Santa Bring Me Some Noise

Well despite the best efforts of the majority of the crowd to hide from the basketball players, the UNCW Seahawks defeated the Bulldogs of UNCA last night 68-50. I make the comment about hiding from the basketball players because that seems to be the only logical explanation for being completely quiet during a basketball game. Seriously, the people got more excited about the mini-basketballs they throw out during timeouts than they did for a big 3-pointer by John Goldsberry earlier in the game. I think they should change the banner in Trask from "Toughest Place to Play in the CAA" to "Toughest Place to Play in the CAA Excluding Christmas Break". I mean there must have been some sort of contest to see who could sit on their hands the longest. It's pretty bad when only ten people in the "Student" section will make any noise of the 1,200 people in that section. But I digress...

The performance by the Seahawks was much better than the performance by the fans. UNCW registered their 4th home blowout in as many home games picking up another 18 point victory. The game started slow with some lackluster shooting by the Hawks, and great offensive rebounding and stifling defense by Asheville. But eventually the boys in teal returned to form and slowly pulled away.

Todd Hendley led UNCW in scoring pouring in 18 points and grabbing 5 rebounds. Vladimir Kuljanin and Beckham Wyrick crashed the board for the Seahawks pulling in 6 apiece. They also posted double digits in scoring with 14 and 11 points respectively. And, big suprise, John Goldsberry led the way in assists with 7. He also put in 17 points while only playing 23 minutes. John David Gardner had some solid minutes scoring 3, pulling in 4 boards, and dishing out 3 assists. He also looked very good on defense by not allowing his man to get a second of daylight for open shots. He has a street style of play to his game that looks eeriely similar to Mr. All Conference himself, John Goldsberry. A sign of things to come?

Boxscore

Highlights

In other CAA news ODU followed up their impressive victory of DePaul by blowing an OT game at Richmond. VCU logged a Conference win over GSU. Nothing else too spectacular.

UNCW, Northeastern, and Drexel still lead the way with 2-0 CAA records. They are followed by VCU at 2-1. And then Hofstra, ODU, GMU, and Towson at 1-1.

Complete CAA Standings

UNCW has a week off before facing the Cougars of the College of Charleston on Dec. 27th at 7:oo in Trask. Charleston stands at 4-3 on the year and are coming off a loss at VCU.

Till next time

Merry Christmas

Happy Holidays

And most importanly GO SEAHAWKS.

Winning is the Best Remedy

Well the Wisconsin hangover appears to not have affected the Seahawks too much as they handily dispatched Buzz Peterson and his Coastal Carolina team. UNCW jumped on the Chanticleers early and never let up. John Goldsberry led the way as usual with 17 points. Temi Soyebo had an impressive 8 assists. I was not able to come to the game but I saw that our prize recruit John David Gardner logged his first minutes for the Seahawks. From what I have heard he looked pretty good. He finished with only four points but apparently his defense was pretty effective. It will be interesting to see how he emerges in Conference play.

Story

Box Score

Highlights

In other CAA news ODU defeated former UNCW skipper's DePaul Blue Demons 87-43. That's right the deficit for DePaul was more than they scored. Very impressive win for ODU as they seem to have bounced back from that bad loss at Drexel last week.

Current CAA Standings

The Seahawks are holding steady in the RPI as they are #18 right now.

They also hold steady in the Mid-Major Top 25 coming in at #12 once again.

ODU 4
UNCW 12
Hofstra 20
Drexel 23
Northeastern 26
GMU 27
VCU 33

The next game is Tuesday night Dec. 20th versus UNC-Asheville at 7:00.

See you then.

Rodents and Ugly Turtles

Ok.

Maybe Kammron Taylor will not burn for what he did to me and thousands of other people last night, but I'm still waiting for a written apology from him. Or at least a sincere heartfelt apology from the officiating crew included with the check that they received from the tax payers of the state of Wisconsin via the University of Wisconsin Madison's Athletic Department.

