Don Senick and Laurel Hughes were wedded this morning. Amanda and I picked Billy Supplee up and headed downtown for it. One thing I decided to do was to look at Don as Laurel was walking down the aisle. What I remember best was that he just shook his head as if in amazement.
The ceremony was only about half an hour and was capped off by communion, which I thought was a nice touch. Afterwards, they held a reception at Roudabush. There was a little dancing and quite a bit of milling about. Amanda and I sat at what seemed to be the “Tribute” table, in that everyone there either worked at or was married to someone who worked at Tribute Properties.
They had a pretty good spread of food and cupcakes with sugar surfboards on them instead of cake. We took off around 12:30.
We dropped Billy back off at his apartment then went on home. Duke played Maryland at noon and I had set the DVR, so I was able to watch the whole thing. A rarity in cases where I’m missing the game, I happened not to have looked for updates to the score online, which I’m glad I did. It allowed me to enjoy the game that much more.
What can really be said about it? Duke murdered, I mean absolutely chopped, stabbed, mutilated, castrated, humiliated, beat them down, and left the Terps for dead. They had one guy, Landon Milbourne, score 19 points. The next highest scorer was Dave Neal with 5. Duke had all the starters out somewhere under the nine-minute mark and still won by 41 points. Brian Zoubek had a nice game and was a point and a rebound shy of a double-double. Literally everyone on Duke’s team got to play, including Steve Johnson. I really like that the freshmen got to play. Even Olek Czyz, the new Martynas Pocius, logged almost double-digit minutes. Miles Plumlee showed some good defense but just needs to go stronger to the basket. Elliot Williams kept attacking the basket aggressively, which was great to see.
The final score was 85-44. It was the worst Maryland loss since the ’60’s and the worst loss ever under coach Gary Williams. The best part of the game to me was on one possession Gerald Henderson was heading down the court then lobbed the ball towards the goal for Kyle Singler to finish with a dunk. Then on the very next possession, Singler stole the ball and tossed it up court to Jon Scheyer who then touch passed it across the court to Nolan Smith who then tossed it behind himself to Gerald Henderson to lay it in. What an awesome sequence and great show of teamwork! Cameron was rocking after that and Brian Zoubek grabbed Henderson, who was just grinning from ear to ear, and gave him a big bear hug. Everybody was just pumped! (In the video clip above, it’s the part from about 1:40 to 2:00.)
Another fun thing about the game is how Maryland’s Greivis Vasquez, a notorious trash talker, had claimed before the game that Cameron Indoor Stadium was his house. Gary Williams sat Vasquez for the rest of the game after being whistled for an intentional foul (since the game was well out of hand at that point anyway) after making four points on 2-10 shooting. The Cameron Crazies were shouting, “Nuestra casa!”
On a sadder basketball note, Kay Yow, former NC State Women’s Basketball coach, lost her struggle with cancer today. From a USA Today article:
In 38 years of college coaching, 34 at N.C. State, Yow had a 737-344 record, four Atlantic Coast Conference titles, 20 NCAA bids and a 1998 Final Four appearance. She coached the U.S. women to the 1988 Olympic title and was a member of the Naismith and the Women’s Basketball halls of fame.
Basketball games all over the country, including the Duke-Maryland game, held a moment of silence for her. The one at Duke also honored Bill Werber, who died at the age of 100 on Thursday. He was Duke’s first All-American basketball player and also played baseball with Babe Ruth.
After the game I tried to doze off but Amanda made me get up and go shopping with her. We needed to go get a birthday present for Michael so we went to Independence Mall, Circuit City, and Best Buy. Circuit City’s liquidation prices still aren’t very competitive, in my opinion. One of the things Michael wanted was Wall-E on Blu-Ray. It was priced higher at Circuit City but ended up being $1 cheaper with the discount. The TVs and other higher ticket items, cameras and the like, still have a way to go before they’re competitive, I think.
Zach Dotsey