com about former Wolfpack star Rodney Monroe. Monroe, of course with Chris Corchiani, made up Fire & Ice, the potent NC State backcourt of the late Valvano years.

It's always fun to catch up with former ACC stars who didn't quite make it in the NBA.

Oh, the SFN guys also linked to a post of theirs that I missed back in January putting together their top-five ACC shooters.
Since my ACC history goes back to the same time period as the author's ('81 or so), I'd probably pick the same five. One difference is that I'd probably rank Dennis Scott a skosh higher. I'd put the five in order this way:
Dennis Scott
J.J. Redick
Rodney Monroe
Mark Price
Randolph Childress

Childress really wasn't in the same class as the other four, but gets bumped up solely for that ACC Tournament run.

Thud

This is the way the World Cup ends
Not with a bang, but with a whistle

The United States wasn't playing a great game, but they were playing well enough to give themselves a chance. Like they did in each of their first two games, they controlled possession for most of the first half, but produced only a few good scoring chances. Claudio Reyna made an awful mistake on the back line and it put the US in an early 1-0 hole. But the boys had recently struck back to make it 1-1 and were starting to show the life that would be necessary to beat the dynamic and dangerous Ghanaians. Meanwhile, Italy had taken a 1-0 lead over the Czech Republic. Amazingly and improbably, the pieces were falling into place.

And then...

Whistle.

Point.

Penalty kick.

Dream over.

With one horrendous decision by the referee, the United States was vanquished. He awarded Ghana a penalty kick on a play that not only wasn't worthy of a PK, it wasn't even a foul. That goal made it 2-1 with just a few minutes to go until the half. Stunned, our team stumbled into the locker room down one. In the other locker room, Ghana set their final strategy. With Italy beating the Czechs 1-0 and playing 11 on 10 after Jan Polak was sent off, Ghana knew they were in good shape. No team in the world is better than the Azzurri at holding a lead, so it was a very safe bet that they'd maintain their lead over the depleted and dejected Czechs. With a Czech loss, all Ghana needed was a tie to move on to the knockout round. It's not too hard to fashion a strategy in a game where a tie is as good as a win and you already have a one goal lead. Pack your men behind the ball and just look for quick counterattacks against a pressing US side. So that's what Ghana did. And it worked.

To the US' discredit, they didn't come out in the second half with the fire they needed. The spark they showed just before and after Clint Dempsey's sensation first-half goal never came back. Sure, they had a few flurries and Eddie Johnson seemed to make Ghana nervous in the back, but they just never looked like a desperate, dangerous team. And that's the real reason why they are headed home after just three games. Mistakes, bad luck and bad calls can and do happen to every team. The best teams rise above and get the results they need anyway, but our boys never did.

It's hard to explain just what went wrong. The early punching bag is coach Bruce Arena who stubbornly stuck to his 4-5-1 alignment and kept the dangerous Eddie Johnson on the bench for too long. It didn't take long after the game for many US soccer fans to declare that it was time for a new face at the helm of the national team.

Other worthy targets are the young, supposed-stars DaMarcus Beasley and Landon Donovan. The two good friends were sensational four years ago and produced a hopefulness and even cockiness never seen before in US fans. What happened? Donovan fizzled out in Europe - twice - since then, but has starred for the US and the MLS. For some reason, he just never seemed to be into these WC games. It's hard to remember a single play that he made. Beasley did manage to hold on, barely, in Europe, but he was even worse than Donovan in this Cup. Today, even though he had a beautiful assist for our only goal, Beasley was meek and erratic. Probably 2/3 of his touches resulted in turnovers. I don't know what happened to our two prodigies, but somehow they are less capable now at 24-years-old than they were at 20.

