And nnnewwww: Virginia Tech 82, Duke 67 F
Lol. Oh man. Never thought I’d ever see this day ever. Frankly never thought I’d even consider this a possibility either, but here we are. ACC champions.. of Men’s basketball: the Virginia Tech Hokies.
The literal turkeys giving new definition to cockblocking, having denied all sorts of favored basketball programs a conference title in the vaunted ACC. A #7 seed going gangbusters and inexplicably winning four games in four days. A title that should’ve been won by Notre Dame, or Duke. A title game that was destined to be UNC/Duke #1,069.
All these should haves and could haves, that never did happen, all because of an improbable hot streak by a team hardly known for basketball.
It feels like just a week ago, I was writing about clowning on Patrick Ewing, and learning that just a year ago he took an #8 seed Georgetown squad and won the Big East. But as much as I dunk on Ewing, he’s still a reputable Hall of Famer, and it was the Big East he won, not the ACC. Virginia Tech winning the ACC in hoops is like McDonald’s winning a bracket in coffee, McDonald’s winning a tournament of chicken sandwiches, or McDonald’s winning a competition of quality competency. I’m not sure why I’m taking shots at McDonald’s here, maybe it’s because it’s 4:25 am the morning after daylight losings or maybe I’m getting hungry, but the point remains.
I actually checked in at a time in which I thought the game would’ve been over, only to be mortified at seeing there was still like three minutes to go, with Tech only being up by like 7 points. I don’t know, I closed the app too fast to remember. But I was absolutely sure that because I deviated from my normal game ghosting, Dook was bound to go on a massive three-pointer spree, close the deficit, and then some other Plumlee brother would come out of nowhere to jam down some go-ahead punctuation dunk to shatter my hopes and newfound dream of seeing Tech winning the ACC in men’s hoops.
I put my phone down and decided three minutes of game time that probably ended up being 30 minutes of real time was more important to get when I needed to be up at 3 am for my morning flight. And went to bed completely expecting to see Dook winning like 79-74.
But that didn’t happen. I awoke to see that Tech didn’t even waver or even have to bend much less actually break. Dook was the team that collapsed, failed to close the gap and end up getting blown up in the end. Coach K’s humiliating farewell tour continues with another L, having lost the ACC title game, after getting blown out at home in his final game on the court named after him.
Does this still count as baby luck? It’s still within the first calendar year of #2, after all. I got to see a Braves World Series, seen Georgia not Georgia and win a natty in football, and now a completely improbable ACC championship from Virginia Tech.
It’s a shame that I’ve become so busy for sports, because as a fan of them, this by any measure has been a pretty incredible year for my general sport fandoms, interests and allegiances. But then again, being so balls out with them is what usually leads to heartbreaks and disappointments. I’ll take everything as it’s happened here, and arrogantly do my written victory laps retroactively and often times after the facts.
And with that, we may resume the status quo where Virginia Tech will probably get bounced by a school nobody’s heard of like Jackson State, and hopefully the Coach K farewell tour continues with yet one more L, to hopefully another school nobody’s heard of like Creighton.
Whatever though, because right now, Virginia Tech are champions, of the ACC, and that is something to be proud and happy about. I had a hard time picking an image to use for this post, and I was really tempted to use one of Coach K getting fed shit, but when the day is over, it was still more important to back the boys over shitting on Coach K. Instead, here’s a mini gallery of some of the choice photos I found after the game: