this isn't your father's ACC

On Wednesday, I went to the ACC tournament's opening day.  One of the few actually, who bothered to show up for the losers bracket.  These first three games were played to make up teams to meet three of the bottom half of the upper half of the league.  (make sense?).   Wake drew Notre Dame, one of the new teams in the "not your father's ACC", and who apparently have really fallen on hard times.

The Greensboro Coliseum has seen many many games that had larger more enthusiastic crowds.  There were plenty of seats available and a portion of the upper deck had a curtain hung to block of the ocean of empty seats.

Wake jumped out to an early lead over the not-so-fighting Irish.  We hit some shots, got some rebounds, and generally made Notre Dame look rather weak.  I enjoyed the game.  First half, upper deck first row.

For the second half, I moved to the first row right behind the press row.  Even better seats and we continued our mastery of our hapless opponents and low and behold, the long drought was over and Wake had won a post season game meaning I was to return to Greensboro to see Wake play a second game.  Optimism is an amazing thing.

Last year, Stephen and I came for the tournament to see both Wake and State play and stayed for the entire time, saw all the games and enjoyed Miami winning.  Great time and great games while our preferred teams did not win, our least preferred teams did not, so all in all, not a bad tournament.  (We enjoyed seeing both Duke and Carolina suffer losses last year.)

Back to this year, second day, feeling optimistic, as we were to play another of the new teams, the Pitt Panthers. I was there early and went into the FanFest tent, met the Deacon, and had a good time.  We are thinking victory.

That was the end of the good time.  Pitt, put a whoopin' on the Deacs.  Our post season woes returned and goodness we were pitiful.

There were more people in attendance, as better teams (Pitt for example) were playing this day, and they did indeed highlight just how big a difference there is between good and bad teams.  I left early since  I already knew what bad teams look like.

up next the NCAA's and I will be making out a bracket or two once and sans Deacons.