As was to be expected, given the conference's long, storied tradition in the sport, ACC member Boston College is this year's NCAA Ice Hockey national champions. I'm assured by Yankees of my aquaintance that this is a big deal.

(Of course technically, BC Hockey is not a member of the ACC, as they are the only school in the conference with a varsity ice hockey squad, which would make for a dull and rather predictable conference season. So while it really goes down as a win for the Hockey East Association, with basketball already over and football not looking too swift, the ACC will take what it can get.)

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As my campus visits have been infrequent - this weekend will be the first time since 2006 I've set foot on North Campus - I was totally unaware that Venable Hall had been demolished.

I owe my life to Venable's rat-warren halls. If the daily walk from Phillips to my organic chem class hadn't taken me my the tiny Applied Science offices, I never would have heard about my major, or the free barbecue information sessions they held twice a year. Without that, and the soul-crushing frustration of ketones and chirality, I never would have jumped into the world of materials science, never would have landed the job that eventuslly got me to grad school in Santa Barbara, and wouldn't be doing the science I love now. Hell, I'd probably be doing information science or something - there but for the maze of Venable goes I.

On the other hand, I had a ceiling tile fall on me in class there, and that was almost fifteen years ago. I think I can just be satisfied with a brick.

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(Look! Filler that should have been posted two weeks ago!)

Still no sports news in the long, dark teatime of exam week, unless you want to talk about steriods (I don't) or the random games I come across on TV (Louisville and Purdue at the moment in a particularly ugly start. And is John Wooden just stamping his name on any basketball game now?)

But it's the end of the year - there has to be some sort of list I can fill space with. Nothing Carolina related, since we're all up to date there. I've only read two books published in 2007 (these two - I was kind of preoccupied with a dissertation) and for some reason all the movies I were one-word titles beginning with S, which would make for a weird list. I did plow through a fair amount of music, though, and that's worth a post if nothing else:

My Three Favorite Albums of 2007: The National, Boxer, Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, and Saturday Looks Good to Me, Fill Up the Room.

Favorite Album Where I Already Owned All of the Songs on 12 Monthly EPs: Bishop Allen, Bishop Allen and the Broken String

Favorite Album That Really Should Have Stopped After Half the Songs: Mark Ronson, Version

Favorite EP I Really Wanted to Have Twice as Many Songs: Los Campesinos!, Sticking Finger into Sockets

Album That Would Have Made This List But It Really Didn't Need to Be Any Whiter: Arcade Fire, Neon Bible.

Two More Worth Mentioning as We Get So Caucasian We're Translucent: Ted Leo and the Pharmacist, Living with the Living and Jens Lekman Night Falls over Kortedala

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Chad Orzel pokes around the NCAA's horrible website to take a look at the graduation rates of scholarship athletes. For the most part, he finds that athletes are graduating at the same or slightly lower rate as their demographic counterparts in the student body at large. There is one question:

I don't really know, but a closer look at the numbers shows that almost all of that discrepancy can be attributed to the baseball team, who only graduated 50% of their (all-white) incoming class of 2000-2001. What is up with that?

Anyway, I may poke around the NCAA's numbers a bit, mining them for interesting things. I've already learned that 1 out of every 5 black men attending Duke is doing so on an athletic scholarship; what else is out there?

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Is there anything that can compete with the excitement of the NBA Draft? How about a thrity-six sport year-long competition nobody cares about? Because those results were also released today, and UNC picked up third.

The Tar Heels ended up with 1,161.33 points - the .03 coming as part of a women's gymnastic score - and lost only to Stanford (1,429) and UCLA (1,257). UNC still remains the only school besides Stanford to win the cup. This was the Heels' best finish since a second place in 1998.

UCLA's margin of victory can be wholly attributed to their 100th NCAA championship won in women's water polo, worth 100 points in the scoring. The women's water polo championship has never been contested by any team outside of the state of California, and only one has it been won by a school from outside the Los Angeles city limits. The only ACC school with a varsity team is Maryland.

Here's the breakdown of the UNC Athletic Season:

• Women's Cross Country, 31st
  
• Women's Field Hockey, First Round
  
• Women's Soccer, 1st
  
• Men's Soccer, Second Round
  
• Women's Basketball, Final Four
  
• Men's Basketball, Regional Finals
  
• Women's Fencing, 13th
  
• Women's Gymnastic, 31st
  
• Women's Swimming, 30th
  
• Men's Swimming, 27th
  
• Women's Indoor Track and Field, 16th
  
• Men's Indoor Track and Field, 32nd
  
• Men's Wrestling, 49th
  
• Men's Baseball, 2nd
  
• Women's Golf, 21st
  
• Men's Golf, 16th
  
• Women's Lacrosse, Quarterfinals
  
• Men's Lacrosse, Quaterfinals
  
• Women's Softball, First Round
  
• Women's Tennis, Third Round
  
• Men's Tennis, Second Round
  
• Women's Outdoor Track and Field, 21st
  
• Men's Outdoor Track and Field, 6th
  
• Women's Water Polo, a stupid little sport that cost UNC second place.

