I was fairly certain TV announcers loved Tyler Hansbrough more than anybody.
Suddenly, I'm not so sure.
The confusion stems from the BCS title game, in which I heard Fox's Thom Brennaman say the following: "If you're fortunate enough to spend five minutes or 20 minutes around Tim Tebow, your life is better for it." Now I know the point Brennaman was trying to make, and I get it. But I would like to note that I have spent five minutes and 20 minutes around Tebow on multiple occasions, and I've found my life to be pretty similar afterward each time.
Still got the same crappy car and everything.
But perhaps I'll give it one more shot.
Anyway, here's the Friday Look Ahead.
Game worth flying to see in person: Among the things North Carolina coach Roy Williams said about this week's 108-70 route of College of Charleston was that it allowed his Tar Heels to get the "bad taste" out of their mouth -- an obvious reference to that stunning loss to Boston College. Now Wake Forest waits, eager to put another bad taste in UNC's mouth Sunday night, and though it's difficult to imagine the third-ranked Tar Heels losing twice in eight days, it's not hard to visualize the fourth-ranked and undefeated Demon Deacons dealing UNC its second loss in eight days because they have the talent to do it and the home-court advantage to boot.
Game worth driving to see in person: Some of my favorite postgame news conferences are Bob Huggins' news conferences after losses; the man always seems downright depressed while painting a picture of devastation through hushed tones. You really start to feel badly for the guy. For instance, after this week's 61-55 loss to Connecticut, Huggins explained how his 25th-ranked West Virginia Mountaineers aren't "good enough" or "strong enough" or any of the things it takes to beat a team like UConn without doing "everything right." Fair enough. But are they good enough and strong enough to win at 18th-ranked Marquette? The answer comes Saturday afternoon.
Game worth watching on TV: A lot of you e-mailed earlier this week to ask how I could have Wisconsin ranked 15th in the Top 25 (and one) when the Badgers aren't even ranked in the AP or Coaches polls. Answer: Because I'm wiser than most of the writers and coaches participating in those polls, which is something I prove every week in the Poll Attacks. Beyond that, there's nobody I placed below Wisconsin last Sunday night who, at the time, had a clearly better body of work than the one Wisconsin possesses; the Badgers have no bad losses (the losses are to No. 5 Connecticut, No. 7 Texas and No. 18 Marquette) and solid wins over Michigan and Virginia Tech.
Does that make them great? No, not really. But you don't have to be great to be the 15th-best team in the country this season, and the good news for Wisconsin heading into Sunday's game against 14th-ranked Purdue is that you don't have to be great to beat the Boilermakers either. After all, Penn State just did it, and I think we can all agree that Penn State is something other than great.
Some non-BCS love: I got an e-mail from a reader named Dan wondering if Mark Few's quote about how Gonzaga could be "13-1" if they scheduled differently was meant as a jab at West Coast Conference foe Saint Mary's, which has a schedule lacking even one likely NCAA tournament team. In response, Dan, I'll tell you that Few did not mention Saint Mary's or any other school by name; the comment was merely a quick word about how he could've scheduled for 13-1 if he opted not to challenge his team. But it is interesting that you read it that way, and it is kind of funny that the record Few used was 13-1, because 13-1 is the record Saint Mary's is taking into Friday night's game against Santa Clara. Maybe that's a coincidence. But either way, that Gonzaga-Saint Mary's game on Jan. 29 should be fun.
An obvious prediction: I did a search for "Jamie Dixon" and "Pittsburgh" just to see if I might've missed something with the nation's new No. 1 team while traveling home from Wednesday's Tennessee-Gonzaga game, and when I came across a headline that read "Pitt won't finish as No. 1 team" in a small paper in Pennsylvania I decided to take a look because it seemed Debbie Downer-ish, like if you responded to news that your neighbor won the lottery by telling him that he might eventually die of cancer. Yeah, it could be true, but can't the man just enjoy the day? The writer's belief: There's no way Pitt can remain unbeaten in the Big East, and from that he surmised that Pitt won't finish No. 1, apparently forgetting that you don't have to go undefeated in basketball to be No. 1 or even finish No. 1. Only in college football is it important to try to go undefeated to finish No. 1, although actually doing it guarantees nothing, as my friends in Utah understand well. So anyway, the obvious prediction is this: No, the Panthers will not go undefeated ... but they sure as hell aren't losing Sunday to St. John's.