Now I usually don't crawl into the realm of conspicracy theory. But for your consideration:

March 22, 2003

Brett Blizzard's final game in a UNCW jersey. A hard fought "loss" to Maryland. Blizzard was double teamed and shut down the entire game but the Seahawks found a way to hold a 1 point lead with just a few seconds to play. Until Drew "Buzzkill" Nicholas decided that he would like to torment the fine people of Wilmington NC and by the grace of God dropped in a heavily guarded 3 to give the defending national champions a 2 point first-round victory. They would eventually fall in the Elite 8.

December 16, 2004

A Christmas Break game in Charleston SC in which the Seahawks led the ENTIRE game. Then with a 1 point lead and 5 seconds to play the exact same thing happened with slightly different rosters as Dontaye Draper hits a 3 as time expires to give College of Charelston a 2 point win. UNCW would go on to win 19 games this year and this loss most definitely gave the NIT selection comittee the excuse they needed to keep us out of the postseason. Even thought they took two teams who finished below us in the conference and did not advance as far in the conference postseason as we did. Conspiracy theory is in effect. By the way Dontaye Draper scored his only 3 points of the ball game as time expired.

December 12, 2005

Just as the student body at UNCW had changed enough to push the thoughts of that loss to Maryland out of their heads. And the remaining survivors had just completed reattaching their hearts that had so suddenly been ripped out. A certain Kammron "Buzzkill Jr." Taylor decided that UNCW is never to have a completely fulfilling season. The Seahawks continued their national exposure by staying at #12 in the latest collegeinsider.com Mid-Major Poll after being idle all last week. The Seahawks moved into the ESPN/Coaches Poll receiving 2 votes putting us at #46 in the nation. UNCW was ready to once again burst onto the national scene and all our wildest dreams were about to come true. But then a few refs got together and had a conversation that I believe would have gone something like this:

Ref #1: Hey guys don't you think it would be funny if we gave the heavily favored home team that never loses at home 18 times as many free throws as the hard fighting mid-major team.

Ref #2: That sounds great. I always wondered what that would be like. And not only that let's call some of those fouls on the mid-major team where the 17,000 people who cheering against them are even confused.

Ref #3: Hey guys this whistle is loud.

Now I know this sounds far-fetched but I am not kidding. Check out the box score.

Nothing on their is a mis-print because I listened to the whole thing. Except they should have put a few more players on the Wisconsin Badgers roster. I believe their names were Ted Hillary, Jim Burr, and Dan Chrisman. Apparently whoever typed up the box score thought they were the refs. I guess they misplaced their red and white jerseys and had to where some black and white ones instead and i guess since they were non-trad students no one really questioned it and assumed they were the officiating crew. I guess we should personally check their credentials.

But enough of the negatives.

TJ carter had a breakout performance putting up a career high 19 points. As well as 5 rebounds and 2 assists. John Goldsberry led the way with 5 assists. And Beckham Wyrick crashed the boards for the Hawks coming up with 7. Alando Tucker led the Badgers with 15 points.

I am very proud of our team. They fought so hard for 40 minutes and they deserved another 5 minutes to come home with that win. Our RPI jumped to #14 after the loss. But I have never felt so much pain over a "game" as i did when that 3 dropped for Taylor. The reprecussions for this school could be great. This loss instead of a win could keep us from receiving an at large bid to the big dance. But hopefully that won't be necessary as we can hopefully win the CAA tournament.

In other news we are tied for first in the conference with Drexel and Northeastern who all stand at 2-0 in conference play. A half game back are ODU, GMU, VCU, Towson, Georgia State, and Hofstra who are all 1-1. Complete Conference standings.

The Seahawks face Coastal Carolina next on Saturday at 7:00 in Trask. I will not be in attendance as I will be out of town visiting family. But every one get out there so we can get this loss behind us.

Enjoy the win Wisconsin. I hope it's sweet. Though not nearly as sweet for you as it is bitter for us here in Wilmington.

See Below

You can go straight to hell Kammron Taylor.

