Ryan Craig
Ryan Craig is the sports web editor for WRALSportsFan.com.
By Ryan Craig
Mar 10, 2011
In every great he said-she said debate - one where both sides swear they’re right and the other is completely wrong - the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle.
In much the same vein, after every great sports comeback people want to hammer the once-leading team for blowing a lead or laud the side that came back for exhibiting such poise in the face of imminent defeat.
The truth is, any great comeback takes a combination of both: one team has to unravel to some degree while the other has to capitalize on that opportunity.
Thursday afternoon’s first-round ACC Tournament game between Miami and Virginia had just that – a winning, or losing depending on which team you root for, combination of ineptitude from one side and opportunism from the other.
Here is how the play-by-play looked from the final minute of Miami’s you-wouldn’t-believe-it-unless-you-saw-it, 69-62 win over Virginia Thursday, starting with the Mustapha Farrakhan free throw that put the Cavaliers up 53-43 with 42 seconds left in the game:
:42 left – Farrakhan makes free throw – UVa leads, 53-43
:34 left – Miami’s Durand Scott hits three-point shot – UVa leads, 53-46
:31 left – Virginia’s Sammy Zeglinski misses back-to-back front ends of a one-and-one
:24 left – Malcolm Grant hits a three – UVa leads, 53-49
:21 left – Zeglinski turnover in the backcourt
:19 left – Julian Gamble dunks – UVa leads, 53-51
:15 left – Virginia’s
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By Ryan Craig
Mar 10, 2011
I once asked a friend of mine, that happens to be a basketball official at the highest level of his profession, about officiating the final minutes of a big game.
“Why is it that refs swallow their whistles at the end of games?” I inquired. “Because you all know you do.”
After we both had a good laugh about it, he gave an honest answer.
He said it’s not that officials choose not to call fouls that they see; it’s that they have to be surer they are seeing a foul before they call it.
A professional, he said, won’t simply ignore fouls, but they will become more conservative when it comes to whistling a player’s action that might fall into the dreaded grey area.
Unfortunately for the officials in Wednesday afternoon’s St. John’s vs. Rutgers game, the final 1.7 seconds of the contest had nothing to do with grey area.
It’s not the no-call on the likely blocking foul before the potential go-ahead layup for the Scarlet Knights or the unseen cross-body block thrown by the Johnnies on the game’s final inbounds play that is disappointing.
I can even live with the non-call of the technical foul for the Red Storm player throwing the ball into the stands while the game was still going on, although Rick Pitino and his male cheerleader friend might have an issue with it.
And traveling? That hasn’t been called consistently for years, so why should be expect that to change on a random Wednesday in March of 2011.
But
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By Ryan Craig
Feb 28, 2011
LeBron’s famous summer speech about bringing his talents to South Beach invited a lot of hate.
People wondered how big of an ego one superstar could have and what the future of the NBA would look like if more All-Stars made behind-the-scenes agreements to join forces in the league’s biggest markets.
If Sunday night’s Heat vs. Knicks game in Miami was any indication, count me as someone that thinks the league will look just fine.
With the expansion of professional sports, be it basketball, baseball, hockey, etc…comes a dilution of talent. For the most part, there are only so many good players, so the more teams there are to share them, the more that elite talent will be spread apart.
In time, the on-court product suffers.
Not so if the best players are condensed into a few select areas.
Also, for the longest time, the NBA seemed a little more to me than disinterested players playing less defense than you’d see in a pregame layup line.
Too often it seemed this collection of millionaires would rather be anywhere else on the planet than playing in the second of back-to-back road games.
With the advent of the “superteam,” however, this has changed.
Sure, Lakers vs. Kings isn’t exactly inspirational viewing, but as more teams compile lineups that include three, or sometimes four, All-Stars, more of the season’s 82-game schedule consists of two of these teams going head to head on a given night.
Spurs vs.
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By Ryan Craig
Feb 7, 2011
Aaron Rodgers will have to answer a lot of questions after winning the Super Bowl.
