January 13, 2007: The day the Hokies gave the baby blue Tarholes a mighty ass-whippin’ in Cassell Coliseum.

My story is fairly mundane but that’s alot of what blogging is all about: mundane historical context.

My wife and I recently bought a house, so we were moving out of our Fan apartment in Richmond. I was fairly bummed about missing the game but I was busy as hell and it couldn’t be helped. When 3:30 rolled in I was sweepin’ and cleanin’ and switching the radio over from music to Bill and Mike. My buddy Snipes and my wife Lori were working around the apartment as we settled into the game. I reminded everyone (which would continue all day) that Wick and icecoldballa Rob were at the game and that I was very jealous.

And suddenly it was something like a 17-9 UNC lead. Dammit. I went down to the basement where I couldn’t hear the radio for some more cleaning and figured the magical day was not to be. When I went out to load a bunch of crap in my truck in the back alley I thought I heard UNC was up a bunch on a huge run. Dammit again. But something was bugging me, I thought I might have heard it wrong, and when I got back in the truck to move it I discovered that the Hokies were on a massive run and up something like 27-20. Cassell was in full throat, and the Hokie seniors were running inexperienced UNC off the court.

Everyone knows what happened for the next 20 minutes. The Hokies blew it open. I feel like I remember most of the play — somehow listening on the radio makes it more vivid in recollection — that and being mostly sober. I remember making senseless guttural caveman noises upon hearing the 10 point halftime margin, and I remember thinking we really *might* win when we went up 23. I remember Vasallo threes and Deron flying and CC dunking and dunking and dunking. I was pacing around the empty apartment wiping stuff down and pacing and wiping and getting increasingly giddy and agitated.

By this time Snipes had bailed up to Buddy’s. Lori and I had about 15 minutes total of work left to do before closing up the apartment for good, but we couldn’t stand it — we headed up to Buddy’s too. We arrived there in our cleaning clothes with a truck full of miscellaneous crap parked right out front on Stuart. We grabbed a few delicious beers and settled in to soak up the amazing blowout.

And then that torturous final four minutes kicked in. Instantly the lead was down to 16, to 9, to 6, and, incredibly, down to 3 points with 16 seconds remaining. UNC was on an unbelievable hot streak, and the Hokies couldn’t break the press. I was making a complete ass of myself in the bar, to my wife’s horror. This is nothing new, she explained to the other patrons.

And then it was over — we pulled through. Jamon Gordon sunk two free throws with 4 seconds remaining and that just barely shut the door on UNC’s impressive but futile comeback.

The rest of the evening was a continued march of delicious cold beers at Buddy’s and finally a boozy passout at Snipes place. January 13, 2007 was a very very good day indeed.

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