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.

Two frustrating games

BU games are becoming so demoralizing these days that I can only write them 2 at a time. Which is fine because the last two games made me feel exactly the same way. Both games were broadcast on NESN, and I made the mistake of watching both games.

BU is just extremely frustrating game to watch. When the outside shots arent falling, we are unable to do anything else. Tyler and Carlos aren't doing anything these days, so that leaves us with one scoring option - not enough.

The Hartford game from Saturday was bad... but I think the Albany game was worse. It's one thing to lose to a decent team on the road (and yes, Hartford is a decent team). It's another thing if BU can't even get up for a home game against the defending champs, with 1500 fans present. The crowd looked AMAZING on TV last night -- I wish I was there! -- but we still came out flat.

The worst part is, each game we got into a big deficit early, and then we came back to make it close, giving me hope!! And then of course, the hope is dashed, we lose by 7 or 9 - and I feel like feasting on the brains of the next poor soul who tries to talk to me.

Sorry to vent. Frustrated right now.

Basketball Logic

Saturday, we take on Hartford, who has turned a couple heads this year. The game will be on NESN at 6PM so make sure you catch it. Hartford freightens me slightly, because of a couple wins, but one in particular.

Hartford beat Binghamton, and Binghamton laid a beatdown on us. Now with perfect logic (which is unrealistic in Basketball, but just for the hell of it...), one would just assume that Hartford would beat us easily.

But hold the phone--BU just beat New Hampshire, who earlier in the year, beat Quinnipiac, who in turn beat Hartford. So now I don't know what to think.

Think that's weird? Well our pounding from Binghamton came just after UVM took the Bearcats to the cleaners. So UVM's pretty good, execpt they lost to UMBC. UMBC seems to be having a great year so far, except they lost earlier this year to Central-Connecticut State. The very same Central-Connecticut State that fell to UNH. That's right, the UNH that we just beat.

So tell me how the hell that makes sense??