What does this mean for soccer in the United States? Many felt that a good showing at this World Cup would be yet another enormous log on the fire of fan interest in this country. If that was true, does a poor showing mean a bucket of water has been poured? Will fans turn away? I say no. Surely there are many potential fans who will have been lost, but one thing that the coverage of this year's games has shown me is that interest in this country is much greater than I realized. ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC have been getting very respectable ratings for the live, daytime games and I've heard many reports of crowds in bars and at workplaces following games that don't even involve the US. It may be that the interest is there and growing despite our team's poor performance. Perhaps soccer - at least high-level, World Cup-quality soccer - is palatable to US fans after all. Maybe our relative lack of interest is not so much because soccer sucks, but because we are so rarely exposed to great soccer. It hadn't dawned on my why I just can't get into MLS games very often until I watched these games. The difference in the level of play between the MLS and the world's top players is stunning. And soccer at the highest level - just watch this goal from Argentina - is awesome.

So what next for the US? I don't claim to know enough to have the answers, but one thing that is clear to me now is that we need more players playing in the top leagues. I think our guys just seemed a bit stunned on the big stage, surrounded by so many elite players. A few of our guys, like Claudio Reyna, Kasey Keller and Brian McBride, have experience in top leagues and those guys are the ones that seemed to keep their composure. We need more of that. We also need to develop a few world-class strikers. We had no one out there who stuck fear in the defense, who seemed like they could score at any time and from any distance. Our whole offense seemed to be floating balls in McBride's general direction and hoping that he'd get his head on one. That may work in CONCACAF, but it doesn't cut it against the top teams in the world.

All that said, despite the severe disappointment of this year's performance, I'm still very hopeful about soccer's future in this country, both in terms of fans of the game and in our national team's performance. We just have too many great athletes to not produce a few elite, world-class players. They will come and when they do, the United States - team and fans - will be ready to move on to the next level. Until then, we'll just have to be content to enjoy the wonderful play of teams like Argentina, Brazil and The Netherlands.

Let's just hope the refs get better.

It Was 20 Years Ago Today

Hey, did you hear who won the award for the best basketball player under six feet?

Len Bias.

That's the joke that the speaker at my high school overheard while she was in the bathroom before her speech. It was less than two years after the death of her son and now Lonise Bias was hearing some snooty white kids joke about it.

When she told us all that she just overhead some among us joking about her dead son, my classmates and I cringed. While she may have thought we were all just callous rich kids, it wasn't true that we didn't care. It didn't matter who you were, if you were a fan of college basketball in the mid-80s, particulary of ACC basketball, you were a fan of Len Bias. He was a baaaad man. I hated Maryland, but I loved watching Bias play. He was big, strong, agile and competitive as hell. Think Michael Jordan with two more inches and 20 pounds more muscle. In ACC terms, Bias was sort of a cross between Jordan and James Worthy, too strong for small players and way too quick and athletic for power forwards.

There's no guarantee of course that Bias would have been a star in the NBA, but I've never heard anyone say they thought he'd be anything but. He had All-Star written all over him. Or so we thought.

It turned out that Bias had another side that we didn't see. A stupid, irresponsible side. That aspect of his life killed him at 22. When reports first came out, it was claimed that June 18 was the first time he'd ever used cocaine. Slowly, other stories leaked out that challenged that notion. Bias had been a user for some time. Those darker stories of his partying, along with the revelations that he hadn't really been going to school, took down Lefty Dreisell and sent the Maryland basketball program into a nearly decade-long tailspin.

But there's another side of the Len Bias story, one a bit more positive. Often times out of extreme bad news comes good. As Jay Bilas says in this Michael Wilbon article, everyone of my generation remembers where they were when they heard the news of Bias' death. I was home for the summer after my sophomore year of high school. I worked as a bus boy, so went to bed late. When, I woke up on the morning of June 19 at the crack of noon, I flipped on SportsCenter and very quickly heard the news. It stunned me. How could Len Bias, the biggest, baddest mother around die just like that? At that point in my life I had never been around cocaine (and to my great fortune, never since either), but sitting there watching that story unfold, I quickly determined that I would never, ever touch that stuff. If it could kill Len Bias, it could kill me. I'd never take that chance.

Lonise Bias realized quickly that that would be her son's legacy. He wouldn't set NBA records or win titles, but he would, in death, save lives. She realized that and hit the road to tell her son's story to everyone she could, even if it meant enduring the cruel jokes of adolescent punks.

