Ready for 9th year of Blue Devils failure in NCAA tournament

Let's take a moment to bask in Duke's March failures, hoping for more tonight or in the next 11 days.

Since Duke's unfortunate national championship in 2001, the Blue Devils have five ACC tournament titles but little else to celebrate.

Since then, North Carolina has more national championships (2) than Duke has Final Four appearances (1) and victories against a team seeded No. 4 or higher (0) combined. The Tar Heels beat FOUR teams seeded No. 4 or higher just last season.

And, no, you can't use the term Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is mouthing to the left to describe these facts.

The Blue Devils haven't beaten a team seeded higher than No. 5 since beating Arizona, the No. 2 Midwest seed, in the 2001 NCAA final. Duke hasn't beaten a No. 1 seed since knocking off Midwest No. 1 Michigan State 68-62 in a 1999 national semifinal. Two nights later, the Devils lost to West No. 1 seed UConn 77-74 in the national final.

Here is a rundown of the annual tournament failures for Mike Krzyzewski's boys:

2002 South No 1 seed: Beat No. 16 Winthrop 84-36, No. 8 Notre Dame 84-77, lost to No. 5 Indiana 74-73.
2003 West No. 3 seed: Beat No. 14 Colorado State 67-57, No. 11 Central Michigan 86-60, lost to No. 2 Kansas 69-65. (Gee, who might have been coaching the Jayhawks that year? Of course, it was Roy Williams.)
2004 South No. 1 seed: Beat No. 16 Alabama State 96-61, No. 8 Seton Hall 90-82, No. 5 Illinois 72-62, No. 7 Xavier 66-63, lost in national semifinals to West No. 2 seed UConn 79-78.
2005 Austin No. 1 seed: Beat No. 16 Delaware State 57-46, No. 9 Mississippi State 63-55, lost to No. 5 Michigan State 78-68.
2006 Atlanta No. 1 seed: Beat No. 16 Southern 70-54, No. 8 George Washington 74-61, lost to No. 4 LSU 62-54.
2007 No. 6 West seed: Lost to No. 11 VCU 79-76.
2008 No. 2 West seed: Beat No. 15 Belmont 71-70, lost to No. 7 West Virginia 73-67.
2009 No. 2 East seed: Beat No. 15 Binghamton 86-62, No. 7 Texas 74-69, lost to No. 3 Villanova 77-54.


You might ask why a fan of North Carolina, consigned to the lowly NIT, would be wasting time with this considering how bad the Tar Heels' season has been.

But I ask: which one would you prefer?

* Duke's plight since the 2000-01 season: Nine years of consistency with five ACC titles and only drawing lower than a No. 2 NCAA seed once but making the Final Four only once and never winning an NCAA title. OR

* UNC's plight since the 2000-01 season: Two terrible seasons (8-20 in 2001-02 and the current season, which actually is ending with some positives) and two NIT appearances, but two ACC titles and two national championships.

Yes, Tar Heels fans have endured two painful seasons but also have enjoyed watching UNC win it all twice. Duke's main pain has come in March and its fans have enjoyed no national titles.

No matter which of the thousands of freakish looking Jon Scheyer faces you put on Duke's recent March history, it's one of failure.

I'll take the mixed bag that the Tar Heels have delivered any day.

New York City cheaper than Chapel Hill?

Anytime you visit New York City, you are quickly reminded that nearly everything is more expensive there.

Everything except, apparently, when it comes to buying Carolina basketball tickets.

I can't afford to fly to New York for Tuesday's NIT semifinals, but I was curious about the price of tickets.

Given that regular-season Carolina men's basketball tickets cost $50 and UNC initially was going to charge $40 for a ticket to the NIT first-round game against William and Mary, I figured we'd be talking about big money when you convert that to New York prices. (UNC, of course, relented and cut the price for a W&M game ticket to $20.)

Boy, was I wrong.

