March 2006 Archives

We've solved, I think, one of spring break's mysteries. My learned colleague and fellow birder Wallace Hornady spent a little time in southern Alabammy during spring break, and he points out an eminently reasonable explanation for the lack of bird life we observed along the Gulf Coast: salt. The hurricane(s) didn't just punish the local foliage with wind and rain, but with a storm surge that dumped salt water over great expanses of forest. That'll do some serious damage to any plant, and probably to the the insects and birds that rely on that plant as the base of their food pyramid. I suppose there'll be more hard data on all this if I can find the info from Project Feederwatch somewhere on the web.

As for the other events of spring break, I refuse to be down in the dumps about UNC's loss to George Mason. C'mon, people, this was a Tar Heel team that lost five starters, seven of its top nine players, and more than 90% of its production from last year; we were supposed to finish no higher than sixth in the ACC, win maybe 17 games, and go to the NIT. Instead, Roy Williams pulled off probably the finest coaching job of his career, and the Heels not only won 23 games, but finished second in the conference, beat Kentucky and Duke in their gyms, and got a number-three seed in the NCAA tourney. This is overachievement on a grand scale, and anyone who doesn't take a profound delight in the what David Noel, Tyler Hansbrough, and their teammates did this season needs to take a step back and get a little perspective. This was a superb season for the UNC program--a sign that even when we're "rebuilding," we're a force to be reckoned with. I'm very, very happy.

Of course, I'm also cheerful about the annual self-destruction of the Duke Blue Devils, particularly this year, because their squad makes such a perfect contrast with the Heels. In last year's article on the NCAA championship--you know, the one with Sean May on the cover--Sports Illustrated was already speculating on the 2006 champions. UNC was expected to lose at least a couple of underclassmen, but SI predicted that with just Felton and May staying in school, the defending champs would rank... seventh. Who was the team to beat? Why, the team returning four starters, including the ACC Player of the Year, whose senior class had been rated the best recruiting class of 2002, and whose freshman class was rated #1 for the 2005 recruiting season: Duke.

Thus, the Blue Devils came into this season as the favorites--with two of the best recruiting classes in the last four years, no team should challenge them (unless of course one team got the best recruiting classes in both '03 and '04). Some Duke fans were talking openly about going undefeated--not just in the ACC, mind you, but through the whole season, something no team had done since Sean May's father, Scott, led Indiana's 1976 squad to a perfect record. And speaking personally, I was more than happy to talk about that as well. With Duke's personnel, I argued, any loss would be a failure, and not securing a national title? Complete and utter collapse.

Needless to say, it makes my little Carolina-blue heart beat a little harder when I compare the achievements of that vaunted pair of recruiting classes against UNC's depleted ranks. What exactly did Messrs. Redick, Williams, Dockery, McRoberts, and Paulus do that Carolina's squad did not?

*They won the regular-season title outright. UNC finished second.

*They won the ACC tournament. UNC lost to Boston College in the semifinals.

*They won two games in the NCAA tournament. UNC won one.

*They lost at home on Senior Night--to UNC. UNC's seniors went out winners against UVA.

I think, with the disparity in personnel, the difference between those two squads' results should have been a weeeeeeee bit greater.

This is in line with recent Duke teams, actually; the Devils have made it to nine straight Sweet Sixteens, which is pretty impressive, though still short of Dean Smith's record 13 straight from 1981-93. During that run, however, Duke has only one Final Four to its credit--in 2001, when they won it all. There are a variety of theories kicking around the web to explain this. One is that Mike Krzyzewski does not do much to develop a bench, leaving his starters exhausted and dead-legged by the time the NCAAs come around; certainly J.J. Redick's 3-for-19 shooting performance against LSU (and his bad night against UNC in Durham) would seem to suggest that this theory might have some merit. Duke used only seven players against LSU, despite the obvious troubles their first team was having. With all those McDonald's All-Americans available, why didn't Coach K try to shake things up, as Roy did several times during the season by sending in a whole new squad? UNC regularly used a nine-man rotation--and would use ten if the first five needed some time on the bench to think.