Name That Site 6

I was checking out my site today, replacing a few images that went missing in the Great Crash of Aught Six and it got me thinking about my Name That Site series. I haven't done one in a while and dammit, it's time. The problem was what to pick? I needed a good one. A hard one.

I think I found it.

The pic below, as always, is a landmark with some critical ACC history. Some have been current football stadiums or basketball arenas. Others have been sites critical to an ACC national championship. Can you figure out what this is? (click the pic for a larger view)

If you think you know the answer, leave it in the Comments. Also, feel free to go back to one of the previous contests (one, two, three, four, five) and have a guess at those. Since I lost all of my comments, those contests were all wiped clean. You can look like a genius!

The US Tries Again

After five long days of agonizing, excuse-making and short-sighted exclamations that this is why soccer will never be popular in the United States, our boys kick it off again tomorrow against Italy. Sure, the Italians are a world power and we will be severe underdogs, but anything can happen in one game and I'm staying optimistic. The way the first round goes, you play each team in your four-team group once, earning three points for a win and one for a tie. The top two teams in each group advance to the 16-team playoff.

Normally, four points will get you about a 50% chance of going through. 5 points puts you in roughly 2/3 of the time and 6 points is a near lock. In our group, Group E, The Czech Republic and Italy both have 3 points and the US and Ghana have zip. Since head-to-head results and goal-differential are used as tie-breakers, the best thing for the US is for the Czechs to keep on beating everyone else. Let them get 9 points and we'll fight the other two teams for the remaining points.

If we tie the Italians, they'd have 4 points and we'd need to beat Ghana and have Italy lose to the Czechs just to tie the Italians in the final standings. Then we'd be subject to goal differential and with our 3-0 loss to the Czechs and the Azzurri's 2-0 win over Ghana, we'd still be in trouble. I'd say the odds would be very slim that we could overcome those 5 goals.

If we beat Italy, things would look much better. We'd both be tied with 3 points going into the final games, them against the Czechs and us against Ghana. That would make for a very exciting final day (next Thursday), particularly if the Czechs and Ghanaians tie tomorrow, meaning all four teams would still have a shot in the last game.

I'll say it again - Go USA!

--------------------

Since I tend to focus on ACC news here, and that's what brings my most loyal readers, I'll try to tie our lovely conference to the World Cup.

The US men's roster contains 23 active players. Six of those players never played US college ball, instead going the more modern route of high school straight to the pros. Of the 17 who did play in college, 7 played in the ACC, making it by far the most represented conference.

The ACC veterans:
Chris Albright - UVA (left after sophomore, All-American season)
Gregg Berhalter - UNC (left after three years. Two-time All-American)
Pablo Mastroeni - NC State
Ben Olsen - UVA (left after three years. All-American and NPOY)
Oguchi Onyewu - Clemson (left after two years. All-American)
Eddie Pope - UNC (All-American)
Claudio Reyna - UVA (left after three stellar national-championship seasons. Three-time All-American. Two-time NPOY.)

J.J. In The Clink

I was debating whether or not to post about J.J. Redick's arrest for DWI the other night. I mean, it's a newsworthy story, but then it's not really that big of a deal. Mostly, I considered posting it just for the opportunity to make some jokes.

But then I went and read Chris Chase's take. I should have known better. Chris, as usual, already hit all of the good jokes. He even throws in another J.J. poem. I'm not even going to try to compete with that.

Yanks Down

Surely you know by now. Despite years of building and anticipation, the United States showed up on the pitch yesterday against the Czech Republic and promptly took a dump at midfield. It was ugly.

Actually, before I go into what went wrong, and there was plenty, I should point out the good stuff. The US did control possession for most of the game. They held the ball for nearly twice as long as the Czechs in the first half (and maybe for the game - I didn't see a late update on that). They didn't produce a ton of good scoring chances out of that possession, but Claudio Reyna sent a shot that was only a few inches away from tying the game at 1-1. Had that ball gone in, who knows how the rest of the game would have gone. Maybe that would have woken the Americans from their inexplicable torpor.