More info when I'm not as seething mad.

Story.

American Idle

I guess it pays to take the week off for exams. The Seahawks keep on going up in the rankings without doing anything. The latest RPI ratings have UNCW at #16. And the latest Sagarin ratings at USA Today have us at #26, one spot in front of Wisconsin who stand at #27. So it looks like Wisconsin are the one's who will need to pull an upset (wink wink) over a powerhouse UNCW team.

After some conference games last night we are now in a tie for first place in the CAA with Northeastern who improved to 2-0 in league play with a dominant 89-67 win over Towson. The stat line looked pretty good for Northeastern especially from star senior Jose Juan Barea. This guy nearly posted a triple-double on the Tigers putting up 27 points 11 assists and 7 rebounds. Northeastern is 6-1 overall along with ODU. That puts them a 1/2 game behind us overall as the Seahawks stand at 7-1.

ODU picked up their first conference win last night over GMU with a 3 by Drew Williamson as time ran out giving ODU the 54-53 win. It has been an exciting start to the CAA season and hopefully ODU won't be able to pull off any magic like that against us.

Here are the current CAA standings.

UNCW remains idle until Monday night when we travel to Madison to face off against the Wisconsin Badgers. Here is the link to the live stats for the game. Other than that you will have to depend on the AM 980 broadcast of the game, unless you plan on traveling to Madison which is highly recommended.

Talk to you soon.

You Better Recongnize

Well folks it looks like the national spotlight is finally starting to fix itself on Wilmington. The new AP poll has UNCW in a tie with Buffaloe and Loyola MD for #46 in the nation. This puts us right behind ODU who is in a tie for #41 with Iowa State. They are #39 in the ESPN/Coaches Poll. Our next opponent is Wisconsin on Dec. 12th in Madison. They are #28 in the ESPN/Coaches Poll and #32 in the AP poll.

AP Top 25 and ESPN/Coaches Poll

And the CAA is moving on up once again in the latest collegeinsider.com mid-major top 25. There are several CAA teams in this weeks poll. UNCW jumps 7 spots to #12 this week.

ODU 2
UNCW 12
Hofstra 17
George Mason 24
Northeastern 27
Drexel 34
VCU 38

Mid-Major Top 25

Also on collegeinsider.com is this little tidbit written by their columnist John Stansberry.

Seahawks flying high again

"Hey, is anyone out there paying attention to the fantastic start that UNC Wilmington has gotten off to? The Seahawks went out to Laramie and won the season opening Black Coaches Association Invitational, beating Butler, host Wyoming and Northwestern en route to the title. They currently stand at 7-1.Head coach Brad Brownell looks poised to raise UNCW back to the lofty status the program attained back in 2001-02, when then coach Jerry Wainwright directed that edition of the Seahawks into the second round of the NCAA's, where they fell to eventual Final Four participant Indiana.Keep an eye on point guard John Goldsberry, the steady senior with the ability to knock down the three if he gets a look. His line against Butler shows what he's capable of: 21 points, seven rebounds and eight assists. The Colonial is looking that much tougher with UNCW playing this well."

Also for you students out there I'm sure you received this email from Coach Brownell today:

Students –

Great job yesterday! You once again helped make Trask Coliseum the Toughest Place to Play in the CAA! Because of you, the VCU Rams left Trask with their 10th straight loss in the building. The energy and excitement you provided yesterday was incredible and certainly gave us a lift. Good luck with your exams and have a great holiday. I hope to see you back in Trask later this season for more big games.

Go Seahawks!
-Coach Brownell

And if you are looking for a new wallpaper for your computer check these out. The Trask one is my favorite.

Well I'll keep you posted of any more news on our boys during our off week. And maybe I'll post some sort of update about some other sports. Who knows.

