It appears that my Xbox 360 indeed broken.  I turned it on today and it was still messed up the same way it was last night.

I woke up this morning to the phone ringing.  It was Amanda’s dad, who was calling because he was putting Amanda on his cell phone plan.  We talked to him about it a couple days ago and apparently he decided to go ahead and do it.  When we went over finances a few days ago we came to the conclusion that we shouldn’t have to spend $50 a month for her cell phone when she never came anywhere close to using her minutes.  My phone is taken care of by my work, so we couldn’t get on a shared plan ourselves.  Anyway, he needed some of her info to get it switched over, plus she needed to pick a new phone.  She chose a purple RAZR and we’ll be saving about $30 a month.

We didn’t do a whole lot for the morning.  We sat around updating the baby registry, adding in a bunch of the little, everyday items.  After we took a shower we watched a little bit of basketball, namely NC State who won an overtime game against Georgia Tech.

That game was still on when Georgetown rolled into Cameron to take on my Blue Devils.  This wasn’t a problem, since the games were on different channels here in Wilmington, but I did keep the State game on the picture-in-picture.

I felt a certain peace going into this game.  I know that this is a really good Duke team, but a lot of people were thinking this was an unfavorable matchup.  I knew Duke could win, but I knew it would be tough, so I think I was pretty well prepared for whatever the outcome was.  Well, Gerald Henderson had 17 points in the first half alone and Kyle Singler had a career-high number of rebounds in a game.  On top of that, Georgetown’s star freshman, Greg Monroe (whom Duke heavily recruited) got three fouls in the first half.

Monroe’s fourth foul was a controversial one.  A ref was walking by the Hoya bench, turned and threw a T at Monroe.  Georgetown had some momentum going at that point and had cut the lead to four points, but this started something like a 15-3 run by Duke.  I feel confident that Duke would have won anyway (the final score was 76-67), but it was a black mark on the game, in my opinion.

Greg Paulus had a pretty good game too, which was great to see.  He hit several threes, but more importantly he was just fired up and played with a lot of intensity, which affected the other Blue Devils.  He’s been playing with an arm injury for a long time, and when you add that to the fact that he was relegated from started to bench player, I was just happy to see him play with the fire.  I hope it’s a sign of things to come.  Duke will need that intensity and his three pointers.

After that game Amanda and I watched Wake Forest playing at Clemson, the game of the unbeatens.  The only other undefeated team remaining was Pitt, the number one team in the country.  Louisville took care of that later in the night though.  I texted my cousin, Roger Dotsey, who goes to Louisville, to congratulate him.

Anyway, Wake and Clemson played a pretty good game.  Wake lead most of the game but Clemson made a pretty good comeback towards the end to make it interesting, but ultimately the Demon Deacons won out.  I expect, with Pitt having lost later, that Wake will probably move up to number one in the polls.  This week they’re two in one poll and three in the other.  Duke is three in one and two in the other.  It’s possible that they’ll both be number one next week, but since the Deacs are undefeated so far I wouldn’t be offended if they’re ranked first.

I went and got Amanda some mac and cheese at the half.  There was a good sale on Cinnamon Toast Crunch, so I got a few boxes of that.

Amanda and I headed over to Justin and Lisa Hauenstein’s for a party they were bonfire throwing.  We met a few people, most of whom work with Lisa.  One of them happened to be another big Duke fan, so we had plenty to talk about.  The fire outside was nice, but it was still pretty cold out, so some of us spent a bit of time going back and forth between inside and out.

We watched the end of Pitt losing to Louisville then the beginning of Miami playing at Carolina.  Miami was hanging with the Heels up to the half, but as Amanda and I were listening to them on the radio on the way home Carolina started hitting all their shots, particularly Wayne Ellington dropping some crazy treys, so I didn’t bother watching.

Despite the Carolina game it was a great day of basketball.  I really like how my Blue Devils played.  If people weren’t considering them a heavy contender before, they should be now.

Zach Dotsey