Two other items of note:

First, Galley Friend M.R. sends us the web comic “Breakfast of the Gods”. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. It’s amazing stuff.

And then, Galley Friend B.W. gives us this clip of the best basketball finish of the weekend–the Div. II championship game. Now that’s a collapse.

Okay, these two amphibious assault vehicles are just ridiculous. Here’s the run-down on the big one:

Lockheed Martin has conceived a new class of high-speed amphibious combat craft with a top speed of up to 50 knots on water and up to 80 miles per hour on land. Significantly, the vehicles can make the transition from land to water and vice versa in five seconds and will be capable of traveling 50 miles on sea and then 100 more on land without having to refuel.

The little one, a two-seater called the Terraquad, looks like this:

The question is, which one would COBRA get? Since they got gyped on the Whale/Water Mocasin deal, it seems only fair that they get the ACC/R.

For some, it isn’t enough to simply go to HoyaSaxa.xom for full coverage of last night’s stunner against UNC. They’ve got to do the analyzing themselves. And so now, with guest commentary from Galley Friend Joseph Bottum, a review of last night’s win:

Georgetown didn’t win; North Carolina lost–or so friends from down South have been calling to insist. The Hoyas played well down the stretch and through the overtime, they admit, but just look at the Tar Heels’ collapse: a stretch of 1 field goal in 14:37 minutes and 23 misses on their final 25 shots.

That sure does look like a collapse. But is it true that North Carolina’s failure decided the game more than Georgetown’s success did?

Some obvious things should be said here: Teams don’t collapse without a lot of help from their opponents. When good shooters start clanking their shots at the end of a game, it often comes from tiredness that playing against a well-coached team induces. A strong defense inside forces a team into low-percentage shots outside, and after a stretch of that outside game, even average shooting starts to look very cold.

That said, North Carolina didn’t manage even average shooting down the stretch and through the OT. They took 4 three-pt shots in the final six minutes of regulation–by my count, 3 of them good, reasonably open looks–and missed all 4. Along the way, they hit 1 of 3 strongly contested two-pt shots and had Hansbrough fouled twice for 4 free throws.

That’s 6 points from inside play for nine possessions over six minutes–which isn’t really too bad. The question is why they took and missed 4 three-pt shots during that same six-minute stretch. Part of the answer has to be Georgetown’s defense: The Tar Heels tried to get the ball inside on 3 of those 4 possessions and just couldn’t manage it. The other part of the answer is panic–induced by the fact that the Hoyas’ offense over the last six minutes was something close to perfection.

Look at it this way: At 6:03, Georgetown is still down 10. They score on eight of the next nine possessions, for 16 points in six minutes:

6:02 Green hits 1 of 2 free throws
5:37 Sapp layup
5:09 Green hook
4:19 Hibbert dunk
3:15 Wallace hits 2 of 2 free throws
2:43 Ewing lob from Green
2:13 Sapp layup
1:25 Green misses layup
0:35 Wallace three-pt. shot
(10th possession, with 2 seconds left: no shot)

Well, who wouldn’t panic? North Carolina was ahead through all of this until Wallace tied it at 0:35, but the feeling of the game had shifted entirely to Georgetown, and the Tar Heels were obviously burdened by it. North Carolina got no offensive rebounds during this stretch, and that was all: 10-point lead disappears, and the game heads into overtime with momentum all on Georgetown’s side.

Interestingly, in overtime, the reverse is true: Georgetown’s defense was better than its offense. The Hoyas did allow three offensive rebounds and turned the ball over once immediately after a defensive rebound. But they closed down the inside completely until Hansbrough was fouled at 0:31 after an offensive rebound, and they strongly contested the first 4 three-point shots North Carolina took.

Meanwhile, the Hoyas’ offense was very good during the OT, but not the perfection you might expect from the lopsided scoring. Georgetown had 10 possessions in OT, but 6 of them came in the final 1:38, with Summers’ dunk the only basket and the other 5 producing foul shots after deliberate fouls by North Carolina (all by Summers and Sapp, with Summers 4 for 4 and Sapp 3 for 5).

So Georgetown’s offense in OT essentially came down to the first 4 possessions, after which a scoreless North Carolina was in a deep hole. Here’s the breakdown:

1. Green miss, ball out of bounds on NC, Wallace scores on backdoor cut at 4:22. (G’town 1 for 2 shots.)
2. Loose ball, scramble, Summers stuffs at 3:57. (G’town 2 for 3.)
3. Green banks it in at 2:53. (G’town 3 for 4.)
4. Lost pass, Green blocked, Sapp misses 3-pt shot at 1:54. (G’town 3 for 6.)

That’s excellent basketball–6 points in 3 minutes, 50% shooting–but not the high-speed perfection I felt it to be while watching it live.

Turns out that what was high-speed perfection in OT was the defense. Hibbert, in particular. North Carolina got some second chances–preventing offensive rebounds has to become a higher priority for the Hoyas–but Georgetown shut down the interior and contested the low-percentage outside shots that the Tar Heels didn’t make.