Rammed Once Again

Sorry Coach Capel but the Rams are still having trouble in Trask. Yesterday afternoon the Seahawks put up an impressive showing against Virginia Commonwealth to improve to 7-1 on the year and 2-0 in Conference play. The loss drops VCU to 2-2 and they drop to 0-1 in CAA play. The first half was hard fought in close and Temi Soyebo's half ending lay up put UNCW up by 6. The Seahawks blew the game open in the second half with stifling defense and lights out shooting by John Goldsberry, and also Daniel Fountain coming off the bench. Todd Hendley led the way in scoring for UNCW with 14 points 9 rebounds and 2 steals. I can't even begin to describe how big of an acquisition he was for our team. And his addition has made him and Goldsberry one of the best frontcourt/backcourt teams in the Conference. And speak of the devil, Goldsberry followed up Hendley with 10 points, 5 assists, 2 boards and 2 steals. Temi Soyebo and TJ Carter also came up with 2 steals on the day.

Here is the Box Score.

Jeff Capel had only good things to say about our teams performance:

“UNCW plays hard, together and tough and that’s very evident in watching them play. I knew how good Todd Hendley was, and I’m one of John Goldsberry’s biggest fans. It’s the best team we’ve played so far this year."

Our own Coach Brownell said:

“I’m really proud of our kids. They had a lot of things going on including exams. I want to thank our crowd. They lifted our spirits and I think we got some energy that way.“We’ve increased the lead every time coming out in the second half. We had the home crowd giving us some positive feedback. On the road those are the demons you fight. Offensively in the first half we played too hard. At halftime I told them to relax. We executed well to get the ball in there but couldn’t finish and I credit that to Virginia Commonwealth. There’s a lot of mutual respect between the programs."

UNCW finished the game with a 20 point victory winning 60-40. The 40 points scored by VCU were the lowest in the history of their basketball program. This was UNCW's 4th straight victory and will give us confidence hitting the road to face off against Wisconsin in Madison on December 12th at 8:00 EST. Wisconsin was receiving votes in both national polls last week and will more than likely be in the top 25 when we meet up. Right now Wisconsin stands at 5-1 with their only loss coming at Wake Forest. One of those 5 wins was a 3 point nail biter against Old Dominion. Wisconsin is one of the toughest places to play in college basketball so this should be a nice indicator of the potential of our team this year, especially after coming off 8 days of rest.

In off the court news I do appreciate the enthusiasm shown by the fans yesterday but the is a certain line you don't cross. And walking over to the VCU locker room to get in their coaches face and talk to much trash is a little unacceptable. I want the fans to heckle but just stay in the student section when you do it. We don't need to become known for meanspirtedness and bad sportsmanship. Sportsmanship extends to the fans as well. Lets leave the idiotic heckling and the bad sportsmanship to Maryland students.

In other CAA news UNCW stands alone on top of the Conference at 7-1 (2-0 CAA). We are followed by Hofstra, George Mason, Towson, and Northeastern who are all 1-0 in conference play. Old Dominion and Northeastern are both 5-1 overall and Hofstra stands at 4-1. In RPI rankings we have 6 teams in the top 100:

Northeastern 14
UNCW 27
Hofstra 47
ODU 65
GMU 68
VCU 88

As off this post the new national polls and Mid Major polls have not been released yet. I will update that as soon as the info is available.

Happy exam week everybody.

Good Job Hawks.

This Must Stop

Today's post is about one of my biggest pet peeves, and why I think it is ridiculous. This is something that has grated my nerves ever since I arrived in Wilmington in the Fall of 2003. It is the lack of interest that is shown by this student body by anything worth noting. Now I'm not saying that this includes the student body as a whole. But it probably applies to about 80% of the students here, and that is probably an improvement since my Freshman year. The example I will use to epitomize this case study is basketball.

When I was accepted to UNCW during the winter of my senior year of high school in Oxford NC. I started reflecting on how my sports allegiances would change. I had grown up a Duke fan, this was aided by the fact that Oxford is a mere 30 minute drive from Cameron Indoor Stadium. I had also had the priveledge to go many Duke basketball and (cough) football games when I was young. I had also attended basketball camp at Duke one year and felt a certain kinship to Coach K and his players.

