In case you didn't see, the Indiana Pacers started off the third quarter by hitting their first twenty shots. They went 20 for 20, scoring 54 points, the fourth highest point production in a quarter in NBA history. Tyler Hansbrough had a bucket; Mike Dunleavy, Jr. went 7 for 7. Everybody else for the Pacers was perfect from the field. And then, with one second left on the clock, Josh McRoberts launched a three.

And missed. Stupid Josh McRoberts.

Unfortunately, the Nuggets, coached by George Karl and with Ty Lawson coming off the bench, were the victims of this barrage. Lawson led the Nuggets with 19 points, while Hansbrough had 20 for the Pacers. McRoberts had two.

I don't know what to say. So I will crib from a post from Jim Wray in its entirety:

The Nike Boom app features "blasts of motivation" like this one from Coach K, who appears to be taking a dump. I'll be sure to download this app precisely thirty seconds before I want to grind my iPhone into dust.    

Click over to see the picture. Free is way, way too expensive for this. Why would anyone need a voice encouraging you to scream at a ref during your workout anyway?

Heh.

I know this has been everywhere by now - I first saw it here - but this truly, is the best thing to ever come out of the state of Ohio:

I hereby apoogize for driving an hour and a half out of my way simply because of my personal vow to avid setting foot in your state.

I'm still in no mood to think about the College World Series, whether Josh Horton is going pro (getting a lot of Google searches about that) or anything else related to this weekend. Luckily, I have a nice little distraction - Dawg Sports' Fredoesque support of Oregon State complete with the usual tropes about universities being founded and Carolina Blue.

First a little correction for Kyle. The College World Series isn't a double elimination tournament. It's two double elimination regionals with a three-game series for the title. It's been two brackets since 1987, and a three-game series since 2003. Both Oregon State and UNC could have made it to the tile game with one loss, or no losses. This year it happened to break down that UNC needed five games to Oregon State's three. Last year the situation was reversed, and the Heels didn't whine about it. (Nor did OSU this year. Just Georgia fans.) You play the hand you're dealt.

As to Georgia's claim to being the oldest university, I don't need to even dignify it with a response, since the first comment on Dawg Sports does it quite well:

There's talking about something, and then there's going out and actually building it. UNC did the latter. Georgia didn't. (Oh, and the "we took longer to do a good job" excuse would work better in UNC didn't routinely trounce you in school rankings, both for value and overall.)

Now, as to the purported girliness of the school colors. It's an old slam against UNC, and although it's interesting to see old Wolfpack talking points are the height of fashion down in Athens, I have to admit I've never seen it. Maybe it's just growing up in a Carolina household, but our shade of blue has never struck me as anything but manly.

The sky is Carolina Blue. The thing constantly over all of our heads, where we look when we aspire to better things, the last sight you see before the black nothingness of space, is Carolina Blue. It's the color of Oxford shirts and faded jeans - if you actually work for a living, no matter what shade your collar, you're doing it in our colors. It's the color of William Wallace's Scots and the Israeli Defense Forces - if you're beset by enemies on all sides and yet still winning, you're most likely in Carolina Blue. And when you first came into this world, this is the color they slapped on your head to signify you had a dick. So I've got no compunction against meeting you on any field or any court in Carolina Blue and White, no matter what sartorial choices you need to make to remind yourself what's swinging between your legs.

The ironic thing of course, is that UNC's tradition of Blue and White go back almost to the University's founding. Yes, there's a good chance Tar Heels were declaring themselves Blue and White before Georgia even got around to opening its doors.

I'm sure you guys have a storied history behind your choice of red and black though. Here it is. Your colors represent a time in 1893 when Georgia Tech stole your women. It's that kind of storied tradition that makes college...

Wait. Georgia Tech stole your women?

Georgia. Tech. Stole. Your. Women. And you folks commemorate this?

I'm beginning to see the obsession with "manly" school colors. That must have been a great story to tell the grandkids. You know, if Grandma hadn't run off with an engineer from Atlanta.

I guess when you steal your mascot from Yale, your logo from Green Bay and can't even come up with an original name for your town, you desperately latch on to any sort of tradition you can find, can't you?

I briefly took note of the StateFans Nation post a couple of days ago trumpeting the fact that their business school made a Top Fifty list when UNC's Kenan-Flagler did not, but promptly succumbed to a serious bout of not caring, and moved on with my life.

It turns out the firm Fortune Magazine hired to do its reporting for them, QS Quacquarelli Symonds - who's business model seems to consist entirely of ranking schools for fun and profit - couldn't distinguish between UNC and N.C. State. And hilarity ensued.

