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There is a scene in Braveheart where they are getting ready to fight the Battle of Falkirk.  The English sneak a march on the Scottish and bring a whole army, including Welsh Bowman and Irish Infantry.  Upon hearing the news, the Scots are baffalled.  The Irish are fighting along side of the English?  Only when William Wallace’s closest friend Stephen (one of the greatest movie characters of all time by the way), who himself is Irish confirms it, did they finally believe it.  As he rides up to Wallace he says “It’s true, I had to see it with mine own eyes to believe it”.

That is how I felt last night watching the ACC lose the ACC-Big 10 Challenge.  Of course in the movie, the Irish change sides as the battle begins, but in real life, as I wake up this morning the ACC has still lost.  The good news is that in the big scheme of things are fate is not tied to the performance of the conferenece, but it still bugs me to lose this thing.  We have won the last 10, and I wanted 11.  I truly believe that we play in the most difficult conference in all the land, and the ACC-Big 10 Challenge (and the results of it) was just more evidience to that fact.

Of course, maybe I am being selfish and we should just let the Big 10 have their candy this one time, afterall we had a decade of dominance, but on the other hand, I feel like the Defensive coordinator who was leading a football game 70-0 to his arch rival, who finally gave up the shut out as time expired.  On the surface,  you can’t be mad because that wouldn’t be very sporting.  But deep down I’m seething because I really wanted that shut out.

But again, big picture, Maryland beat Indiana in a game that we really needed with Villanova on the schedule next.  So for us, the Challenge was everything we needed it to be.  Also in a way I should also be happy that Duke was the school that blew the challenge for us, but it does figure, the one time I am actually pulling for them (I’ll stick with pull, I won’t say cheering for) they drop the ball.  Oh well.  Let’s just hope they can continue to disappoint through conference play.

So congratulations to the Big 10 on their first ever Challenge win, and for making the score a respectable 10-1 now.  It’s about time they finally pulled it out, but as Stephen from Braveheart says, I still had to see it with my own eyes to believe it!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 6:43 am and is filed under Maryland Terps Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.