Being the huge sports fan that I am, particularly college sports, and the tops among these is basketball. This mainly stems from the appreciation I had for the atmosphere and beauty of the game from attending several at Duke. As well as going to a few games at Chapel Hill, and watching countless others on TV. And as every college basketball fan knows, the epitome of sports competition is the conference tournament's and the NCAA tournament that are held during March. Furthermore I know of no true hoops fan who doesn't find themselves cheering for the plucky underdog to pull off that big win over a "power (aka money) conference". Also every true hoops fan knows that this is the only time of year that you can find every truly good team in the country playing on TV. The tournament underdog has been the name of many teams that it is hard to imagine they could have ever truly been an underdog. Why even Duke was an underdog in the 80's and early 90's when they knocked off perennial powers such as UNLV, who would not be from a "power" conference today, and Kentucky. And most recently Gonzaga has built on tournament success, most notably a trip to the Elite 8, to build a nationally recognized program that has become a top 25 and NCAA tournament staple. Even though Gonzaga resides in a non-power conference. They are a member of the West
Coast Conference. The WCC is one of the top mid-major conferences in the country, and they have been even before Gonzaga received national noteriety.

The WCC is definitely a force to be reckoned with, just ask the Tarheels who lost to WCC member Santa Clara last year. I seem to remember that same Tarheel team going on to win the national title. And strangely enough they seemed to have lost very badly to a (gasp) non "power/BCS/money" conference team or even a ranked team that ESPN hadn't bothered to spend time on. There are countless other examples of this in recent years so I will not begin to bore you with details and research. However I will add that Michigan State, who most basketball analysts are picking to finish this year either in the Final Four or perhaps even as national champions have already caught their beatdown from mid-major team in the form of a 20 point loss to the Rainbow Warriors of the University of Hawaii.

The recent history of college basketball has brought to us many teams that have snuck under the radar of national exposure and yet still managed to do damage in the tournament. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, from the Horizon Conference, went to the Sweet 16 last year. Kent State, from the Mid-American Conference recently went to the Elite 8. Yet still many "big" hoops fans are willing to dismiss any team that isn't a household name as being inherently inferior to ones that are.

Here at UNCW we are in the spot light of ACC schools such as North Carolina, North Carolina State, Duke, and Wake Forest. And also to some extent in the spotlight of an Atlantic-10 team, Charlotte. UNC Charlotte recently escaped their curse of hyphenation by switching their schools official athletics name to Charlotte from UNC Charlotte. UNCW recently made some stride in that direction switching our name from University of North Carolina at Wilmington to University of North Carolina Wilmington. I say we should go all out and switch to Wilmington, as Charlotte did. This would help pull us out from under the shadow of Franklin Street and the rest of Chapel Hill. This is not to say we are not thankful for our academic relationship with the UNC system and it's 16 campuses, but as far as athletics go we no longer need to be under their shadow.

In recent years every college hoops analyst has talked about UNCW, particularly when all time great Brett Blizzard was crushing conference records here. Under his leadership we defeated USC in 2002 before going down in the final seconds to eventual national championship runnerup Indiana in the second round. The next year we completely out-played defending national champion Maryland when they hit a last second shot to knock us out of the tournament and end Brett Blizzard's college career. Maryland would go on to the Elite 8 that year. So logically UNCW could have done the same. Especially since we nearly defeated a team that did so and our best player was basically a non-factor.

So one could reasonably assume that the students that come to this institution have some sort of appreciation for this schools legacy. But sadly this is not the case. I receive no greater joy here than yelling and cheering on my Seahawks in the notorius student section at Trask Colisieum. And I receive no greater irritation than walking around campus and hearing students talking about the previous nights UNC or Duke victory. Or seeing said "students" walking around in college clothing of schools they decided not to go to, or they couldn't get in and either way they need to get that chip off their shoulders and stop adding to the inferiority complex that plagues this campus.

