Monthly Archives: September 2011

The History Corner: Duke-Stanford, 1971

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Lewis_Bowling

As Duke prepares to play Stanford at 3:30pm Saturday, Lewis Bowling enters the TRB fray with a piece on the last time these teams met, in 1971. In addition to being a published author and a Duke historian, Bowling writes for GoDuke.com and the Herald-Sun, and teaches a sports history class at Duke.

Duke had a new coach in 34 year old Mike McGee. Tom Harp’s last year as coach of Duke was 1970, so 1971 under Coach McGee had a lot of question marks. Great players in Leo Hart, Wes Chesson, and Dick Biddle had played their last games in 1970. The team lacked depth, according to Coach McGee, and faced a tough schedule.

But after impressive wins over Florida, South Carolina, and Virginia to start the season 3 and 0, Duke climbed to the 19^th ranked position in the nation in the AP poll.

But now their task was their biggest of the season, taking on the defending Rose Bowl champion Stanford, who came into the Duke game ranked number ten in the country. Like Duke in losing their great quarterback from 1970, Leo Hart, John Ralston’s Stanford club had just graduated the 1970 Heisman Trophy winning quarterback in Jim Plunkett. But Stanford had an outstanding replacement for Plunkett in Don Bunce, who had a plethora of skilled, agile, and fast receivers to throw to.

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Posted in UNC | Tagged football, Stanford, The History Corner | 3 Comments

Everyone’s Dirty: An Ethical Guide to College Football’s Top 25

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Shane

14 Comments

Folks who know me will tell you in a Carolina heartbeat that I’m a moral man. I want to root for the good guy. I want to embrace the good guy. So in an attempt to filter out the good from the bad, I took a broad look at the black marks marring college football programs and their players and coaches in this year’s preseason AP top 25. (I know the rankings have changed, but such is life.) The results, to put it mildly, are not encouraging. Quick synopsis: watching college football may compromise your soul.

Special thanks to SportsDelve, which compiled a comprehensive list of schools which have been placed on NCAA probation since punishment policies began in 1953, and made the research much easier. Let’s begin at the bottom.

Justice, where is thy stern visage on the gridiron?

25. USC – The Trojans are in the second year of a 2-year bowl ban due to “lack of institutional control” between 2004 and 2009. Reggie Bush was the focus of the sanctions, and the illegal benefits he received from two sports marketers (including a rent-free home for his family) cost the football team 30 football scholarships through 2013. They were forced to vacate the 2004-05 national championship, and Bush was later stripped of his Heisman trophy. USC is second all-time with 15 years spent on probation in program history. Recent graduate Everson Griffen was arrested in Los Angels in January for battery, and had to be subdued with a taser after he grabbed a cop in the groin.

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Posted in Miscellaneous | Tagged football | 14 Comments

The Queen of Style Checks In

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Carrie

6 Comments

Ever week or thereabouts, our new contributor Carrie will be analyzing uniforms from around the Tobacco Road universe. Today’s assignments are below.

1. Duke Football’s Black Uniforms

Duke's "controversial" new uniforms. Also appears they didn't quite make this play.

It’s not so much the shoulder stripes that concern me with Duke’s new uniforms – I actually think those are quite sharp and on a different uniform (on a different team?) might even lend an (appropriately) militaristic look to the uni – really, I’m bothered by those white helmets. Continue reading →

Posted in Duke, Miscellaneous | Tagged football, Maryland, Uniforms | 6 Comments

Appreciating The True Coach K

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Andy_Moore

9 Comments

(Introducing: new writer Andy Moore, with a take on the Real Coach K.)

This year, Coach K will become the all-time winningest coach in college basketball history. He will win his 903rd game, possibly with flair against Michigan State in Madison Square Garden, and this will put him above his mentor Bob Knight. It will be a monumental achievement, and the unceasing media coverage around the thing is going to be a chance for reporters to exercise their favorite hobby—legacy defining.