One stat I came across shows that three highly recruited members of Duke's freshman class--Boateng, Pocius, and Boykin--played a total of 19 minutes during the last 16 games of Duke's season. By contrast, UNC started two freshmen--Hansborough and Frasor--and gave significant minutes to Green and Ginyard. Michael Copeland was the only UNC rookie who didn't get into every game.

The no-bench theory is certainly appealing, but there's also the ACC-refs theory, which works thus: Coach K, who once complained that Dean Smith benefitted from a "double standard" of officiating in the ACC, is now the beneficiary of that same double standard. Because of K's reputation and his relentless working of the ACC refs, during the regular season Duke gets calls that no other teams get, allowing them to go to the hoop more aggressively on offense and be more physical on defense. In the NCAA tournament, however, the referees are not from the ACC, and do not call the game in the same way; fouls that might benefit Duke aren't always called, and defenders like Shelden Williams are called for fouls they might have gotten away with during the regular season.

The stats do indicate something of a disparity; according to Duke's own statisticians, Duke attempted 889 free throws this year, making 676. Their opponents, by contrast, totalled only 589 attempts, making 386 of them. My shaky math skills indicate that Duke thus got 51% more free throw attempts than the teams they played. In ACC play, the spread was 404 (with 316 made) to 315 (with 218 made), giving the Devils 28% more free throws than their ACC compadres. In their 32 pre-Sweet Sixteen victories, Duke outshot its opponents from the line 837-502 (that's 67% more FTs); in their 3 regular-season losses, the opponents got 87 free throws to Duke's 52 (again, 67% more, but this time for the opponents). In Duke's two NCAA wins, though, they outshot their opponents from the charity stripe by nearly 97%, 57 to 29.

Plainly put, when Duke gets to the line more than their opponents, they win; when they don't, they lose. I'm not sure that's the entire story of the Duke postseason, but at the very least, it's worth noting that Duke never shot fewer than 14 free throws in a game this season, while their opponents shot fewer than 14 free throws on 14 separate occasions; Boston U. shot only four against them.

I'm still wondering what makes Coach K's train get derailed after the ACC tournament, but I can't say I'm feeling terribly sad about the wreckage. And as for the rest of this March Madness, all I can say is "Go, GMU!"

4:48 PM

I'm back from my annual week of driving with Dad, which this year took us through the Okefenokee Swamp, the Florida Panhandle, the mouth of Mobile Bay, and the Mississippi Sandhill Crane NWR. As usual, the driving was punctuated with fine dining and some time spent in front of the tube watching basketball, but I spent a good bit of time with binoculars in my hand, hoping to log life birds in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

In this, I failed utterly.

No lifers, nowhere. Despite rumors of Bachman's Sparrows in the Okefenokee, and reports of regular Reddish Egrets near Little Lagoon Pass in Alabama, I saw nothing new.

In fact, I saw very few birds in general. In four days of fairly intensive birding that included time in three separate NWRs in an area with a biiiiig biomass, I saw fewer than fifty species--I've topped that in a single morning at one NWR. And there weren't many individual birds, either. We spent an entire day in the Okefenokee and saw exactly one egret (a Common) and one heron (A Little Blue). The "neotropical trap" of Fort Morgan, the peninsula at the eastern mouth of Mobile Bay, contained barely any neotropicals; all we could see were a handful of Savannah Sparrows, a Mockingbird or two, a bunch of Starlings, and a lone Barn Swallow. The Mississippi Sandhill Crane NWR was not only free of Sandhill Cranes, but as near as I can tell completely free of bird life.

I did see a few interesting things, mind you. There were dozens of Northern Parula Warblers along the Okefenokee boardwalk, giving us some great looks at the beautiful dark necklaces against their yellow undersides. Northern Gannets were soaring over Mobile Bay, the golden tint of their white heads clearly visible as they wheeled into the water. And the sandbar at Little Lagoon Pass near Gulf Shores, Alabama, was host to dozens of terns and gulls, including Forster's Terns and at least a couple of Bonaparte's Gulls. But the majority of the sites we visited were running low to empty on bird life.