Carolina March mid-major favorite UC Santa Barbara was 61st, and got no points in women's water polo despite fielding a team (The coach resigned, much to the joy of women's water polo forum posters. Yes, no matter what the sport, someone, somewhere is advocating on the internet to fire a coach.)

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Occasionally, I'm reminded I live in California. You'd think I wouldn't need these reminders, what with the never-changing weather, Pacific Ocean, and all those California license plates I see in traffic everyday, but I do, and Santa Barbara is more than happy to provide.

Today I had a little time to kill, and wandered into a local clothing boutique - the type that sells two hundred dollar jeans. Now I am not a man who buys two hundred dollar jeans, but I am constantly in danger of becoming that guy, as these jeans actually fit my scrawny hipster ass, in a way sensibly priced jeans for the population at large do not. (There's a reason sports-blogging ladies everywhere aren't campaigning for my physical attributes to be enshrined across the internet. Now go vote for Mike.) My wallet has yet to succumb to their siren call, however.

Don't worry, this does all relate to UNC.

This particular store also pimps overpriced T-shirts, of the typical faux-vintage, fashion-forward variety I never pay much attention to. Today they were devoting a reasonable amount of floor space to a new line of such shirts, with college logos on them. One of which was the old school Rameses logo

on a plain gray tee, artificially distressed in the state T-shirts made after 1979 never actually reach on their own.

Now I'm a fan of old school Rameses. Big fan. I've never been fond of his Joe Camel redesign, but the Strutting Ram? Him, plus the shock of seeing UNC apparel in this enviroment was enough for me to take a closer look. And so I got a glimpse of the price.

The thing was selling for seventy-two dollars. For a T-shirt ninety-percent of the people reading this blog already own. Welcome to California.

The next shirt over, for Pitt was only $66. Being a class establishment, the store didn't sell Duke or N.C. State (or even misappropriated Wolfpack) apparel. The free market has spoken, and its judgement cannot be denied.

Of course, now I can't consider picking up those jeans I had my eye on without seeing Rameses' stern glare of disapproval. I wonder if this place has sales...

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And since I am perpetually unhappy with said institution (Duke), it makes for some interesting reading. It's heavy on typical almuni grousing you can read on any school's message board, and tosses out some things I'm not sure Feinstein thought through - I don't think reinstating a cancelled lacrosse season is nearly as easy logistically as he imagines, and I'm not sure that arguing Duke is losing its integrety really meshes with castigation for not hiring Bobby Ross - but nonetheless, it's the most enjoyable thing I've read from the man in quite a while.

It of course, revolves around the Duke lacrosse scandal, which I as a matter of policy have never mentioned on this blog, and will continue to not comment on. My reasoning at the time is very simple. I wasn't there that night. Nor was I in the state for the resulting furor, and I ducked as much media coverage as possible because it wasn't a subject I wanted to emerse myself in. I have a viceral dislike of Duke, and to a lesser extent the sport of lacrosse, so I wouldn't be fair in reaching any conclusion and there's absolutely no opinion I could voice on the subject that couldn't be found in a multitude of places on the internet. So I took a pass on the whole thing, and wouldn't even bring up the Feinstein piece here if it didn't raise another question I'm interested in hearing more about:

Is the antipathy directed at a lot of athletic directors these days a new phenomenon, or one that's always existed? Because you can't throw a rock nowadays without hitting a cluster of alumni wanting to fire the guy running their university's sports teams. Dick Baddour caught holy hell online for Doherty's and Bunting's performances, Feinstein just punched out a couple hundred words of Joe Alleva hate, and entire blogs have been built on the Wolfpack fans' desire to run Lee Fowler out of town on a rail. Has it always been this way. When fans were burning Dean Smith in effigy, was the same vituperation being tossed at the AD at the time? Hell, I can't remember who held the post before Swofford - is it a function of age or the lack of an interent, or was the athletic director position really not in the line of fire until recently? I mean, how stressful could a job be if Jim Valvano had the gig for three years?

Of course, AD questions aside, I couldn't avoid mentioning Feinstein's column completely, if only for this line:

Someone go tattoo that somewhere where Dick Vitale is sure to read it. There's probably a spot on a certain Blue Devil coach that'll do nicely.