It seems like these students who claim to be big hoops fans would have some sort of appreciation of the great mid-major basketball that takes place on their campus. But this seems not to happen, they would rather watch UNC play on TV and vicariously sit in those student stands. Rather then go out and sit in the student stands, for free, and be up close and personal to some of the best basketball in the nation that takes place in the Colonial Athletic Association. And Trask is considered to be the toughest place to play in this conference by opposing coaches and players.

We play Virginia Commonwealth on Saturday with a 2:30 start. This is a great rivalry. The alltime series is tied at 14 all. UNCW has not lost to this team at Trask since 1996. The road team usually goes down in this series and lets get out there and make sure that happens this time.

And if you don't believe how good the CAA is just ask Dick Vitale.

Just ask our very own Coach Brownell.

"Question: Why is Trask such a difficult place to play?
Answer: I think over the years, any place that's had success and is difficult to play, the first factor is because you have good players. I think Trask also provides an intimate atmosphere where the fans are close to the court and the electricity on game night can often give our players an added boost of energy and enthusiasm, etc. "


"ESPN
Question: Is there any chance that we will ever get a game on ESPN from Trask? What has to happen for ESPN to come to Wilmington? I think VCU has had games on ESPN for the past few years and I also hear they are on again this year.
Answer: That is really out of our administration's hands and more of a CAA issue. Obviously, we'd love to have ESPN broadcast a game from Trask as I think it's one of the best college basketball environments in the country. But most of that is out of our hands and would have to be the result of the CAA office pushing for such a scenario. "

Or ask VCU coach Jeff Capel

"On playing in Trask Coliseum: “UNCW plays hard, they play tough and they are well coached. They have good players. That gets the crowd into it. The crowd wouldn’t be into the game if it was a bad program. The crowd has a passion for the program and the UNCW players give the crowd a reason to be into the games.”

I will never understand why students won't come out and support this program but then hypocritically want more programs to not support.

"Sigh..."

Go Seahawks.

See you at Trask

Manifest Destiny

UNCW defeated The Tribe of William and Mary Wednesday to open up the conference season for both teams. The Seahawks improve to 6-1 (1-0 CAA), while The Tribe drop to 4-2 (0-1 CAA). No suprise in this part, John Goldsberry leads the way in scoring shooting perfect from the floor going 4-4 from 3pt range and picking up the other 3 points on the charity stripe. Goldsberry also finished with 4 assists and 5 boards. Todd Hendley and Temi Soyebo also posted double figures for the Hawks putting up 14 and 10 respectively. TJ Carter shared the assist prize with Goldsberry putting up 4 himself while Beckham Wyrick matched John in rebounds with 5. All in all we played very well shooting 52% to William and Mary's 44% mark. This is out of character of past Seahawk teams that usually don't shoot well on the road. Calvin Baker led the way for The Tribe with 12 points and 6 assists.

Here is the boxscore.

In other CAA news VCU posted a nice come from behind road win against Houston, and Hofstra did the same against St. Johns. It was nice to see a fellow CAA team take down a Big East opponent.

UNCW and Georgia State lead the way in the Conference rankings standing at 1-0. Northeastern and Old Dominion are 4-1. Georgia State, VCU, Hofstra, and James Madison are all 2-1.

Here are the complete conference standings.

And finally UNCW continues it's conference play finally coming home again to take on Virginia Commonwealth on Sunday at 2:30. This will be VCU's conference opener, and UNCW's home opener for conference play. As stated earlier UNCW is 6-1 (1-0 CAA) and VCU is 2-1. VCU was picked to finish 2nd in the pre-season conference poll while UNCW was picked to finish 5th. However in the last mid-major poll on collegeinsider.com UNCW was ranked 19th while VCU was receiving votes putting them at 36.

However, I forgot to mention that in the AP poll Old Dominon was 45th and Drexel was was in a tie for 54th. And in the ESPN/USA Today poll Old Dominion and VCU were in a tie for 50th.

See you Sunday VCU.

Go Hawks.