Friday, October 14, 2005

I'm a bad fan

I am one tonight, anyway.

I did something I have never done before and hopefully will never do again: I left early. Really early. Like 8:00-left-in-the-2nd-quarter early. And up to that point, I was the douchebag who makes endless sarcastic comments about his team. My "performance" was as poor as the Wolfpack's tonight, which is probably why I'm feeling a little embarrassed right now.

I'm not one who is prone to jumping off the deep end (you won't find me calling for the coach's head); rarely does emotion propel me to irrationality. But I lost my grip tonight. It wasn't any one thing or play. Maybe it was the result of a season-and-a-half of frustration. Or the obvious lack of effort on the part of a team in such an important game. Whatever the case, I snapped at an unusually early point in the game, said "[] it," and ran out of the stadium without thinking twice.

Suffice it to say that very little is required for me to lose faith in the the Pack's ability to win.

Here is the box score, if anyone's interested. Although this loss was by no means heartbreaking, it was extremely discouraging. Last week's win allowed my positive outlook to creep back in--I couldn't help but think, "we can still have a good season." Clemson doused those thoughts pretty quickly, and probably for good.

Blowout losses are usually easier to talk about because you see them coming so much earlier in the game and thus have time to sever your emotional attachment. I'm not much interested in talking about this one, however. This is the low point of the Chuck Amato era.

It's no longer worth arguing that we're a talented but underachieving bunch. That we'll come around. That we should expect to play better. We are not any good, and that's all there is to it.