The article reporting on the ensuing mess, which is still raging on after Fortune pulled the rankings, is full of stupid quotes, from panicked business school officials overresponding to the ass-covering non-statements from Fortune and QS. What takes the cake, however, is the man-on-the-street opinion:

I will absolutely guarantee you that a few years from now absolutely nobody is going to ask you about a Fortune.com list. Do you know why the hundreds of these damn lists exist? To sell magazines. And apparently, support high-caliber research firms like QS. Universities overreact to these sort of things because students and cash-donating alumni overreact to these things. Nobody who actually has the power to hire people gives a flying fuck. They've mentally compartmentalized business schools into excellent, good, and places they haven't heard of, and that's as far as it goes. Nobody cares about where you went to school once you've gotten a job in the real world, unless they're tal;king college sports. The soones everyone realizes this and stops obsessing over magazine filler like it was the Bowl Championship Series the healthier the world will be.

Oddly enough, I deal with people confusing UNC and N.C. State quite a lot. Being an engineer on the west coast, most folks just assume I went to State. It doesn't help that people only know two North Carolina towns, Raleigh-Durham (sic) and Charlotte, which leads to interesting things like Kyle Whelliston thinking UNC-Winthrop was a Tar Heel home game. You eventually get used to it. Of course, I've had a boss in RTP ask me who I studied under at State while I was wearing a UNC sweatshirt, so it could just be people are stupid. Who knows?

Someone explain this column to me.

The general thesis is that ACC expansion was bad. I'm a fan of the good old days of eight-team conferences, where everyone played everyone else in every sport, and all were engaged in spirited intercollegiate competition. I am willing to listen to your agruement. Persuade away.

ACC expansion was wrong because the conference is so bad at football, Wake Forest is leading the league. I don't really see how tossing Miami, BC, and Virginia Tech into the mix suddenly made Florida State incompetent and Wake Forest inviolable. Try another tact.

ACC expansion was wrong because the basketball coaches are complaining about being denied NCAA berths. Basketball coaches always complain when they don't make the tournament. Do you think it was the addition of Miami, BC, and Virginia Tech that kept more ACC teams out? Maybe Florida State could have slipped in - they went 2-3 against the three teams - but that's it. It was a down year in ACC basketball, a year after sending everybody to the pros.

ACC expansion was wrong because Miami got into a fight. I wasn't thrilled with that, either. If only Miami was prone to fire coaches quickly.

Look, there seems to be some sort of thought rifling through the sportswriting hive mind that for a conference to be "respectable" the same powerful teams must bestride it year after year. Tennessee failed to make a bowl game last year, but it wasn't the end of the SEC. Southern Cal was pretty mediocre before Pete Carroll swooped in, but the Pac-10 was still respectable. Hell, the Big East spent the latter half of the '90's wasting a BCS bid with a steady stream of three-loss conference champions. Now? They're back in the saddle.

It's a bad year for FSU and Miami. This is a good thing - new teams are coming out on top. The Florida schools will bounce back, and in a few years no one will reference this period of mediocrity. To blame this season on expansion - when Boston College is jockeying for an ACC championship bid and Virgina Tech is second in the dismal Coastal division is absurd. Both schools will put up a fight come basketball season (Miami is rather screwed.). The conference will survive. And a couple of columnists can take their schadenfreude and stick it up their ass.

As I've been repeatedly informed by the new official NCAA Footbal blog, Every Game Counts, today is College Colors Day. And here you didn't even get anything for the missus.

As you no doubt remember from the rose-colored memories of the College Colors Days of your youth, it's a day which, and I quote:

It also somehow involves Kenny Chesney. Perhaps he's the punishment for failing to display enough flair college spirit.

Coincidentally enough, the holiday comes on the heels of a Collegiate Licensing Company press release stating that Texas has knocked UNC off the perch of Most Royalty Generating Institution. Two thoughts on this:

• North Carolina's licensing ubiquity has always struck me with a mixture of pride and bewilderment. I've walked into the local Sportsmart in Goleta, California and seen more UNC hats for sale than any school but UCLA and Southern Cal - and this was in 2002, one of the darker years of Tar Heel athletics. The downside to this is being 3,000 miles from home and trying to strike up conversations with people wearing Carolina gear. After getting five or six blank looks, you realize most of the people in the gear not only didn't go to Chapel Hill, but often don't even realize their clothing refers to a school. A buddy of mine from Cal Poly picked up an interlocking NC hat (in red, of all colors) simply because he liked the logo. It's a bit alienating.
• To the new licensing champions Texas: Congratulations. But a word of advice, based on something I saw on the back of a car driving down the 101. You're probably aware that your logo has, shall we say, gynecological aspects to it. Now there's no shame in this, and I'm sure you get a lot of grief about this from your Aggies and Red Raiders and other cohorts in the Lone Star State, so I don't want to pile on. But if I may make a suggestion? You might not want to sell a version of your logo that's, well:

Pink. And sparkly. I'm just saying.