What caused this? Well, it's hard not to believe that the hurricanes of last year had some effect. From the Okefenokee south, here are plenty of trees down in the woods, and many of those still standing are missing limbs or foliage; some are even standing at a significant off-plumb angle. With fewer trees and less leaf cover, you'd think the birds would be more visible, but perhaps they've headed to other places with more camouflage. Maybe the tree damage has resulted in less food for the birds--fewer buds and nuts, and perhaps fewer insects that feed in the trees?

I don't know. All I can be sure of is that I'll be paying the Gulf Coast another visit in the future, and I hope like hell the avifauna makes a comeback by then.

In the meantime, I'll be concentrating on finishing up the edits on the next draft of The Amazing Q and cheering the Tar Heels on to glory in the NCAA Tournament.

4:27 PM

We apologize for the recent interruption in your PC service.

Normal service has been resumed. You may continue to expect the best in self-absorbed birding minutiae, obsession over UNC basketball, and wistful memories of bygone breakfast cereals. Tune in later this week for an appreciation of the Okefenokee Swamp, analysis of the NCAA's tournament seeding, and the usual bitching about the Bush administration.

--The Management

1:41 PM

La la la la la :) :) La :D la :D la :D la :D la!

No, the blog hasn't been taken over by a thirteen-year-old girl. I'm just in a really good mood today. Why?

I'm done with debate. The State finals are over, and I'm back home.

On the way home from States, I discovered a 40%-off going-out-of-business sale at the Sam Goody's in Short Pump and snagged several bargain-priced CDs. Two I'd been looking for at some length: Jethro Tull's Songs from the Wood and Neil Young's After the Gold Rush. The other was a tougher decision, coming as it does from an artist who's proven himself extremely untrustworthy over the years, but as I looked at the song list, seeing no hint of "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" or "Young Turks," I made the call: for seven bucks, I'd buy Rod Stewart's "Millennium Collection" best-of CD, if only to finally own "Maggie May."

There are Purple Finches at my feeder--a first. The male showed up Friday, and though I still harbored some doubts that he might be a rosy-tinged House Finch, I called him a Purple. This morning the female showed up, and there's no doubt--no House Finch has streaking that clean, or a white eyebrow that clear. I hadn't seen a Purple in a decade, and certainly not on this feeder.

It's spring break. Yes, I have to finish grading my exams, calculate my grades for the trimester, and write my student comments--all by Tuesday at noon--but I'm free from classes until the 21st.

My mom's coming to visit. She's actually staying at my cousin Indira's place, helping to baby-sit her daughter while she visits an old college buddy for a week or so; Indira's husband works days, and her mother just took on a new full-time job, so Aunt Suzy volunteered to come help out--and get the chance to see her grandsons in the process.

Oh, and mom's bringing us a loveseat.

For my birthday, I got Alan Moore & Gene Ha's Top 10: The Forty-Niners, plus the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and the Rolling Stones' Hot Rocks 1964-1971. I'd wanted them all for some time.

Kelly made pound cake.

And of course, Carolina beat Duke last night, 83-76. At Cameron. On Senior Night. La la la la la...

I've really enjoyed watching this year's Tar Heels, who have no business being in second place in the ACC with so few remnants of last year's national champions. I mean, c'mon, the team's top seven players left. Only three guys on this year's squad got any PT at all last year, and four of our top six players are freshmen. We were picked to finish 6th in the ACC. Instead, we beat the regular-season champs, in their gym, on senior night, to claim sole possession of second place.

But that's not the only way UNC-Duke has made me happy today. Friday night I picked up a copy of Will Blythe's wonderful new book,
To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever. Pat Conroy blurbs it as the best book on basketball he's ever read. He may be right.