And here’s what they’ll say: 903 is huge. It not only means he’s the winningest coach in history, it may mean he’s the greatest coach ever, especially when taking into account the relatively primitive college landscape that helped enable John Wooden’s success. After all, when Krzyzewski retires, he may have over 1,000 wins and four or more national championships. He will completely have changed a previously moribund basketball franchise, he will be a large part of why the ACC is still the most important conference in college basketball, and he will have expertly guided a clean program in a time when everyone seemed a little dirty.

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Posted in Duke | Tagged Coach K, Men's Basketball | 9 Comments

Future Home of the UNC Wrestling Preview – UFC CONTENT!

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Andrew Westney

The Plumblebees

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Marc

7 Comments

(Editor’s note: When I asked Marc if he wanted to write for the site, since I know him to be a funny and interesting dude, he asked me if someone had taken “the Plumlee beat.” I told him it was all his.) Hello friends! My name is Marc. My first sports memory is watching Christian Laettner crush the hopes and dreams of every Kentucky fan on that wonderful day back in 1992. I jumped around the living room like a maniac and gushed with glee as my dad replayed the shot over and over again because we taped the game on our high tech Hitachi VCR. Since that day Duke Basketball has been the only sport I’ve truly followed. The Carolina Hurricanes have a fun bandwagon to hop on if they are in the playoffs, but does anyone outside of Raleigh really care about the regular season? The Panthers have been an unmitigated disaster for the past few years and this year looks to promise some new lows! Shane’s article on the Duke-Richmond game brought up wonderful memories of the John Fox Run-Run-Pass-Punt offense. This year I’m expecting a variety based upon Run-Sack-Interception playcalling. I’ve lived in North Carolina for twenty-three years and I haven’t been able to really focus on anything but the Blue Devils. Continue reading →

Posted in Duke | Tagged Brian Zoubek, Marshall Plumlee, Mason Plumlee, Miles Plumlee, The Plumblebees | 7 Comments

Kealia Ohai Strikes Again – Weekend Recap

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Shane

The Optipessimist Week One: UNC-JMU

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Nate

4 Comments

First off, I would like to highlight for all the UNC readers out there that Duke lost to Richmond. I will repeat that, since it makes me slightly giddy every time I do. Duke lost to Richmond! HAH! This is amazing not only because Duke lost to RICHMOND, but also because it means I get to read Angry Shane posts, something I have yet to see on TRB.

I'm expecting greatness, Shane.

Okay. Onto the game. Everything said below this line has to be taken with a grain of salt, because Carolina’s opponent was James Madison University. And this wasn’t the same JMU that knocked off Virginia Tech in their opener; this was a pretty bad iteration of JMU. You’ll see why.

Without further ado, I’d like to debut my post-game feature: Optipessimism. Over the next ten weeks, I’m going to try my hardest to make this into a real word, which I define as the tendency to follow any positive statement with an immediate qualifier. According to my mother, I might be the most effective optipessimist in the world. “CAN’T YOU EVER JUST SAY ANYTHING GOOD!?” Brutal.

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Posted in UNC | Tagged football, Optipessimism | 4 Comments

The Duke Football Essay Project: Game 1, Richmond

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Shane

9 Comments

On Duke’s second play from scrimmage, junior quarterback Sean Renfree took one step back, tripped, and hit the ground. Whistles blew, fans murmured. Too early to be disappointed.

I sent my stepfather, back in New York, a text:

Our qb fell over. Second play. Bad omen?

It turned out he’d been watching on his computer. Within a minute, I had a response:

I thought he looked good falling.

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Posted in Duke | Tagged David Cutcliffe, Desmond Scott, Duke Football Essay Project, football, Juwan Thompson, Kelby Brown, Matt Daniels, Richmond, Ross Cockrell, Sean Renfree | 9 Comments

The Triangle Prophets, Week One

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Shane

5 Comments

Every Friday, a group of fearless webmasters and sports fanatics from around the Triangle will gather to predict five college football games against the spread. Every Duke, Carolina, and N.C. State game will be featured, along with a smattering of high profile non-Triangle games. As the season goes along, we’ll keep the standings updated and see who emerges as the one true prophet. Make your predictions in the comment section. Every week, we’ll feature any and all commenters who pick all 5 games correctly.