Burger Man, Meet Mr. Holland

Let me tell you about Burger Man. Burger Man is a big-time BU fan, but you might say his fan-dom of the men's hoop team has lapsed a bit. He still follows the team from afar and is always up for watching a game, but maybe not as up to date on the intracacies of the team as if, say, he read this blog every day.

But I won't hold that against Burger Man.

Burger Man earned his stripes as a BU basketball fan, showing such spirit during college that he sometimes showed up to games looking like this:

I was delighted when Burger Man elected to join me at Porter's for the BU vs. Maine game on Wednesday (the bartender doesn't even hesitate anymore - he sees my BU shirt and immediately tunes the DirecTV to NESN). The last game Burger Man watched with me was really depressing, so he had been a little gunshy about bringing more bad luck to the Terriers.

"But they're a whole different team now than when you saw them shit the bed against Albany!" I told Burger Man. "And wait till you see this John Holland kid."

"Who?"

Clearly, something needed to be done about this. I told Burger Man that Johnny Holland was going to put on a show for him against Maine.
Annnnnnnnnnnnd, he did.

Within minutes, John-boy was dropping effortlessly 3-pointers and frustrating the Maine ball-handlers at the top of the zone defense. BY FAR, the most ridiculous stretch came near the middle of the 1st half. BU stole the ball on 4 straight Maine possessions, each time leading to a fast break - first for a Marques Johnson lay-up, then a missed 3-pointer, then a Carlos Strong dunk... and THEN what we were all waiting for: Johnny gets a steal and takes it the length of the floor for a jaw-dropping, thunderous dunk. I loved that 2 minutes of my life.

BU annihilated Maine - it wasn't even as close as the final score of 73-54. The outcome was never, ever in doubt. Burger Man and I were hoping to either double Maine's score OR stay ahead by 30... we did neither, but it didn't matter. John Holland and Co. put on a show for us, and we were thankful.