Stop #8 of 12 has a backstory involving Boone

It would be easy to ask how a person looking to shine a light on Smaller things for 12 games end up in Cameron Indoor Stadium ?

Well it does meet the criteria of not being in a crowd of over 10K, so there’s that! My mission was to finish my argument that how I would take a step in making the ACC more enjoyable for the non- Big 2 sports would be to add my adopted ” Little School ” Appy State.

They have a fan base, a beautiful campus with big enough facilities and they would bring back the blood rivalry feed feel we had for so long back in the day! Before we drank the kolaide about we so desperately needed the number of television 📺 sets in Boston and Syracuse. Any time I would bring the subject up it would be quickly dismissed with it will never happen because the Powers to Be all think Bigger is Always Better.

It’s an easy argument for all of the ” other ” sports but we all know the $$$ is with Football and Men’s basketball 🏀. Point 1 in regards to football is that Appy has the best winning percentage in the state of North Carolina in the past few years and then earlier this year the Mountaineers took to the road to play at Miami. The Hurricanes finished up number two in the Coastal behind Pitt and was the fifth best out of the 14 team league.

Miami needed a last minute field goal to pull out the victory at HOME of Appy. I would later travel back to Boone and watch them upset Coastal Carolina on their way to another 10 win season.

Their football stadium 🏟 is very comparable to the ones at Duke and Wake Forest and they tend to stuff it full pretty much every home game.

But there still was the other elephant 🐘 in the room – could Appy possibly play hoops in the ACC and would the other teams and their fan bases even care ?

That question was answered last night in front of a packed house in Durham with the Cameron Crazies in full force. Not only did Appy show up but they two separate Duke haymaker Runs in the first half

Down 13 at the break after the second of the runs the Mountaineers still would not fold. They were facing the deepest Duke team since 2015 in their house and they were playing with No Fear.

The third and final Duke run at the end of the contest provided a misleading 25 point margin of victory for the #2 team in the Country. Duke hit 50% from 3 (15-30) so it wasn’t as if they caught the Dokies on an off night

The next stat to check out is the number of minutes played by the starting five. Four of the starters needed to be on the floor for 30+ minutes and the fifth was at 23 minutes.

The only case the people smarter than me (and there’s no shortage of them) can make is the one about the TV sets in Syracuse and Boston.

Stop ✋, just Stop ✋. Just how much money do we need? Let’s make the league fun again, especially for the student athletes and their fan bases that could drive to Boone from Chapel Hill to watch a softball game versus trying to fly to Boston. I will surrender my point about Appy if 30,000 UVA fans fly to Boston for the Fenway Park Bowl in the middle of the week in December. If the rich alums won’t due it for FOOTBALL how can we expect the ” other ” sports fans to do it ????

In my best Lawyer voice I promise to rest my case by I think there’s a case to be made.

For the 3rd time in my eight games Rob Sisk was in the co-pilot seat for the game and I promise you his search to find this showing was a smidgen easier.

In a separate note Duke just lost its second opponent for the scheduled home game for this Saturday, both due to Covid. First it was Cleveland State and then Loyola- Maryland offered to fill in but now rhey can’t make the game either. The search is now on for a 3rd team – Thoughts and Prayers to all of the folks now facing 🙏 the Virus