Will the victory change his status among the NFL’s best signal-callers? Who does he credit most with his development? When will he be going to Disney World?
But one question he won’t have to answer on this night, or any other for the rest of his imminently Pro-Bowl-laden career, is whether or not he’ll ever be able to fill the shoes of Brett Favre.
The 2010 season was a coronation for Rodgers and an abomination for Favre.
The former adds a Lombardi Trophy and Super Bowl MVP to his resume.
The latter leaves the game with a broken body and a tainted image.
When Rodgers was taken by the Packers with the 24th overall selection in the 2005 NFL Draft, he stepped into an impossible situation.
How do you replace the franchise’s, if not the league’s, greatest quarterback ever?
Favre was the embodiment of Green Bay. He loved the cold and the snow – relished it, even.
The man with the unshaven face and blue jeans commercials had re-written the NFL record books and done so with a gunslinger’s mentality and a penchant for making clutch plays.
But while Rodgers may never have the stubble, the Southern drawl, or the highlight reel of off-balanced throws, he already has the same number of Super Bowl titles as his predecessor.
And he’s only 27 years old.
For the past seven months, while Favre was busy holding the Minnesota
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By Ryan Craig
Feb 4, 2011
North Carolina point guard Larry Drew II reacts to a foul late in the game against Georgia Tech during the first round of the 2010 ACC Tournament on March 11 in Greensboro, NC.
By now, it’s clear that Roy Williams, Kendall Marshall, and the rest of the North Carolina basketball program were shocked by the sudden departure of backup point guard Larry Drew II.
Even those that weren’t shocked by the end result were certainly caught off guard, so to speak, by the timing.
February?
With the meat of the conference schedule looming?
It seems that everyone was stunned by the decision – everyone other than the Drew family, that is.
Before his team’s game Friday night, Larry Drew Sr., the head coach of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, stated that the decision to leave the program was actually one the family had arrived at before the season.
Huh?
Rumors swirled towards the end of the 2009-2010 campaign that the younger Drew, then the team’s starting point guard, was contemplating a change of scenery. The buzz had gained so much momentum that Drew found himself having to address the claims during a number of postgame interviews.
The team was in the midst of a season that would ultimately end with an NIT finals loss to Dayton, and Drew was one of the fan base’s favorite scapegoats.
Those who had become accustomed to the wizardry of Felton and the pace of Lawson were eager to take their rage out on someone - and that someone was Larry Drew, the California kid that rarely showed his emotions on the court.
Despite the denials from the coaches and players, everyone thought a transfer was in the making.
When
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By Ryan Craig
Feb 4, 2011
Brian Baker hasn't been the defensive line coach at North Carolina long, but he has already made an impact.
Many are crediting Baker with landing the upset signing-day commitment of Delvon Simmons, a five-star defensive tackle that had previously eliminated Carolina from his list of finalists.
As it turns out, Baker may not be around to coach Simmons, as the former defensive line coach for the Carolina Panthers may be headed back to the NFL sooner rather than later.
By Ryan Craig
Jan 28, 2011
Hockey in Raleigh? Never.
I imagine those that doubted the staying power of an NHL franchise in the City of Oaks are on their third helping of crow at this point.
In the past ten seasons, the Carolina Hurricanes have won two Eastern Conference championships and a Stanley Cup.
And now, for four days at least, the entire hockey world will call Raleigh home.
As a downtown Raleigh resident, I can say it’s been a long time coming as NHL commissioner Gary Bettman finally followed through on his ten-year-old promise to grant Raleigh and the Canes the NHL All-Star Game.
When news of the Hurricanes coming to Raleigh surfaced, I was among those hoping the franchise would be play its home games downtown. But, as tolerable consolation prizes go, basing the All-Star Game’s festivities along Fayetteville Street and Glenwood Avenue isn’t bad.
The league’s elite will descend upon Raleigh and depart less than 100 hours later for their respective franchise’s homes, but the effect the Game will have on one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities should last far longer.
Just blocks from my house, streets are closed in advance of the various pedestrian activities scheduled for the Weekend.