On the bad side, well, there was plenty. The US didn't match the Czechs' energy. The US forwards were largely invisible (did Brian McBride even touch the ball once?) as the US' service all day was horrendous. The US wings, DaMarcus Beasley in particular, were tentative and completely ineffective. Beasley showed all the touch of a rec-league fullback. Kasey Keller, among the best keepers in the world, continously kicked the ball to where we weren't; it was his ill-timed punt over the heads of his teammates that led to the first goal. Our defense was disorganized and seemed willing to let Pavel Nedved run all over the field, completely dominating play.

In a word, we sucked. We sucked outloud. We should be better than that. We are better than that. And now we get to - we have to - prove it. Italy beat Ghana 2-0 yesterday, giving the US no real choice but to beat the Italians on Saturday. Do that and there is still a very real chance of advancement. Tie and things look very dim. Lose and it's over.

Given how we looked and how the Azzurri looked against Ghana, it's pretty clear that we'll be severe underdogs. There was no comparison between the levels of passion of our boys and theirs. But that change. You'd hope that confidence would lead to aggression, but in lieu of that, maybe anger and embarassment can do it.

Surely, The Bruce (who was NOT happy after the game) will change things up. Look for at least five different starters on Saturday. I'd guess that he's going to go for a bit more youth and speed. It might be a risk from a technical perspective, but this team needs fire, athleticism and threats. Until Eddie Johnson stepped on the field, the team we fielded yesterday had very little of any of those.

Two games left. No room for error. I'm still hopeful.

Yanks Up!

I don't have time for an in-depth post this morning, so I'll just go with this -
USA! USA! USA!

The Cup Tips!

For a majority of the world, this is one of the biggest sporting days of the past four years - the opening day of the 2006 World Cup. I'm pumped!

There are two games today, host
Germany takes on Costa Rica at noon and Poland faces Ecuador at 3 (EST).

Having the host team open things up is a new tradition. In years past, the defending champion got the honor. They may have stopped that after France was knocked off in their first game in 2002. Germany of course is a traditional soccer power, but they've slipped since the last World Cup. But, they are the home squad and the host nation tends to do well in these large competitions. Costa Rica qualified third out of the United State's qualifying group, CONCACAF and probably was picked to face the Germans first because most expect the Ticos to lose. But don't sleep on them. Costa Rica is not a bad team and nearly advanced to the knockout round in 2002.

In the other matchup, Poland is a slight favorite against the South American squad. The knock on Ecuador is that the can only win when they are at high elevation like in their home stadium in Quito. Ecuador has not fared well in recent friendlies, going 0-3-1 in their last four. Look for Poland to take advantage of a likely friendly crowd and get the win.

Closing The Mills

The NCAA is finally starting to do something about the nasty trend of artificial high schools for basketball players, by
disallowing credits from 15 "schools." Of course, being the NCAA, they pretty much whiffed on the actual diploma mills (none of the 15 schools still have teams and some never did), but it looks like they are headed in the right direction.

If you aren't aware of the trend, what happens is that some coach, usually an AAU snake, decides that he really wants to run an elite high school team. So he finds a group of top players who aren't doing well in regular high schools and he founds a school where they are the only students. Usually they have only a couple (if that) teachers, and those are rarely real teachers with certificates. The schools then give out pretty much all A's to their players. The attraction for the players is easy to see - a good basketball team, no actual schoolwork and instant college eligibility (if they can just manage a minimal SAT score). It's disgusting and I'm glad the NCAA is finally acting.

The first ACC victim may well be Clemson and their top recruit for 2007, LaRon Dendy.

Check out this section from that article (emphasis mine):

Mark Knight, Prince Avenue’s director and basketball coach, told Charleston’s The Post and Courier newspaper that four NCAA representatives had visited the school in early May to examine its credibility.

The school, which has an enrollment of about 85, is not accredited, nor is it affiliated with any state or national high school association. According to the report, none of Prince Avenue’s five faculty members has a teaching certificate.

