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Leave it to a Dukie to save my bad school year.
If you are a Carolina football and basketball fan, graduation Sunday marked the end of a pretty bad school year. And if you are a Boston Sports fan, it was really bad until Jayson Tatum saved the Celtics.
Tar Heel football in 2022 started great, winning 9 of 10 games with the only loss to Notre Dame. After what looked like the possible answer to Mack Brown 2.0 did not fulfill his dreams of having a true national contender in his fourth season back at UNC, it all went aouth.
I won’t review losses to Georgia Tech and N.C. State at home, to Clemson in the ACC championship game and to Oregon in the Holiday Bowl, all winnable games that turned the other way in the second half.
Then came basketball, which began with exceedingly high expectations after last year’s run to the national championship game. Yes, the hoop Heels were overrated as the preseason No. 1, but falling out of the polls in December and then not making the NCAA tournament were bummers beyond compare.
Having grown up a Boston sports fan, the way the Patriots and Red Sox performed were totally forgettable. The Red Sox finished dead last in the American League East, which they have done with intermittent championship seasons. Then the Patriots lost a playoff berth when a wide receiver threw a backward lateral pass that was intercepted for a touchdown. Seriously.
When the Boston Bruins were rolling to the best record in the history of NHL regular seasons, they looked like shoo-in to at least get to the Eastern Conference finals against the Hurricanes. They went up 3-1 in their first series against the eighth seed, then lost three straight games in astonishing fashion.
The Celtics had another great team and won 57 out of 82 regular season games but have almost lost their first two playoff rounds. It took them six games to dispatch the seventh-seeded Atlanta Hawks, and then fell behind 3-2 against the 76ers with Game 6 in Philly, where they looked dead in the water.
Then that former Dukie, who had shot 1-for-14 to that point, got hot halfway through the fourth quarter with four 3-pointers, forcing a Game 7 back in Boston. Anything can happen in a seventh game, but Jayson Tatum treated his mom sitting in the first row to a record-breaking 51-point performance in a blowout on Mother’s Day.
The Celtics now move on to the Eastern finals against Miami, but this school year officially ended with graduation at Kenan Stadium, so whatever happens happens. But thanks, my favorite Dukie!
Featured image via Associated Press/Steven Senne
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