Thanks to the miracle of Tivo I’m in the middle of watching Wake Forest play NC State about two hours after the live action.  This after watching the North Carolina-Duke game thanks to the same Tivo miracle.

Sidebar: Life is definitely good when you can take your wife out for your 13th anniversary and still get to satisfy your basketball jones.  My eternal gratitude to whoever invented the DVR.  And I got to play an 1 1/2 hours of my own b-ball at the Y earlier today!

My keen analysis of these games?  All of the ACC basketball refs had to have come down with the flu and had the football officials sub for them.  I swear I haven’t seen so many bodies on the deck in years.

To make matters worse the whistles are very inconsistent.  Guys are mugging each other with no call and then their blown for a hand check.

Still with all that the Duke-NC game was fantastic. I don’t know if Duke choked or Carolina choked them.

I’m at about 13:00 left in the NC State-Wake game and ugly doesn’t even begin to describe it.  More on that later.

Update:  4:16 left in the game.  Wake is playing like crap, but I’m telling you that State is getting some home cooking from the refs.  It isn’t deciding the game because State is shooting less than 50% from the free throw line. Ugly.

Of course I think Chris Paul brought it on the Deacs when he gave Julius Hodge a pop in his Julius early in the game.  Also, Wake got its fair share of home cooking more than a few times this season in Winston-Salem.

Update #2: 26 seconds left.  Refs just fell for the oldest trick in the book.  State’s Evtimov pulled a flop and pulled Wake’s Williams with him, and they call it a charge.  Geez.

Update #3: Holy cow!  Justin Gray hits a 3-pointer from somewhere in downtown Raleigh with a hand in his face and with 12.8 seconds left to tie the game at 53, then gets back to defend the three point attempt by Ansur to cause an air ball.  (Okay he fouled the guy and the refs reviewed the replay and gave the Deacs an extra .4 seconds; so much for home cooking). 

Wake gets the ball with 4.2 seconds left, and Chris Paul goes the length of the court and hits a running one hander from 12 feet to the right of the lane.  The kid played and pretty horrible game, but man did he come through.

Wow!

Last note:  Check out Patrick Eakes’ post about Wake Forest and Chris Paul.  I commented and generally agree with him.