Anytime that your school's director is also the basketball coach, it's a pretty good bet that the school is a fraud. Of course no teachers with teaching certificates is a clue as well. I'd bet that the claim of 85 students is a lie as well. I'd guess that the actual enrollment is closer to 12-25 (gotta have a JV team too!).

And no, I have no sympathy for Dendy. Sure he's a kid and was probably manipulated, but at some point in your life you have to take some responsibility for yourself, and he's old enough to know what's right and wrong. A kid that attends four high schools in two years, trying to find that perfect fit for his basketball game, is NOT someone that is ready for college. Having his transcript invalidated might be the best thing to ever happen to Dendy, if he really does go on to Hargrave Military Academy as they suggest. Something tells me he won't opt for military school though.

Thanks to the DBR and ACC Basketblog for the links.

Diff'rent Stokes

I love Terry Holland and I have a soft spot for Ricky Stokes too, but this just isn't right. Ricky Stokes, once the spunky point guard who helped take Virginia to the 1984 Final Four, is now the coach at ECU. Stokes had a rough first year, going 8-20 and has responded by revoking the scholarships of eight players. Eight! Most of those guys were recruited by his predecessor, Bill Herrion, but at least one player was recruited by Stokes.

Now, I understand that a coach's job is to win and to win you need talent. I also understand that I don't know the whole story here. There are hints that many of these players were unhappy and threatening to transfer. But this whole thing stinks. These eight players now must all find another place to play with very short notice. While ECU can cut them loose with no warning, the players can't just transfer somewhere else and play right away. They have to sit out a year even though it wasn't their choice to leave.

That sucks. You're better than that, Ricky Stokes.

ACC Players Win NBA Titles

You want to win an NBA title? You better get yourself some ACC players, pronto! Draft them, trade for them, sign them - just get them.

Why?

I'll tell you why - since 1990, there have been 16 NBA Finals. In twelve of those years, one team had more players from the ACC than the other team. Of those twelve teams, eleven won the title. Eleven out of twelve! That's a nearly 92% win rate.

Wanna know who's going to win the NBA Championship this year? The Dallas Mavericks. With Josh Howard, Jerry Stackhouse and Josh Powell, they sport three ACC veterans. The Miami Heat? None. Zilch. Nada. And that's about their chance of winning too. The four other NBA teams since 1990 to manage to reach the finals without an ACC player combined to win 6 games between them. They all lost in six games or less.

The Dallas Mavericks - your 2006 NBA Champs.

Year	Western Champion	ACC Players	Result	Eastern Champion	ACC Players
1990	Portland Trailblazers	1	1–4	Detroit Pistons	1
1991	Los Angeles Lakers	3	1–4	Chicago Bulls	3
1992	Portland Trail Blazers	2	2–4	Chicago Bulls	3
1993	Phoenix Suns	1	2–4	Chicago Bulls	3
1994	Houston Rockets	2	4–3	New York Knicks	1
1995	Houston Rockets	4	4–0	Orlando Magic	3
1996	Seattle SuperSonics	1	2–4	Chicago Bulls	2
1997	Utah Jazz	0	2–4	Chicago Bulls	1
1998	Utah Jazz	0	2–4	Chicago Bulls	2
1999	San Antonio Spurs	1	4–1	New York Knicks	2
2000	Los Angeles Lakers	2	4–2	Indiana Pacers	3
2001	Los Angeles Lakers	2	4–1	Philadelphia 76ers	2
2002	Los Angeles Lakers	1	4–0	New Jersey Nets	0
2003	San Antonio Spurs	2	4–2	New Jersey Nets	0
2004	Los Angeles Lakers	2	1–4	Detroit Pistons	3
2005	San Antonio Spurs	2	4–3	Detroit Pistons	2
2006	Dallas Mavericks	3	0–0	Miami Heat	0

Update: Obviously I can't even read my own charts. The pattern held 10 times out of 12 previously, not 11 out of 12. Of course, now that Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat knocked off the Mavs in six games, it's 10 out of 13.

Best Soccer Players Ever

With the World Cup coming up and given that most Americans don't really know the game's history that well, I figured I'd do my part to help out.