The NIT semifinal tickets (for TWO games) are in four price groupings: $10, $30, $45 and $60. I'm not sure that a $10 ticket really is in Manhattan, but it appears that it will get you a seat inside Madison Square Garden. There's more. The ticket-processing fee is only $3, compared to more than $7 when you buy a ticket through the UNC athletic ticket office.

This leads me to a beef I've had about ticket pricing for Carolina athletics events for a long time: regardless of where the seat is located, the ticket is the same price.

At Carolina Hurricanes games, seats at the top of the upper arena behind the goal the Canes shoot at for only the second period cost $25. From there, upper-deck tickets go up to $35, $40 and $50. In the 200 level, they range from $95 to $200. In the lower level, they range from $70 (for the tickets I had for Sunday's game, although a friend got them to me for free) to $200 on the first row.

There were some empty seats in the lower arena at Sunday's game against the Sabres, but those upper-deck sections behind the goals appeared to be filled.

Although all of the tickets for Carolina athletics events are the same price, I realize that the amount of money many Rams Club members contribute for the right to buy them varies widely.

But it still amazes me that Carolina can get away with charging the same price for the last row in the upper deck behind the basket at the Smith Center that it charges for courtside seats.

UNC charges $50 for a regular-season men's basketball ticket at the Smith Center and, in most cases, you are charged $10 to park. 

People wonder why the crowds were down this season for the nonconference games against less-than marquee opponents. Many of these games were played before it was apparent this was going to be a rough season, so you can't necessarily blame that.

I think it has a lot to do with how much UNC is charging for these games,particularly in a rough economy. I'm quite sure that the people who are sitting near the court could afford to pay more than $50 for a ticket and a lot more people would go to games if they could get an upper-deck seat for $15 or $20.

I wish UNC athletics would consider tiered pricing like this. Without that, I suspect that the chances of selling out many of those nonconference games in the Smith Center is unlikely.

Could Heels be on their way to history?

Who knew that the National Invitation Tournament could be this fun?

After the Tar Heels' loss to Georgia Tech in the first round of the ACC tournament, I heard a lot of North Carolina fans say that they wanted the season to end right there at 16-16.

I never was in that camp, hoping that it would give the young players some valuable experience that would help them next season. The very real prospect of seeing the Heels play down the road from me in Williamsburg or at Carmichael certainly drove my preference for playing in the NIT.

But I never expected three consecutive victories for the first time since December home wins against Marshall, Rutgers and Albany (the latter two combined for 42 losses this season). And two consecutive road victories by a team that only won at N.C. State and Wake Forest during the regular season? I figured I had a better chance of growing hair on the top of my head.

But the John Henson we're seeing in the NIT is drastically different than the one we saw during the regular season. Larry Drew II is showing the poise to make the clutch plays at the end of the games that he couldn't seem to muster most of the season. And Deon Thompson had some strong moves and big shots in finishing with 14 points and 12 rebounds in the 60-55 win Tuesday at UAB.

There was a lot to smile about with the second half.

The Heels turned the ball over only four times in that half and played some of the best defense we've seen from this bunch all season, holding the Blazers without a field goal for 10 minutes during the second half.

And now Carolina is a victory away from another 20-win season and off to New York next Tuesday for the NIT semifinals. And let's call it that. The only Final Four is in the NCAA tournament. This definitely isn't worthy of being called the final four even with lower-case F's. And I don't want to hear anybody claim the Heels are in their third straight "final four."

There's been a lot of frustration and craziness since the Heels last played at Madison Square Garden in November against two teams in the NCAA Sweet 16: beating Ohio State 77-73 before getting stomped 87-71 by Syracuse the next night.

It isn't the sort of history I would have wanted when the season began, but the Tar Heels are two wins away from doing something that never has been done.

No school has won the postseason version of the NIT the season after winning the NCAA title. Florida came the closest when it lost in the 2008 NIT semifinals the season after winning back-to-back NCAA titles.

When my work schedule allowed me to do so, I've watched every game this season. But there were many nights when I wasn't all that eager. Now I am eager to see what this group can do in New York next week.

