So it’ll be Badgers-Tarheels in the regional final at the Carrier Dome
tomorrow afternoon. Last night’s games were well worth the walk to campus.
The Wisconsin-N.C. State game was unfortunately discoherent, the first half
favoring the Wolfpack and the second dominated by the Badgers. N.C. State
fell apart in the second half; couldn’t make a shot, couldn’t defend. By
the end of the game, the regular, varied dances and waves by the Wisconsin
contingent got me thinking that Badger fans are like a cult. I offer this
only provisionally and with a quasi-affectionate ambivalence toward Wisconsin
sports, of course. They sang through bizarr-o chants and cheers,
though–stuff nobody who decided to be a Badger fan for just one day would ever
figure out in the two hours of a single game.
And almost everyone walked away from the Villanova-UNC game with the sense
that the officials intervened excessively in the last two minutes. At
least two calls (the foul shot lane violation and the travel) could have gone
either way, and both calls went against Nova for plays that would have favored
them. The Tarheels looked like they’d regressed into the lackluster style
they showed in the ACC Tournament–lots of talent, but no spark, no sense of
urgency, no intensity. So they make great plays to bail themselves out,
squeak by. Plus, we were sitting at the border between local Villanova/Big
East fans and UNC fans, so there was lots of antagonistic banter reduced to
jeering reduced to blathering idiocy. Contributing factor could have been the
four pints of JD and Captain Morgan’s smuggled by the four hoops fans to my
right.