AskMen.com has a nice article running down their picks for the 20 best soccer players of all time. Give it a read. It's a nice primer on not just the great players, but also some of the great teams of all time and some past World Cup champions.

Along with that, how about revisiting that great video of some great soccer goals?

And, thanks to the awesome site that is YouTube.com, some cool vids of some of those great players.

George Best didn't make that list of top 20 players, but any Brit would claim that he was robbed. This video makes a great argument on their behalf.

Of course, you know Pele, but his prime was long ago. I had actually seen very few clips of his game action, so this video really opened my eyes. Incredible. Seriously, don't skip that one.

And speaking of flashy South Americans, you can't forget Maradona. Unfortunately, no clips are quite as well done as the Pele one, but I'll make it up with two good ones. The first is just an amazing clip of him juggling a ball while warming up for a game. Check the stuff he does while seemingly not even trying. And now some clips of him actually playing, including one the most famous goals of all time, his 2/3 field run against England in the '86 World Cup.

How about a modern player who will likely crack the top-20 list when he's done? Brazil's Ronaldinho is not a handsome man, but damn can he do some things with the ball. The flat-footed goal is just sick. This Nike commercial is pretty cool too.

Enjoy.

Glenn Breaks Down The APR

David Glenn did a little reading and put together a couple of table showing how each of the major men's ACC programs fared in the NCAA's Academic Progress Rates (APR) report. As Glenn reports, these numbers came out in February, but no one seemed to write much about them. I remember looking for the full charts when they came out, but couldn't find them (after a rigorous minute with Google, I'm sure) and forgot.

A few observations about the charts:
The basketball list looks surprisingly like recent standings, with UNC, Duke and Wake at the top and Clemson at the bottom.

Duke and Wake ranked in the top three in the ACC in both basketball and football.

FSU shocked me by coming in fourth in both sports. Fourth! If it were arrest rates, I would have expected the Noles to shine, but I didn't think I'd see them near the top of an academic ranking. Good for them.

It appears that NC State's excuse that they struggle because they have so much more emphasis on academics than their rivals doesn't really hold up here (or elsewhere, really). The Pack was 10th in hoops and dead last in football.

Open, Says Wie?

I don't do a lot of breaking story-type articles here - I mean it is a blog - but this one is too good to ignore. 16-year-old Michelle Wie is playing in a US Open - the men's US Open - qualifier today and after 28 holes, she is apparently
only one shot out of making it.

The qualifier has 153 players competing for 18 spots. It is a one-day tournament and they play 36 holes. To put the difficulty in perspective, there are 48 PGA Tour pros in the field.

Wie is sitting at -2 right now, tied for 20th. That means that a birdie puts her in (right now) and if two or more guys ahead of her bogey holes, she's in a playoff.

Did I mention that she's a 16-year-old girl? Incredible. If she makes the top 18 to qualify for the US Open, I think it might just be the greatest accomplishment ever for a female athlete competing against men.

Let's go Michelle!

World Cup Looms

My main focus on this site is discussion of ACC sports, mostly basketball in football - in that order. While I love those sports, and many others, there is no doubt in my mind what the greatest sporting event in the world is - soccer's World Cup. The NCAA basketball tournament is great, nearly perfect, but it just doesn't have the magnitude of soccer's biggest event. College basketball players are NOT the best players in the world, and you just can't compare the excitement of a single university's fans to those of an entire nation.

The World Cup is most like the Olympics in scope, but it's even better for one key reason - the Olympics consist mainly of sports that few play or are interested in when the Olympics aren't in progress, while soccer is without question the most popular sport in the world. Literally billions of people play or follow the game. If you consider the sheer size of the sport, combined with the lack of need for abnormal size to play (unlike basketball, for example), you can easily argue that elite soccer has the best athletes in the world.

The only real knock on the World Cup comes from Americans who don't like the sport. There are a lot of folks who think that soccer is boring, too foreign and too pussified. I'm not going to spend any energy trying to change those people's opinions, but I'll just point out that billions of people can't be wrong. And if you don't like it, you might want to learn to at least tolerate it, because the sport's growth in this country is not going to stop anytime soon. If you don't love it, your kids will. Hell, if the US makes a deep run this year, you might even learn to love it yourself. It's easy to love a winner.

