NU: NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

Just sit back and enjoy that headline for a moment. The Wildcats. National champs.

This lacrosse team is was one for the ages. 21-0 is very hard to accomplish, and they beat each and every team in the final four (Duke during the regular season and Dartmouth and UVA in the final four). Despite the nay-sayers and critics, the 'Cats stayed focused and won it all.

A few additional thoughts from the game: What a job by the 'Cats midfielders. They sometimes don't get enough credit, but they won so many groundballs and made the transition game look like child's play. The Koester twins were out of this world, along with the usual suspects. Coach Amonte Hiller deserves a ton of credit--this team did not exist 5 years ago, and now it's at the pinnacle of the lacrosse world. Simply astounding. The challenge for the athletic dept. is to hang on to this coach because you better believe some big-name programs will come a-knockin'.

Also, kudos to the Northwestern fans in attendance...we estimated about 1,500-2,000 or so wearing purple today (out of nearly 4700). Way to show up and make a ton of noise!

As for the broadcast, I thought it was solid. Frank is turning into a lacrosse guru after just a few games! I am also quite pleased with my call on the final few seconds. At the time, I was just yelling stuff out of pure excitement, and I'm happy to see that it turned out to be half-coherent.

The softball team's gutsy performance was icing on the already-amazing cake---what a day for NU sports. Hats off to my colleagues in South Bend for a job well done on the call out there. Hats also off to the good people at the Loewnes Steakhouse here in Annapolis. They served Frank and I some of the tastiset filets ever consumed by humans in our post-championship celebration.

We have a very, very early AM flight tomorrow, so our rational solution? Stay up all night! Oh...an all-nighter! Send it in!

Northwestern Wildcats: National Champions. That will put a smile on my face for many days to come.