A crazy prediction (but it might happen anyway): OK, you know the deal. I have to take an unranked team over a ranked team, and I'm darn good at it (save last week, when BYU let me down against Wake Forest). This week, I'm using a tried and true formula -- one that involves a well-rested, pretty solid unranked team at home (namely Florida State, which hasn't played since last Saturday) against a highly ranked team coming off a midweek game and facing travel (namely No. 2 Duke, which played Davidson on Wednesday night). Just trust me, this is the type of scenario that produces upsets. So take the Seminoles, straaaaaaaaaight up! And if this thing hits I'm going to ask FSU football player Myron Rolle if he'll let me take his Rhodes Scholarship, because I will have clearly earned it.
Player trying to keep rolling: Rick Pitino complained this week (to Eric Crawford of the Louisville Courier-Journal) that his players have "too many people in their lives" while adding that "if they were just consumed with Father Rick or Uncle Rick, and not with all these idiots on the streets who know nothing about the game, it would be much easier on them." When I read the quote, I couldn't help but think of Sherman, the guy who recently e-mailed to take issue with my theory that Louisville guard Edgar Sosa isn't a good shooter, a theory rooted in the fact that Sosa is a 25 percent 3-point shooter. Sherman suggested I "come to Dyckman Park one summer and watch (Sosa) ball-out." And though I haven't yet decided whether I'll accept the offer, I feel compelled to mention how Sosa has made four of his past nine 3-point attempts (that's 44.4 percent, yo!) heading into Saturday's game at 18th-ranked Villanova, which must make the folks at Dyckman Park awfully proud. Represent.
Player trying to get rolling: Dwight Lewis is Southern California's leading scorer, which is fine because Lewis is a good player. Or at least he's usually a good player. Against Oregon State last game, he was not. To wit, the junior guard missed 11 of 13 shots and finished with six points in a 62-58 overtime loss to OSU, and he'll have to be better if the Trojans are to upset their cross-town rivals, the 10th-ranked UCLA Bruins, on Sunday.
Three things you should know before you go
1. The top five teams heading into the weekend, according to Ken Pomeroy's statistical formula, are (in order) Duke, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, North Carolina and Connecticut. That means the top five are either from the Big East or ACC, which means the Big East and ACC are just as tough as they appear.
2. At this point it seems Arkansas is the class of the SEC West (and perhaps of the entire SEC, depending on what you think of four-loss Tennessee). But the preseason favorites were LSU and Alabama, two schools scheduled to open league play against each other Sunday in Tuscaloosa.
3. For those keeping track, we're down to three undefeated teams. Two of them, as mentioned earlier, are Pittsburgh and Wake Forest. The other is 12th-ranked Clemson, which hosts North Carolina State on Saturday.
Final thought: While I was watching the football game Thursday night, pissed off that my life hasn't noticeably improved since my last encounter with Tebow, a message popped up in my e-mail, one that told me I was over my storage limit. I was devastated, because all this time I thought I was handling my storage limit pretty well. Turns out I wasn't. So I opened my Deleted Items folder and started permanently deleting items while also watching the game, and I must've got confused at some point because I managed to accidentally delete everything from my inbox, and now I have nothing.
Honest to God, I have zero e-mails.
You can't imagine how far below my storage limit I am.
And the reason I'm writing about this is so I can tell you that if you're waiting on a response on something you've sent, you'd better e-mail again or stop waiting, because I have no idea what you sent, and this really is terrifying. Plus, it's hard to do Dear Gary with no e-mails. So if you were in touch, get back in touch. And in the meantime, don't bother going to the gym. Or the doctor. Or anywhere to try to make your life better.
Waste. Of. Time.
Instead, just get down there to Gainesville, where five minutes of Tebow does the body good.
