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After a small hiatus, I am back. Please hold your applause … do people applaud when they read The Daily Orange? If not, now’s a good time to start. I hope you had a great few weeks since the last time we spoke — I sure did.

Last week, the whole school was gearing up for this past weekend. We grinded through all of our work, and by grinded I mean that we played Wordle and felt smart so we gave up on trying to listen to our professor ramble about the origins of the Oxford comma for the day. I don’t even want to talk about any of them. Actually, I do. “SWILL?” What is that? It sounds like a brand of neckties.

I don’t mean to be so flabbergasted about it. I did figure it out after all, because I am, well, a humble genius.

But the Wordle is not what I came here to talk about. This weekend was full of fun, all building up to the Syracuse University vs. Duke University men’s basketball game on Saturday night. Everyone was out around campus, and the energy was noticeably high.

People even camped out for this game. Could you imagine doing that? For a game in the Carrier Dome? I think I’d rather camp out for the Marshall Street Popeyes’ grand opening, which, by the way, I might do. I need to be the first one with a biscuit so dry my throat starts bleeding.

The last game between these two teams in the Dome was February 2020, my freshman year. This game had a lot of built up excitement as well. I remember being able to see just how great the student section really was for the first time.

So, I was even more excited for this one. As an old man now, I was ready to be in the Dome to see a great rivalry once again. The last good rivalry we had here was Joe Girard III vs. the rim, which is still going on.

I got to the Dome at around 5 p.m., and it was beyond packed. It looked like the CoreLife line at 2 p.m. Except, I wasn’t going to end up with a nice steak bowl — this was gonna be much worse.

I got myself a Dome Dog, which by the way, turned my insides into my outsides. But isn’t that the beauty of it? Don’t we all expect to be fighting for our life after eating one? If you open that white box and see a barely cooked dog and say to yourself, “I’m gonna be nauseous for a month after this,” you are most likely right.

The hot dogs are not my main point of concern, although it was definitely a good foreshadowing of the ugliness to come. We sat in angst and excitement waiting for the opening tipoff. As my organs felt like they were failing me, the boys entered the court and we got started.

And … that’s when the game ended. Once the ref threw that ball in the air, it was over. It was a really fun 15 minutes for sure.

There wasn’t even a glimpse of hope. AJ Griffin and Paolo Banchero were left wide-open, maybe every play, and the crowd fell silent almost immediately. The loudest thing I heard was the “oh my god” after every time Syracuse didn’t play defense. I think If I ate three more hot dogs and got on the court, I could’ve guarded Banchero better than they did. But that’s only because I’m a humble genius.

I’m only being this harsh because my stomach still hurts, and not because of the hot dog, but because I just didn’t think the effort was there. The students who camped out had their hopes crushed within three possessions. If they wanted their hopes ruined that quickly, they could have just asked out their crush from Astronomy 101. But they took out their time and sanity for this team, and I salute them for it.

I don’t know what the rest of the season has in store, but I do know that we all should come together and be hopeless as a community. I would love to end on a high note and not cut another column short, but this hot dog is still coming for me. Oh no.

Published on February 28, 2022 at 9:31 pm