5 Thoughts On Duke's 61-59 Championship Game Victory
5. Brian Zoubek, I officially recant all those bad things I said about your offensive competence (or lack thereof).
4. Get on the Singler Express now; he's the official senior leader now, with the graduation of Jon Scheyer. And yes, Duke-haters: the national media will tout him like he's Kareem or MJ; it's the annual ritual.
3. Coach K is genuinely surprised that this Duke team are the champs, I'd wager. And so am I. I'm something of a Duke fan, but they felt overrated to me. Overly reliant on jump-shots, they seemed not far from a terrible game and tourney loss. But a great job they did proving me wrong.
2. Look out for Butler and Coach Stevens. In one season, they have officially entered the "You Are Not A Mid-Major Anymore and Are Expected To Win" Zone, AKA the Gonzaga Zone.
1. Eat it, North Carolina Tar Heels.
Bonus Point 1A. Yes, it is ridiculously significant that Mike Krzyzewski has now won 4 national championships. Coach K has definitely added to his legend, huge as it already is, with last night's victory. The talk is now over that Duke and its coach have coasted on reputation and fear. You might have said he was getting long in the tooth, that Duke's best days are behind it. You would be wrong. This is the least-talented championship team that Duke has ever had. I had them losing early, as did most people. This year was the venerable coach's best job of coaching, I think.
Unrelated Side Rant: I am annoyed by the addition of "cy" to nouns like "relevance" and "competence" and (the worst one ever) the adjective "normal." Woodrow Wilson and newer dictionaries can kiss my grits, because that is not a word. And no matter what the dictionaries say, most of the time, these modifications make the speaker or writer sound like a buffoon. I'm all for colloquialism, slang, and the like, but five-dollar words are so named for a reason, and when you mix verbal occasions and use made-up words, it's a crime. It's a felonious assault on our English language that must stop. The criminal use of "cy" in forming adjectives is almost as evil as the "you're/your" mistake, or the "it's/its" error, and my personal idiot-catcher, "They're/there/their." I cannot say that I have gracious Christian thoughts when these things happen. I am imagining a spectrum. The gentler end says, "Immediate Dismissal Of Intellect" and the more frank end says, "Barely Restraining The Urge To Shank You With A Lead Pipe." I do not fancy myself a great intellect. In fact, I think am in the Gump range of real intellectuals. But I have my standards. I must admit that I have crossed women off my informal list of potential mates when they 1) grossly misspell a number of words in a short space, or 2) demonstrate rank intellectual uncuriosity (sp?). The rub is not pure intelligence, in that case; rather, what it tests is the willingness to make a move toward knowing more than you do today. If one of the four seasons have passed since you read anything more taxing than a People magazine, that could be a problem. If you don't see the "relevancy," then we'll just move on.
5. Brian Zoubek, I officially recant all those bad things I said about your offensive competence (or lack thereof).
4. Get on the Singler Express now; he's the official senior leader now, with the graduation of Jon Scheyer. And yes, Duke-haters: the national media will tout him like he's Kareem or MJ; it's the annual ritual.
3. Coach K is genuinely surprised that this Duke team are the champs, I'd wager. And so am I. I'm something of a Duke fan, but they felt overrated to me. Overly reliant on jump-shots, they seemed not far from a terrible game and tourney loss. But a great job they did proving me wrong.
2. Look out for Butler and Coach Stevens. In one season, they have officially entered the "You Are Not A Mid-Major Anymore and Are Expected To Win" Zone, AKA the Gonzaga Zone.
1. Eat it, North Carolina Tar Heels.
Bonus Point 1A. Yes, it is ridiculously significant that Mike Krzyzewski has now won 4 national championships. Coach K has definitely added to his legend, huge as it already is, with last night's victory. The talk is now over that Duke and its coach have coasted on reputation and fear. You might have said he was getting long in the tooth, that Duke's best days are behind it. You would be wrong. This is the least-talented championship team that Duke has ever had. I had them losing early, as did most people. This year was the venerable coach's best job of coaching, I think.
Unrelated Side Rant: I am annoyed by the addition of "cy" to nouns like "relevance" and "competence" and (the worst one ever) the adjective "normal." Woodrow Wilson and newer dictionaries can kiss my grits, because that is not a word. And no matter what the dictionaries say, most of the time, these modifications make the speaker or writer sound like a buffoon. I'm all for colloquialism, slang, and the like, but five-dollar words are so named for a reason, and when you mix verbal occasions and use made-up words, it's a crime. It's a felonious assault on our English language that must stop. The criminal use of "cy" in forming adjectives is almost as evil as the "you're/your" mistake, or the "it's/its" error, and my personal idiot-catcher, "They're/there/their." I cannot say that I have gracious Christian thoughts when these things happen. I am imagining a spectrum. The gentler end says, "Immediate Dismissal Of Intellect" and the more frank end says, "Barely Restraining The Urge To Shank You With A Lead Pipe." I do not fancy myself a great intellect. In fact, I think am in the Gump range of real intellectuals. But I have my standards. I must admit that I have crossed women off my informal list of potential mates when they 1) grossly misspell a number of words in a short space, or 2) demonstrate rank intellectual uncuriosity (sp?). The rub is not pure intelligence, in that case; rather, what it tests is the willingness to make a move toward knowing more than you do today. If one of the four seasons have passed since you read anything more taxing than a People magazine, that could be a problem. If you don't see the "relevancy," then we'll just move on.
Comments
I agree with this except in the case of "normalcy." Normalcy is to normal what relevance is to relevant. It is what normalance would be were normalance a word. There are things you can't concisely say without it. For example, "we have achieved normalcy!" doesn't work as "we have achieved normal!" I'm no English expert, but at any rate I suspect a spirited defense can be mounted for "normalcy."
Also, I used to write girls off for bad grammer/spelling, but no longer do so. Maybe my standards are lowering, but I think the crux of the matter was exchanging messages with my sisters. I know they're intelligent, thoughtful people, but it turns out that in informal contexts they still write like...like girls. My conclusion is that women just don't care so much about an appearance of skill in their writing. They care more about an appearance of nonchalance. So it doesn't reflect badly on their ability or depth of insight--it's just what they do. So: time to take a bottle of whiteout to your little black book!