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UNC's women's golf team followed up their collective 9 over par first round with a less than stellar 33 over par second round. The Heels dropped from second to eighteenth in the standings. Oh, and Duke now has the lead.

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...the NCAA championships of which began on Tuesday. UNC currently sits tied for second.

My knowledge of golf at UNC begiins and ends with the fact that Finley kicked my ass the couple of times I played it, a feat not unusual among golf courses I've found. Luckily Golfweek assumes no one else knows anything about the team, and pretty much summarizes their entire history for ignoramuses like myself. Coach Sally Austin all but founded the team as a freshman player in 1973, and has coached the team for fourteen years. She also has horrible taste in sunglasses.

UNC as a team is two strokes out of the lead and three strokes ahead of tournament favorite... Duke. SBNation's golf blog Waggle Room points out that Golfweek will have live streaming coverage of the 18th green on Thursday and Friday.

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The women's lacrosse team lost to Virginia 14-8 in the NCAA tournament, preventing a rematch with Duke and finally ending the Carlyle Cup in a 13-13 tie.

You can all relax and return to your daily lives.

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Wondering what happened in the gripping, year-long grudge match between UNC and Duke that is the Carlyle Cup? Me neither. But the seasons have come and gone, and the results are, well, not in:

It's a tie, unless it isn't.

Let's back up a minute. Before we were all distracted by revenue sports, UNC held a 7.5 to 5.5 lead. And then:

• The Tar Heels lost the Duke Fencing Invitational. One point for the Blue Devils and it's 7.5 to 6.5.
  
• UNC came in 5th and 3rd in the men's and women's respective indoor track and field championships topping Duke's 11th and 6th place finishes. So half a point to the Heels per gender, I guess. 8.5 to 6.5.
  
• Duke got their second win over the Lady Tar Heels in basketball for a point. 8.5 to 7.5.
  
• UNC turned around and swept the Blue Devils on the men's side. We were all denied enough footage of crying Durhamites, and the tally is up to 9.5 to 7.5.
  
• The Heels lose to Duke Lacrosse 9-7. Yeah, I'm not going to try to slip a joke in here. 9.5 to 8.5.
  
• The Blue Devils win in men's tennis, 5-2, tying the Carlyle Cup race at 9.5.
  
• Duke wins the women's ACC golf championship. UNC takes fourth, and falls behind in the Carlyle, 10.5 to 9.5.
  
• UNC wins the baseball series for the year, 7-0, 3-9, 7-4. The race is again tied at 10.5.
  
• The Heels blank Duke 4-0 in women's tennis. 11.5 to 10.5.
  
• UNC takes fifth in both men's and women's outdoor track and field. (Duke? 9th and 11th. Blue Devil's can't run. Or jump. Or throw heavy objects.) Another half a point per gender? 12.5 to 10.5.
  
• Duke takes the Heels by six strokes in the men's ACC golf tournament. (Oddly enough Virginia tech wins the whole thing. Didn't really see that coming.) 12.5 to 11.5.
  
• Duke then beat UNC's women's lacrosse team, tying the standings at 12.5.
  
• The Blue Devils also best UNC in the women's ACC rowing champs, when the Heels come in dead last in the First Varsity Eight, Second Varsity Eight, and Varsity Four. (Two caveats here. I don't know what any of what I just wrote in that last sentence means, and "dead last" is sixth. Only BC, Clemson (!), Duke, Miami (!!), UNC and Virginia field women's rowing crews.)
  

Wrong.

• UNC stuns Duke's women's Lacrosse team in the ACC's, earning back half a point. It's 13 all.
• UNC loses to Duke's men's lacrosse though, resulting in... absolutely nothing. The point total doesn't change.

• Duke could have won back half a point, if they'd beat UNC in the ACC's women's tennis tournament. They didn't, losing to 3rd-seed Georgia Tech.
• UNC could have managed the same thing on the men's side. The Heels did everything they could, driving all the way to the finals, but Duke went out in the quarters to underdog Florida State.
• Duke had another chance against UNC in the women's tennis NCAA's, but UNC won handily. Again.

There's still women's lacrosse. UNC meets Virginia, and Duke Johns Hopkins on the 19th. Should both NC schools win, this entirely cockamamie contest will be decided by women's lacrosse. Otherwise, it's a tie and UNC keeps the trophy.

Does anyone think we might want to look into a better way of running this thing? For instance, one point when one school beats the other, instead of this half-a-point trading thing going on now? It's just a thought.

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WXYC is on Flickr, and has a blog.

(And should you desire to have strangers confusedly stare at your chest while mouthing the alphabet, wear this shirt out here in California. It never fails.)

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