So, did Georgetown win or North Carolina lose? The Hoyas’ amazing 8-for-9 run at the end of the regular game makes it look as though Georgetown won, while the Tar Heels’ 4 missed three-pointers (three of them good looks) over that same stretch make it look as though North Carolina lost.

But the Tar Heels had reasons to miss those shots: tiredness, panic, and a Hoya zone defense that confused them at the end. That’s enough to make it definitive: Georgetown won.

JVL adds: I agree completely with poet, intellectual, Civilization Grand Master, and Hoya Super-Fan Joseph Bottum.

Four things typically happen when a team “collapses” in basketball: (1) They turn the ball over at an alarming rate; (2) They go stone-cold from the field; (3) They miss free throws; and (4) The opposing team starts raining 3-pointers. Only one of those things happened during regulation in the UNC game. UNC certainly could have played better down the stretch, and in overtime they looked ashen even before the tip. But they didn’t choke in the conventional sense of the phrase.

What happened is that Georgetown played efficient, controlled, and very, very smart basketball. They pounded the ball inside, they passed up 3-point shots (except for their final score in regulation), they played excellent defense, and they managed their substitutions brilliantly, getting the most out of Hibbert and Ewing Jr. It was a cool-headed, cerebral performance and the guy who deserves the most credit is John Thompson III. The impact of coaching is often over-stated, but to my mind, that win is almost entirely on him.

(If you’ve followed Georgetown basketball for the last 20 years or so, imagine just for a moment how a team coached by Thompson the Elder would have behaved under similar conditions.)

To my colleague Mr. Last:

Of course he traveled. No question about it. But did the refs notice and let it slide? I certainly didn’t notice (probably because I passed out). These things happen. Like the game I caught a few years ago that Georgetown lost against Villanova in which the Wildcats had six players on the floor and won. Nobody saw that, not the refs, and definitely not our incompetent and now-former coach.

But as regards the Post, you must have missed John Feinstein’s column in the same issue (probably because it was tucked away on page E13). Now you know Feinstein is not exactly a Hoya superfan. You know his gripe about Georgetown refusing to play in the BB&T classic (a legitimate gripe at that). But here is his take:

There will be a lot of debate about whether Green switched pivot feet as he spun into the lane on his game-winning shot. The answer to that question is: It doesn’t matter. The officials aren’t making that call at that juncture of the game unless the movement of his feet gets him into better shooting position. Green was double-teamed with a third player running at him and still made an off-balance shot. If college basketball officials called every switched pivot foot, every carry, every extra step, no one would ever score. Green made a big-time play to win a big-time game. Leave it at that.

I want to get this in before Matus starts his campaign of disinformation:

For the record: I had Georgetown last night. I have them all the way into the championship game. So I had a vested interest in them beating Vanderbilt. Further, I like Georgetown. I grew up loving the team and school. They produced The Answer. As Marv Wolfman used to say, ’nuff said.

But last night’s win was a travesty. With 2.5 seconds on the clock and Georgetown down a penny, Jeff Green walked. This isn’t a judgment call. It’s not calling a foul, where the ref uses discretion. Green planted his pivot foot, he did a number of jab steps with this other foot. Then he planted the free foot, and started jabbing with the foot that was the initial pivot. Referees not calling that walk is like giving a football team a fifth down. It’s an affront to the very foundation of the game.

But what’s really, really disgusting is the coverage in today’s Washington Post. The paper ran three stories on the G’Town/Vandy game and only one of them hinted at the call which handed the game to Georgetown. Here, then, is the Post‘s full account:

There were cries that Green had not reestablished his pivot foot, and therefore traveled. But basketball minds much wiser than us surmised you can’t make a call like that to end a taut thriller.

What an embarrassment. I’m not saying the Hoyas should resign from the tournament or play UNC wearing hairshirts, but they should be ashamed of themselves for carrying after the game like they’d won the Super Bowl, instead of having it handed to them unfairly. And the Post should be ashamed of whitewashing the worst call of the tournament. A black-and-white, no judgment required rule call, which changed the outcome of a game.

Galley Brother B.J. sends us this ridiculous look into the Japanese phenomenon “Ninja Warrior.”

Seriously, this makes the American Gladiators look like a bunch of pansies. Will someone remind me how we beat them in a war?

Although I was quite, um, excited by the new Hanes ad featuring Jennifer Love Hewitt, I’ve been quite baffled by the new Hanes commercials, prominent during March Madness, featuring Michael Jordan and Kevin Bacon. For one, I didn’t know they were friends. Secondly, where are they? In the Hanes members-only Lounge? An in apartment? If so, are we to assume they live together? And what’s with Jordan trying to block all of Bacon’s shots in the waste paper basket? At least with the Love ad, we knew she was in a photo shoot. Here, with all the stark white walls, we could be in another dimension. Give me a backstory!

I’m a big fan of Above the Law and a few other legal blogs because they manage to be both serious and frequently very, very funny. (I suspect the soul-crushing ethos of the Big Firm life is to legal humor what heroin and poverty is to song writing.)

Anyway, go read this awesome post on AUSA Tad Dibiase. Then, scroll down to the comments and watch “Virgil” run wild on you.

Awesome.