So That Happened

Nacho: The month of March has come and gone, and with it nary a blog post could be found from the fabled SportsBrethren. Fear not, we've not succumbed to peanut salmonella or something, there was just a lot going on. The Cap'n Pappy and Mammy flew out to LA to visit me, and Brethren was shepherding "Eastbound & Down" into the cultural zeitgeist.

In the interim quite a bit has gone on on the Charlotte sports scene. The Panthers, again, didn't listen to me and make a play for Jay Cutler. On the brightside, Ashton only has to fly to Denver to see his buddy. The Panthers haven't dealt Julius Peppers yet, but my guess is they will. He's trying to get a big paycheck in a bad economy, so don't be surprised when the first-round-draft-less Panthers deal him on April 25th to pick before #30.

The Bobcats had a helluva month. February ended with a drubbing of the Clippers that I got to witness firsthand in the Staples Center. Even got to meet DJ Augustin's cousin, and they enjoyed the enthusiasm. The Cats rolled off a nice five (or was it six? -- Brethren: It was a franchise-record six!) game winning streak and found themselves in the hunt for the 8th seed. At the rate they were playing, it looked all but foregone that they'd sneak in as the last team, but some unfortunate, typical late game collapses seem to have doomed them.

For further analysis follow us, after...

Nacho cont'd: I got really into the Bobcats during the month of March, primarily because I discovered sites like justin.tv and atdhe.net that show streaming video of games. I consumed more Bobcattery than I'd ever done before, and eventually found myself invested in their success. I buckled and admitted that Larry Brown had done well by the time, I speculated about Allen Iverson's prospects in Charlotte, and in the end bit the eff out of my fingernails and yelled a lot. I share Brethren's optimism about the Bobcats 09-10 season and look forward to a fulfilling playoffs over the next eight months.

March Madness happened and the first week was awesome and everything after that kinda stunk. There was a lot of bad basketball played and few upsets. I guess I'd like to see UNC win, but I have no vested interest. I do firmly believe Tyler Hansborough will be Spain's best player in three years, tho. (hat tip to Dave for that prophecy)

And now, someone with a better education....

Brethren: Hello there, friends. I'm truly apologetic for now just getting back on the Sports Brethren blog horse. In our late winter hibernation, a fine blog with the fine promise of only posting during business hours has popped up, the Panthers have remained as stoic and Panthery as they always are, and the Bobcats became a relevant NBA team. Like riding a bike, I'll get back to what's familiar; we present the "where the fuck is spring yet?" edition of the patented bulleted Brethren thoughts:

- Did you watch Eastbound & Down? Did you fan Kenny Powers on facebook? Did you send a friend a customized voice message from the Legend himself? Did you interact with this kick-ass banner ad? If you did one or more of the above, thanks for helping a brother pay rent.

- But seriously, Kenny Fucking Powers is a goddamn bullet proof tiger, and I will do everything I can to convince my HBO marketing clients to call their colleagues in Programming and bring it back for Season 2. Which means I'll have as much influence as any other joker, but gives me an easy conversation piece to discuss with anyone I haven't seen in a long time.

- Wow, Carolina. Ridiculous first half. You are validating the Analyst-in-Chief quite nicely. Next thing you know, he'll be firing CEOs because he can. Snap.

- I actually disagree with Nacho/Smokey -- I think Peppers plays next year for the Panthers. Hurney and the Silver Fox are content to pay him ri-gawd-damn-diculous money or take their sanctioned 2 first round draft picks. They're playing within the rules of the system, and they're keeping their mouths shut. Which seems to have worked out better than, say, what the Broncos did the past two months.

- It's tough to make any predictions about the Cats next year, simply because so much rides on what we do with Pep. These few weeks leading up to Draft Day will determine a lot how the rest of spring/summer play out.

- Opening Day today. How 'bout the Mets' bullpen? Night and Day from last year.

- And, of course, the Bobcats. The five seed is ours to lose next year, I really believe that. AI, as Nacho suggests, may make some sense, in that it moves Bell to the bench, and provides a scorer that we need from the wing. But it's hard to ignore the rapid decline of AI, and I'm not sure we have the cap space -- nor the inclination to fuck with what seems like good team chemistry -- to take a flyer on The Answer.

We'll hopefully be more frequent with the check-ins around here. I'm off to watch the Tar Heels cement this National Championship and drink some bourbon. Good to be back, folks.
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Of Man-Babies and Perspective

Nacho: Cap'n Pappy graduated from Davidson in, like, 1912 or something. He gives us his take on his beloved Wildcats, whether we ask for it or not...

Cap'n Pappy: Back in the spring of '69, just a couple of months before Neil Armstrong would take "one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind", I thought I would check the roundball team of the college I would be attending in the coming fall. I mean, how good could they really be? A small group of their students with Rhett Butler accents had just won the College Bowl (kind of a nerd's version of Jeopardy) where college students competed against each other in answering obscure questions about history, archeology, and literature, beating Harvard, Yale, Penn and others. So I adjusted the rabbit ears, the vertical and horizontal on the TV set, and then WALKED BACK ACROSS THE ROOM to sit down (yes our version of the remote at the time was to get your little brother or sister to walk up to the TV and change the channel).

Cap'n, cont'd: Well, it turns out that it was Lefty Driesell's last season at Davidson and Charlie Scott of Carolina would score at the buzzer over the outstretched arms of Wildcat defenders at the top of the key to advance Carolina to the Final 4 from the East Regional (back in the day when ONLY the conference champion went the to the Big Dance). Terry Holland took over from Lefty and my school of 1170 students would continue what would become its perennial advance to the NCAA tournaments during my tenure there. Since I was a Floridian, I had me some learnin to do about ACC basketball and Davidson basketball. Yeah I knew the SEC and Adolph Rupp and the Duke teams of the mid 60's with Marin, Vacendak, and a guy named Jeff Mullins (who would later coach at UNCC). When I got to Davidson I had to memorize the local traditions: Snyder, Hetzel, Huckle, and yes, Terry Holland. I'll never forget the road trips into the Olde Charlotte Coliseum (a 50's vintage building that looked that the UFO that Michael Rennie emerged from in "The Day the Earth Stood Still") to watch Cook, Kroll, Kirley, Malloy, and Bryan Adrian match up against South Carolina with Roach, Riker, and Ribock, and the Tar Heels when Dean Smith had hair. We loved having Carolina students visit the Davidson campus so we could whistle and shout out "Here, Dean" to the lab running around campus (Terry Holland named his dog Dean Smith). Mike Malloy's fro was way better than Will Ferrell's.

I never thought I'd live long enough to see the Cats challenge the power schools again. I cannot tell you how much I love that the Hornets legacy of Dell Curry/Stephen Curry whipped the butts of Ewing Jr./ and JT3. I ran into a die-hard Hokie fan in an airport last weekend who was disconsolate that Va Tech's coach Greenberg offered the younger Curry a possible scholarship beginning in the sophomore year if he would walk on as a freshman. That's only 30 ppg (or is it per half) the Hokies are missing this year. Not to men tion a very nice character antidote to Michael and Marcus Vick. I also love it that Bob McKillop is following in the tradition of Lefty Driesell and Terry Holland in recruiting outside the box. Lefty was one of the first guys to comb the entire country to find a few guys who wouldn't mind moving from Ohio, Florida, NYC, or Australia to Davidson NC to play college hoops and drink beer at Hattie's Truck Stop. McKillop has just expanded Lefty's Davidson horizons to become a global recruiter (Europe/Africa/Australia). Just a note to the Badgers (the next bowl of Cat-food): how many languages can you talk trash in?
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