Call me a hater, but I love watching Duke lose. The whole hatred stems from my youth, when those punkasses Alaa Abdelnaby, Bobby Hurley, and Christian Laettner beat my beloved UConn Huskies not once but twice. The first time was during the 1989-1990 season when Laettner hit that ridiculous double-pump jumper in overtime to end UConn’s dream season and to send Duke into the Final Four. The very next year, Duke sent them out again, this time in the second round (remember the Rod Sellers incident?). Of course, UConn got its sweet, sweet revenge in both 1999 and 2004.

So it brought me much joy last night to watch the last few minutes of the Virginia-Duke contest, which was a great game. Singletary hits this ridiculous fading one-hander and Virginia’s fans storm the court (they had lost 9 straight to Duke). What makes it even sweeter is that Dave Leitao, longtime UConn assistant coach, is in his second year at Virginia and he got the victory. It’ll be impressive if he lifts Virginia, which hasn’t done much in a while, to the top of the ACC.

That said, Duke is again overrated this year. I’m impressed with the job that Coach K has done, given that the team has such little talent. It always amazes me how Duke can land 10 McDonalds All-Americans, and have so many of them suck. Paulus is too slow for college ball, Scheyer needs to lift some serious weights, and all this talk about Josh McRoberts being ambidextrous and “equally gifted” with both hands is bullshit. He’s just confused and “equally bad” with both hands. Like I said, congrats to Coach K for getting them to number 10 in the polls, but I think they’ll be out of the NCAAs this year by the second round.

In Big East news, Georgetown looked amazing in the second half shooting 72% from the field against St. Johns and rolled to their fifth victory. Looks like the Hoyas are starting to hit their stride.

Categories: Big Willie Style, Commentary, donald, Nostalgia
2 Comments »

See, the problem with the internet is that it can lead you to believe that people have dropped off the face of the earth, just because you don’t know how to spell their name. I had wanted to put a picture of our favorite 7’4” Romanian UMiami grad, or even find out what happened to the guy, but I just wasn’t getting anything searching for “Constantine Popa”. So it happened by chance last night that I typed his name “Constantin Popa” and found tons of results, including this rather relevant one: “Former UM Star is still making an impact; Father of five thrives as Cypress Bay girls’ basketball coach, special ed teacher.”

Yup, that’s right. After bouncing around the US playing in the USBL and moving over to Europe to play in a few leagues over there, Popa’s back in Florida. Now, don’t get me wrong — I think Popa’s a great guy for doing this, and we (as a society) need more people to go into teaching. That said, I’m laughing my ass off imagining him counseling a high school girl who just broke up with her boyfriend. The article gets even more hilarious:

“At UM, he became friendly with several standouts, including Dwayne Johnson (“The Rock”), Warren Sapp and Ray Lewis.”

Popa hanging out with The Rock? Popa chilling with Warren Sapp? Popa going to the club with Ray Lewis and stabbing people? Folks, we’re talking about this guy:

This just made my weekend…

Categories: donald, Nostalgia
3 Comments »

As we begin a new season, some friendly faces from last year will not be with us. Some have moved on to the NBA and some have graduated, and many will be missed. Especially those players that have for one reason or another left lasting impressions on us over the past few years, such as Mike Gansey, Allen Ray, Hilton Armstrong, Quincy Douby or of course, Kevin Pittsnogle. I’ll miss them all this year, and hell, I’ll even miss Carl Krauser. I’ll miss yelling at him in the Garden while he gives his X out to his boys in the bronx. And I’ll also miss that 65 year old Pitt fan in the Zubaz pants emulating Krauser after a made free throw when he gave his X out to his homeboys from Erie, Pennsylvania.

Sure, there’s quite a few I’ll miss this year, and while we’re on the topic of Mr. Popa, I wanted to honor five players from years gone by that I still miss in this fine league.

1. Sure, sure, sure, conventional wisdom tells me that I shouldn’t pick a Georgetown player. It just doesn’t seem right. However, Victor Page was one of my favorite players to watch. The guy never met a shot that was out of range and his two years in the league went way too fast. His agent, whoever he was, was clearly an idiot. Page should have stuck around for two more years and rewritten the Georgetown scoring records.

2. Syracuse over the years has had a cast of comedic players who have entertained us all to no end. They’ve had by far the most amount of talent of all the teams in the league, and there’s an insane amount of players to choose from if I could see one again. I know who most would pick, one of the all-time greats, but for me, you could save your Ronys, Shermans, Motens, Carmelos, Gerry Macs and Wallaces. Let me see Josh Pace play one more game. This guy was fantastic, and I could never get enough of that lefty floater from the free throw line, except of course, when he was burning the Huskies with that shot.

3. I miss God Shammgod. Not just because of the name, but because his efforts were outstanding, especially how good he was at drawing fouls in the lane. Shammgod had the 97 Arizona National Champion team beaten in the Elite Eight that year, but somehow Zona got by, and Shammgod’s career was over. I miss you God.

4. I’ve never had much of a liking towards St. John’s, but let me see one more game with Marcus Hatten in the Big East. Hatten was another crazy scorer, much like Page, and I could never get enough of watching Hatten play. Like Page, he only played two years in the conference and it’s a shame he couldn’t play for more years.

5. Of course, I need to pick a UConn player, and one guy I definitely miss was John Gwynn. The microwave was one of the keys to that 1990 Elite Eight team that put UConn on the college basketball map. Gwynn was like a great pinch hitter in baseball, it was exciting just seeing him come to the table. He didn’t always make the big shot, but you knew he was going to jack it up. He wasn’t all that great, but still, he was one of the most exciting players I’ve ever watched.

Categories: Big Willie Style, Nostalgia
3 Comments »