overeducated and underemployed

nate james breakout year

Hooray! Or , in the eloquent words of one of Duke's two fight songs, "rah rah rah rah rah ra-rah ra-rah"! Nathaniel J. Ames (not an accurate spelling) has replaced assistant coach Johnny Dawkins on the Blue Devil bench.

During my time in beautiful Durham, North Carolina, Nate James was my favorite Duke basketball player. I was always promising my friends that each ensuing year we were there would be, without a doubt, the Nate James breakout year we had all hoped for. Some post-season heroics in 2001 finally made me an honest woman, and now 7 years later (7 years, sweet Jesus!) Mr. "J.Ames" is breaking out further to thoroughly shmawesome affect.

And so, this seems as good a time as any to share my most embarassing Nate James moment(s).

It goes like this: My senior year roommate's brother was on the basketball team. She, therefore, knew the basketball team. And whenever she saw someone on the basketball team, she would make introductions.

SUPER sweet, right?

Yes.

...Except when you have been introduced to one member of the team (umm...Nate James) as "his biggest fan" on multiple occasions. Then, it just starts getting creepy.

I guess the point of this story is: thanks a lot, Ann.

wearing the colors proudly

SO... Duke has limped to the end of the season, got an undeserved 2 seed, and is at great risk to not make it out of the tourney's first weekend. I'm totally not bummed about it though, and it's all due to this bizarro shit that ESPN did with the ACC tournament package. Please, enjoy, and hope along with me that no one got fired for this:

duke football: we won a game

Take that, 22 game losing streak!

We were trying to shoot the moon, but winning one is okay too.

nba shenanigans

While my beloved Clippers battle The Suns in Phoenix for a shot at the last playoff spot in the west, Golden State, their immediate competition, is playing the Dallas Maverick b-team. Nowitski? Zero minutes. Jerry Stackhouse? Zero minutes. Josh Howard? Zero minutes.

It almost makes me hate Mark Cuban. He's going to have to do something REALLY insane to make up for this one.

absolutely ulterior motiveless

I am not posting this image because I am happy that UNC lost. No, I am posting it because it is the most precise pictoral representation of my feelings regarding my tournament bracket I could find. Nothing more. Seriously.

Speaking of my bracket, here's an update on how the bloggers are doing pre-Final Four:

1. The Upstate Life
2. Daily Ramblings
3. Information Leafblower (screwed by Kansas yet again!)
4. Minnesota Brown
5. Me. With only two Final Four teams in.
6. Burdorff
7. ~Unsettled

I'm no mathmetician, but it looks like this is TUL's to lose to maybe Paul, and the rest of us are right out. For reference as to how that strikes us, please refer to Tyler Hansbrough, pictured above. But not if you're going to laugh. Because that is not what I have intended with this post at all. For reals.

the blogger bracket challenge begins

For those who are on the edge of their seats curious, here are the entrants:

Daily Ramblings (Paul)

Information Leafblower (Kyle)

Minnesota Brown (Aaron)

Overeducated and Underemployed (Duh)

Pop Culture Junkies (Burdorff)

Upstate Life (BG (yes this is really sad, I don't know TUL's real name))

~Unsettled~ (Kathleen)

This panel of experts has chosen the following teams as their potential champs:

Ohio State- 3
Georgetown- 2
Kansas- 1
North Carolina- 1

Stay tuned to see who wins the grand prize I haven't come up with yet (any suggestions?)!

bracket busted

Hoorah for tourney time, and for the plethora of easily available online pick'em challenges! That said...do y'all miss the paper bracket days as much as I do? I used to fill one out, photocopy it, and pass it on to anyone who needed it. Today I have 3 CBS Sportsline brackets, 1 ESPN and 1 Yahoo, and darned if I know which picks are where or for what. The old paper brackets may have been eye-pain inducingly shrunk to fit on a page or even printed on legal, but there was nothing quite as satisfying as highlighting and/or circling your picks as the results started coming back in. Now some computer cruelly puts a strikethrough the wrong choices (organized neatly, one region per page) without so much as a conversation about how you ALMOST picked that 12-5 upset but went for the ODU/Butler one instead. If you were running your tournament pool a few years ago, there was something fun about carrying a manila file folder full of brackets to the office, like it was openly acknowledged that during these few weeks, the tournament counted as work. These days it's as quiet and clandestine as any online activity: easily minimized in the event of a boss walk-by/"real work". Another bummer? Join one of these things now, and you can expect a year's worth of emails about other fantasy sports (I'm looking at you, Sportsline). Paper bracket wouldn't do you like that.

Alas, technology. What's to be done? Oh, and anyone want in on some blogger v. blogger online bracket action?

UPDATE: I was so moved by one single request, I have set up a Blogger Battle Bracket. Click on those words to join. If you have any issues, email me, or leave a comment.

MORE UPDATE: Let's go douches, times-a-wastin'!

i hate sports*

The thrill of victory:

The agony of defeat (fellow Mets fans, do not watch):

I think we experienced the Final Destination phenomenon in baseball form last night. The Mets were marked for a two run homer, and Endy Chavez cheated the homer's plans. They then spent the remaining innings dodging various cunning attempts by the homer to return, until it finally did, in the form of Yadier Molina. Not as cruel and ironic as that guy getting plowed over by a bus, but just as painful.

*until the NBA season starts up. And then college basketball. And then next season of baseball...

the mets find new starting pitcher

Eh...not so much. Still, it's good to see someone I respect supporting the Clippers of New York baseball.

And if he could throw, man, we could use it. Tom Glavine can only pitch so many games (and shut out Douchebag Pujols so many times).

l-e-t-s-g-o

Sorry L.A., but baseball is the one thing I prefer to be from New York.

I promise, after this series I'll go back to being a weather-fearing, Clipper-loving, east-coast-jabbing Angeleno.