Blythe is the former fiction editor at Esquire, a fellow Chapel Hillian, and the older brother of two of my old buddies: John, who worked with me at WXYC during our days at UNC, and David, my classmate at both CHHS and UNC, who played bass alongside me in a variety of musical ensembles and was a founding member of the Pressure Boys. I thus don't know Will at all--I'm not sure I've ever met him--but he's existed on the periphery of my life for more than a quarter-century. And when I saw his name on an excerpt from the book in the pages of Sports Illustrated a few years ago, I knew that a subject near and dear to my heart--the UNC/Duke rivalry--had found its perfect chronicler.

The subtitle of To Hate Like This... is a great way to understand the aesthetic at work here: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry. Will is a terrific, funny writer, as well a total Tar Heel (despite years of living in New York City), and his often-faltering attempts to maintain journalistic objectivity are one of the book's delights. His descriptions of Chapel Hill, as it is and was, are one of the particular delights for me; when he describes his days of chasing stray basketballs from his backyard court down into the creek behind Hillcrest Circle, I'm right there with him--in fact, we were chasing balls into that same creek, albeit from the other side of the valley, where my house on Sugarberry Road lay. His examinations of his family (especially his late father, a fiercely proud North Carolinian, and his mother, a Tar Heel fan of the most dedicated sort) are also one of the best things about the book. As funny as it is, it's also tinted with the serious musings of a man in his forties, trying to figure out how his life has become so tangled with the outcome of basketball games played by teenagers in another state. It gets wistful at times, even sober, but that just makes it truer.

But the highlight for me, personally, came as I sat reading page 213, where Will was discussing the legendary UNC comeback against Duke on March 2, 1974, when Walter Davis' 35-foot prayer capped an eight-point rally in the last seventeen seconds. It's one of my life's most vivid memories, so I'm always transported by its mention, but I wasn't expecting Will to write what he wrote next:

If you weren't careful, those eight points in 17 seconds could puff you up with grandiosity like a Cheese Doodle (Elasticity of time! Eruptions of the miraculous!) But my fellow Chapel Hillian Peter Cashwell made the best case for that near quarter-minute in an essay entitled "Seventeen Things I Learned from Dean Smith"...

What the hell?!

Will had apparently discovered my contribution to Basketball In America: From The Playgrounds To Jordan's Game And Beyond. I don't know whether it was heavy research on his part, or if perhaps the Chapel Hill Mom Network had put him onto it ("Oh, Will, honey, I heard from Mary Jane Price that Suzy Cashwell's boy just wrote something about Dean Smith, if you think you might like to read it...") I was reading in the WFS van, parked outside Short Pump Mall waiting to go into the food court, and I couldn't stop grinning.

Will wrapped up the paragraph thus: So profound had been the effect of that game on a generation of UNC fans that it had produced its own poets, a rhapsodic literature of the miraculous. That old Ralph Waldo Emerson, coach of the New England Transcendentalists, could have done no better.

Gorsh. I don't know what to say except "Thanks, Will."

And "Go buy Will's book."

And "Go Heels!"

And "My next fantasy team will be named the New England Transcendentalists."

And of course "La la la la la."

2:46 PM

It's Day One of Month One of Year 44, and so far there's not much to report. Turning 43 has as yet done little except remove me from my exalted position as the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, but if 42 was really the answer, I'd have to say the question was really badly phrased.

This morning I gave my English exams, following yesterday's speech exams, but I've got a make-up exam to give tomorrow afternoon, so I won't have another day off until I get back from the VCFL State Debate tournament on Saturday night. And then, by god, I'm taking Sunday off.

Right now I'm just musing on possible travels, a new list of books to read over the next year, and the approach of spring, which has never seemed quite so tantalizing. C'mon, primavera! Once you're here, I can have afternoons to myself again! Except for the WFS home baseball games, of course, which I'll once again be broadcasting over the web through the Woodberry Forest website, www.woodberry.org. Opening day is March 24th, so be ready!

Cracker's Kerosene Hat is playing, and if ever a birthday song were to come inadvertently out of rock music, "I Want Everything" would be it. Luckily, Kel's already given me a copy of Top 10: The Forty-Niners, an excellent Alan Moore/Gene Ha collaboration in the Top 10 universe. It's not everything, but it's a good start. Here's hoping that applies to the rest of Year 44, too.

9:46 PM