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Herb Sendek was the coach of NC State last year. People were upset with him in part because it had been a long time since he’d gotten any wins (at least consistently I guess) over the Tar Heels or the Blue Devils. Herb Sendek was forced to leave after last season. After a lot of searching, Sidney Lowe was chosen as his replacement. Sidney Lowe accomplished one of the things people were upset at Herb Sendek for tonight. He coached the Wolfpack to a win over Carolina earlier this year, and tonight, in the first round of the ACC Tournament, he coached NC State into a victory over Duke.

It was pretty upsetting and the game stayed close the entire time, but I knew going into it that Duke could lose, and so they did. Greg Paulus had another good night, but the news of the game is that Martynas Pocius had a career high fourteen points. If the stats I read were right, he was 5-5 in field goals (two of which were threes), 2-2 in free throws.

Offensively, Duke did well. Five players were in double digits and they all had at least 14 points (although they were the only ones with any points at all). Defensively, they didn’t do too hot. One NC State player, Costner, scored thirty points. In the second half, Engin Atsur seemed to score at will for a total of 21 points. In overtime I don’t think Duke stopped the Wolfpack from scoring in a single possession.

I’m really hoping Duke does okay in the NCAA tournament. Earlier I was thinking a Sweet 16 appearance would be nice. At this point I’m hoping they make it to the second round.

So, what else happened besides basketball today? Nothing. The ACC tournament started at noon, so I had that on while I worked. First was Clemson’s loss to Florida State. That was a really good game. The score difference was one or two almost the entire time with the leading team changing all the time. It was 66-66 at the end but Al Thornton made the second of two free throws on what I thought was a somewhat iffy foul for the win. Miami beat Maryland after that, which I was pretty happy about.

So far all the lower seeds have won in the ACC and Wake Forest is up 80-76 against Georgia Tech with 46 seconds left. (It’s not on any station I get or I’d be watching it.) Maybe that pattern will hold and Florida State will be Carolina at noon tomorrow. That’d make me so happy. I guess I’m pulling for State in the tournament now.

So really what else happened today?

Bruce was really cute this morning. I washed some towels yesterday and had the basket of them sitting downstairs, and when I went to get one this morning I pulled on it but it was stuck. Turns out that Bruce had burrowed himself into the towels (with Amanda’s help, I later discovered).

A little while later I went across the street to help our neighbor, Bonnie Narron, with her printer. (She’d called last night to see if I could come over to take a look at it, but it turns out she’d gotten it to work.) I took Bruce over there with me, and on the way out she gave him a large (for him) doggy bone. It was big enough that when he carried it the ends stuck out on both side of his mouth. As soon as I opened the door he trotted over across the street and as soon as he hit the driveway he ran up to the front door of our house. As soon as I let him in there he ran upstairs and waited for me to lift him up to the bed so he could hide it.

I found out that the friend of mine who was afraid of being kicked out of his apartment is fine.

Wake Forest and Georgia Tech are going into overtime at 82-82.

I finished watching The Dark Ages from The History Channel after work this afternoon. I DVR’ed it on Sunday and only now got around to finishing it. After that I went to pick up some food from Wild Wing Cafe and Chick-Fil-A. Funnily, as I was pulling up to the house on the way back home Elliot and Melissa were getting out of their cars and it turns out that they had just eaten at Wild Wing Cafe. They came the Gordon Road route, but I went there that way and drove back the Eastwood route.

We had small group tonight with everyone in attendance. We watched the beginning of the Duke-NC State game while Rob and Kristen ate their dinner. I set the DVR to record the rest of it (which I generally don’t like to do) and Elliot stuck around to watch the rest of the game after everyone else left. (He and his wife, Melissa, had driven here separately.) He left with a few seconds left on the clock. We were both rather disheartened.

Georgia Tech and Wake Forest just went into a second overtime on a three pointer made by Georgia Tech in the last three seconds of the game.

Zach Dotsey