But I digress. The World Cup would be great even if the United States had failed to qualify. It's just such a spectacle - the games, the fans, the colors, the nationalism, the playing styles - they all blend together in a whirlpool of passion and pride. If you haven't followed it before, try to catch some games this time around - all of them are on live TV.

One of my favorite aspects of international soccer, and to be honest, I don't follow it much outside of the World Cup, is how so many teams' playing styles fit with the stereotypes of the people of their country. Germany plays with a dispassionate precision - rarely sexy, but always dangerous. Brazil dances and flashes around the field like it's Carnival. South American and Mediterranean teams seem to always have a bit more flair, along with wild displays of emotion - screaming, diving, pulling. The Italians are all about style over substance - pretty players preening for the crowd and not at all afraid to cheat. African teams are often big, strong and fast, but as disorganized as the governments they come from. The United States is a multi-ethnic group that plays no one particular style. Yes, it sounds overly simplistic, stereotypical and possibly racist - but watch the teams and you'll see what I mean. There's nothing negative about the differences. While you do have some instances of unruly fan behavior in and out of the stadiums, the games themselves are like a celebration of our differences, examples of the varied ways to accomplish the same goal.

As for actual previews of the tournament and the teams, I won't pretend to be better than what you can find on the Internet. CNN/SI has a nice preview of every team, sorted by the groups here. They also have a nice section that discusses the various tactics and formations used by each team here.

The United States was placed in the very difficult Group E, along with Italy, the Czech Republic and Ghana. The US is ranked fifth in the world by FIFA, but you shouldn't trust that rating. The US is good, but nowhere near that good. The conventional wisdom is that the Nats are the third best team in their group behind the Azzurri (Italy) and the Czechs. But the Czechs (#2 in the world) have had some serious injury problems lately and of course, the Italians are dealing with that game-fixing scandal. Ghana is the lowest rated team but has actually had some good results in recent friendlies that suggest that they are no pushovers. The US wasn't expected to do well in 2002 either, but wound up making it out of group play (upsetting huge favorite Portugal along the way) and making it all the way to the quarterfinals.

The US' first game is next Monday at noon against the Czech Republic. After that, they play Italy on Saturday, June 17 and wrap up with Ghana the next Thursday, June 22. With only three games to earn enough points to make it to the knock-out round (a standard 32-team tournament), the US can't afford any slip-ups. They need to beat Ghana and at worst, tie both Italy and the Czechs. Much better would be to knock off one of the favorites in the first two games, giving themselves a little breathing-room for that last game. You get 3 points for a win and just one for a tie, so splitting those first two games would be better than two ties.

Whatever happens, barring a complete collapse by the Red, White and Blue, it should be a hell of a tournament and I couldn't be more psyched.

The Seminole Way

Florida State crime stories - they never grow tired, do they? And this one may be the best yet.

According to Tallahassee police, two former Noles - guys who played this year - linebacker A.J. Nicholson and receiver Fred Rouse broke into current player Lorenzo Booker's home and stole $1,700 worth of stereo equipment. At first, I thought that maybe this was just an altercation gone wrong, but nope, they broke in a back window like common thieves.

Now, if breaking into homes to steal stereos doesn't sound stupid enough and if doing it to your own teammate doesn't up the ante enough, how about this - Nicholson was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals just a few weeks ago! The man is a professional athlete!

Oh, but wait, it gets better. You know how the police knew to look for Rouse? Evidently he was clever enough to think to wear gloves during the break-in, you know to avoid leaving fingerprints. But instead of using some generic plastic gloves, he wore his FSU receiver gloves - ones with his number sewn into them ... and he left one in the home!

Now I'm wondering if maybe they weren't wearing their jerseys with their names on the back too.

Of course now that I've written all of this, I'm feeling a bit apprehensive. Maybe I'm being a bit hard on these guys. Maybe I should wait a bit and see if there's a perfectly acceptable explanation. Maybe they both have Lyme disease.