Not exactly smokin' the Tobacco Road Marathon course

Executive summary: I finished marathon No. 24, the Tobacco Road Marathon in Cary, N.C., on Sunday in 3 hours, 42 minutes, 10.76 seconds (according to my Garmin), which was eight minutes faster than I ran the Detroit Marathon in October but not as fast as I wanted. The race has me down for for a chip time of 3:42:13 and an official time of 3:42.32.4, which is 152nd out of 698 who actually ran. I was 7th out of 37 in my age group. Here's the way the bib looked before I fixed it and how it looked afterward (officially it's the Duke Medicine Tobacco Road Marathon.)

Much longer version:

One of the running books I use to put together most of my marathon-training programs gives a lot of good advice for all sorts of races. To run your best marathon, it says that you want to set yourself up for a stress-free, relaxing two week leading up to the race. I was "involuntary separated" from control of all that.

When my former newspaper announced March 8 that there would be layoffs within two weeks, that ended thoughts of a a stress-free tapert. I didn't sleep that well worrying about what was ahead. When I got laid off Wednesday -- four days before race day -- all bets were off.

I haven't got more than seven hours of sleep since March 8, and it's ranged from four to a high of 6.5 hours. I resorted to taking Benadryl to help me fall asleep. That helped, but I still was waking up way too early. Certainly not ideal and something I've never dealt with leading up to a marathon.

Normally marathon week is one of the happiest for me of the year. Seeing a game in Carmichael helped a lot. But to say I've had more pleasant weeks would be an understatement.

The race started and finished at the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary. A big advantage: they actually had nice bathrooms instead of a Porta Potty.

I was worried about the congestion at the start because there were 800 marathoners and 2,300 half marathoners all starting on a two-lane road at the same time. I was pleasantly surprised that, at least for me, it ended up not being a factor.

After three miles, the half marathoners turned right onto the trail and the marathoners turned left. The American Tobacco Trail is beautiful and a really nice place to run.

As I suspected, with a small marathon such as this one, there wasn't much crowd support although there were pockets of people at certain points. I got a boost at mile eight when I saw a former co-worker at the Herald-Sun, and an avid runner, Neil Amato, who came out to cheer me on. That was pretty cool.

I also caught up with another former H-S co-worker, marathoner Jack Threadgill, right, who did the half-marathon.

My adventurous goal was 3:30 and I was actually on pace for that through 16 or 17 miles. If I could have repeated my 1:45 half-marathon split in the second half, I would have run a 3:30.

But I tailed off a bit at the end and it seemed to coincide with drinking "Gatorade." It tasted watered down and, shortly afterward, my stomach started feeling a little bad. For the first time in any marathon, I nearly threw up a couple of times.

With that, my usual strategy of taking water the first half and Gatorade in the second half quickly was cast aside. I also was paranoid about taking a planned Advil since I was worried about what it would do to my stomach.

But, soon afterward, I took a packet of Gu and downed a little of that with no problem, so I took my "Vitamin I." Didn't have any other issues with my stomach, but I didn't take any more Gatorade even though I probably could have used the electrolytes on a hot day.

The forecast in the days leading to the race predicted a 40 percent chance of rain. Thankfully, that changed and it was fairly pleasant, in the 50s, for most of the race. But when we left the trail for country roads for the last few miles, it really got hot. It must have been in the mid-60s.

I was doing the math and with six miles left, given that my pace getting slower, that beating my PR (which is 3:33:54 from the 1997 Chicago Marathon) wasn't going to happen. My legs felt dead and I was pushing as hard as I could, (like around mile 25, above), but it was a slow marathon trot at that point.

Soon after the beloved 26-mile marker, I turned the last corner and was happy to see Jean, Scott and Alex cheering me on, left, as I pushed for the finish line. That meant a lot. It's been a rough week for them, too, so it was nice to have a moment we all could celebrate!

A very nice marathon on a not-so-nice week. My next question to mull: What will be No. 25?