For several days, I’ll be able hear concerts echoing through the streets from the Downtown Raleigh Amphitheater.
The city’s recently completed hotel and city plaza projects will be full of visitors from across the state and the world.
The
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By Ryan Craig
Feb 17, 2010
“I’m at a loss.”
“It’s flabbergasting.”
These are not phrases we’ve heard out of Roy Williams’ mouth very often in his time as the head coach of North Carolina, or at Kansas for that matter, but they were both uttered at one point after the Heels’ 68-51 loss at Georgia Tech Tuesday night.
Williams has never missed the NCAA Tournament as a head coach when his team had been eligible to participate – his Jayhawk team did not play in the ’89 Big Dance because it was placed on probation for violations that occurred before his arrival – and he’s never been on the losing end of a score line more than a dozen times in one season.
This year, he may experience both.
At 3-8 in conference play, and 14-12 overall, the Heels are almost certainly in a position where the only invite to March Madness will come via an ACC Tournament Championship.
Carolina can pick up wins over Miami, Boston College, and Florida State, but victories over Duke and Wake Forest on the road will be tough to come by, and a 6-10 conference record just isn’t going to get it done during a down year in the ACC.
The Heels do have quality non-conference wins over Michigan State and Ohio State – both top-11 teams in the latest poll – and a win over Virginia Tech that is looking better every day (the Hokies beat the Demon Deacons Tuesday night to secure second place in the ACC).
But,
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By Ryan Craig
Feb 5, 2010
Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski talks with Kyle Singler on February 4, 2010.
After his team’s win over Florida State just more than a week ago, Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski answered a postgame question about the luxury of having three players, in Nolan Smith, Jon Scheyer, and Kyle Singler, capable of carrying a team on the offensive end of the floor on any given night.
He joked that the team hadn’t felt very luxurious just yet because all three players hadn’t clicked very often on the same night.
Despite Nolan Smith’s modest point total of 14 in Thursday night’s 86-67 win over Georgia Tech, Coach K had to be feeling pretty darn good about things.
That’s because Kyle Singler, the one player out of the triumvirate that hadn’t had a signature night since Duke’s loss to Wisconsin early in the season, officially broke out of whatever shooting slump he might have been in.
Minutes after seemingly re-injuring a wrist that he initially hurt against Wake Forest, Singler began hitting three after three in a performance that brought back memories of former Blue Devil All-American J.J. Redick.
The Oregon-native hit on eight of his ten three-point attempts on his way to a 30-point night – simultaneously quelling all fears of what another whack to the wrist might mean for the 6-foot-8 forward and shooing away all concerns about what had been plaguing the shooting stroke of the preseason ACC Player of the Year.
When Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith play well, Duke is a potential
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By Ryan Craig
Jan 25, 2010
I know a lot of people want to blame Minnesota’s 31-28 loss to New Orleans Sunday night on 40-year old number four, but the real number they should be focusing on is five.
Five times the Vikings put the ball on the carpet, or field turf as the case may be, Sunday night, a number that many would consider high for an entire month, much less a three-hour period.
If you’re Adrian Peterson, how can you be the best running back in football and fail to secure the ball on a regular basis?
Sure, the third-year back out of Oklahoma didn’t lose either of his two fumbles to the Saints, but the worries they caused had an effect on play calling, personnel choices, and team confidence.
You not only lose yards when you cough up the pigskin, you lose options.
Vikings head coach Brad Childress didn’t feel comfortable giving the ball to his franchise player at critical moments of the NFC Championship Game, so he was forced to employ Percy Harvin in the backfield – the same Harvin that was questionable to even make the trip to the Bayou because of migraine headaches, and a guy who was catching screen passes from Tim Tebow last season.
Sure enough, it took Harvin exactly two plays, and one lost fumble, as the feature back to prove why most teams don’t like to lean too hard on rookies deep in the playoffs.
But, I have no sympathy in this situation for Childress – after all, despite the epic case of fumble-itis his
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