Thursday, March 13, 2008

Singletary gets ultimate compliment

They do this thing during timeouts at Bobcats Arena where they focus a camera on a guy wearing team colors, and fans of all 11 other teams boo.

A guy in blue points to the “D-U-K-E” on his sweatshirt, and everybody else boos the image that’s shown on the giant video screen on the scoreboard. The camera focuses on a “C-A-R-O-L-I-N-A” guy who gets booed, and a “M-A-R-Y-L-A-N-D” guy, and so on.

That’s why the final minute of Virginia’s 94-76, first-round loss to Georgia Tech was so refreshing. ACC commissioner John Swofford likes to talk of the collegiality that exists in the conference.

Virginia senior guard Sean Singletary experienced that Thursday night. With 36.3 seconds remaining, Singletary came to the bench for the final time during an ACC tournament game as coach Dave Leitao substituted for him.

Singletary is a three-time, first-team All-ACC guard who had an outstanding career at Virginia. And the crowd showed how much they appreciated him.

Regardless of whether they were wearing orange, yellow, blue or red, they stood and cheered the guy with “V-I-R-G-I-N-I-A” on the front of his jersey. Singletary hunched over, exhausted as usual, after scoring 20 points with 10 assists and three steals, enjoying the ultimate compliment – the respect of his rivals. – Ken Tysiac

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

There was a similiar scene at the end of the Iowa St v Texas A&M game. I forgot the kids name but when he left eh game for the final time the crowd gave him the standing O even the head ref for the game shook his hand and thanked him for 4 great years. The annoucer mentioned he will never play in the NBA but did play all 4 years at Iowa State and was their best player for that time.