It was a tough Christmas break for us here at the Sermon going home and hearing questions from our “friends” like:
“Sweetney had how many points against Virginia?”
“Did UCLA get 20 bonus points at the beginning of the game because of your ugly blue uniforms?”
“Miami just won the FOOTBALL championship, but they beat you in BASKETBALL?”
“What’s this I hear about some guy named Herve?”
Yes, the battered and bruised Hoyas lost four straight over break, including two against mid-level Big East teams and will face last year’s Big East Champion, Boston College, in Boston on Saturday. No, the Big East Conference games are not as easy as those against Norfolk State. Yes, the Hoyas, with a loss against BC, will not have won a game in a month. No, things do not get much worse. Fortunately, it’s still early in the season and the Hoyas can recover. Still, it’s hard to be optimistic about a preseason top-20 team that can’t hold a nine-point lead with five minutes left against a perennial Big East doormat.
However, there were some things that did make the Sermon smile over the break. The Miami Hurricanes finally put to rest all the BCS garbage with a thumping of Nebraska and someone the Heisman people called the most “Outstanding College Football Player of the United States,” Eric Crouch. Not like it wouldn’t have been better to see Oregon in the title game, but no one can say that the Hurricanes did not earn the title this year. Miami won their games by an average of 33 points and throttled five top-15 teams by a combined score of 236-72.
Another beautiful aspect of vacation was Duke’s loss to Florida State and even better, the fact that Jason Williams blew it for them. Not that I have anything against the point guard, but now Dick Vitale can finally shut up about how great Duke is, how great Jason Williams is and how Duke could beat the Chicago Bulls. Duke is only mortal and it took an average ACC team to show us.
Also amusing us over the break was the reemergence of the most pathetic idea for team unity ever created. The Philadelphia 76ers, struggling to make .500, decided that when the going gets tough, the tough wear headbands. How hilarious was Matt Harpring in a bright red headband? How about Dikembe Mutombo? Aaron McKie? Fortunately, the most dysfunctional team in the NBA, the Blazers, put an end to the headband experiment. Unfortunately, even though the Blazers received their usual three technical fouls per game, including one by the immortal Chris Dudley, not one resulted from pulling a headband off of Derrick Coleman.
However, Miami’s dominance, Duke’s loss and the Sixers’ headbands were unable to shake our daily, reoccurring nightmares. Every night at approximately 5 a.m., we would wake up in cold sweats after being chased by a 6-foot-10 monster named Herve, who just would not let us inbound the ball. Go Hoyas.
