But to those of you who blame Bobby: Cope was a senior too. Just saying, don’t say Bobby should have known better because he was a senior. He didn’t know what Cope was going to do. He said later that if he knew what was going to happen he would have just dribbled it out.

Also for those of you insulting Bobby’s play: he came back from tearing his ACL. Although his offense is not what it used to be his defense is better than ever and he gets plenty of playing time.

To sum up my position: The foul was wrong, not dirty but not clean either. Cope was wrong to react the way he did but not wrong to want to make a spectacular game ending play. He was not wrong to want to score two points in an ACC game. McCauley was wrong in making his “not in our house” comment. I do belive the foul was intentional. I do not belive he was going for the ball. I think the State fans were being classless and disrespectful for throwing things on the court. I belive Roy was right for sending Cope off. The refs were right to give the two players technicals. I do not belive Cope was trying to start a fight with McCauley. He was simply mad at getting whacked in the head and was not thinking at the time. I think Cope was sorry for what he did. It is not Bobby’s fault.

That’s it. Feel free to disagree.

I would have been tempted to respond to the WVA fan with the old but hilarious line: “I hear that in West Virginia, they have a new use for sheep. Wool.”

It’s sort of like when my wife and I were in Charlotte the night of our bowl loss to WVU in December. We went out to eat downtown afterwards and were approached (while we quietly sat at our table no less) by a half-drunk WVU fan. He asked us “Did you lose your ties?” When I got him to repeat himself about 3 times (he was slurring a bit) so as to understand him, I then asked what he was talking about. He then informed me that he thought you needed to wear a tie to go to UNC, the implications being obvious. I decided to let it slide and told him he should probably lay off the sauce but to enjoy his meal and his team’s well deserved victory. However, I wanted to say “I thought you needed to be married to your sister and missing a few teeth to go to West Virginia”, but I didn’t. The funny thing is, and I lie not, he was actually missing his two front teeth (his wife had different hair color than he did, so there’s that going for him).

I’m on the same page as rathskeller68, William and my friend JB, so dittos in lieu of a long post stating the same opinions.

James in W. Springs, the weather up here is fine. If by weather you mean having a highly successful basketball program. How’s the weather in Raleigh? No sunshine there in what, 20+ years? I’ll sip my chardonnay and watch wins any day of the week versus chewing tobacco and watching a glorified high school team play while my sister gives me a back massage. Nothing like idiotic stereotypes, eh?

The State-UNC rivalry probably peaked about 1977, which was the year that Duke got back on track after being pretty mediocre for about ten years and dismal for about six years. The two rivalries stayed about at the same level until 1984 when Duke and Carolina took off to another level entirely. (You also probably had the 1969-1971 period where South Carolina was UNC’s most hated rival and the 1980-1983 period where UVa probably was, where were big inter-state rivalries at the time.)

This was due to three things. First, Valvano and Dean Smith liked each other and it was pretty hard for Carolina fans to dislike Jimmy V. Second, Carolina fans found it easy to dislike Coach K, and Duke soon got to be just as good and maybe even better, as a program than UNC during the 1988-1992 years and also during the 1999-2004 years.

Obviously, television is the other thing. Duke is probably the most popular team on the east coast. UNC may be the most popular team in the nation at large and certainly has more fans in North Carolina than Duke, Wake and State put together. The Duke-Carolina rivalry is much better to sell nationally than the Duke-State rivalry, which is more of a local rivalry, sort of like Kansas-Missouri.

So, with the Duke-UNC game, ESPN has it all. A rivalry which is between an excellent public and an excellent private university, and which is both local and interregional, in a sense.

I think Wake Forest fans view UNC as the team they most like to beat, but most Carolina fans see Wake as more of an annoyance than as a team to hate. We do respect their school and many of us might have considered attending Wake if it were not so expensive.

I don’t believe that is true with respect to NC State. I don’t recall too many of my UNC friends saying that they even applied to NC State, which seems to have more of a rural fan base and student make-up.