Landing the (Triangle) quad: Four games, three venues, two sports, one very long day

Darkness had long ago fallen, and we’d been up and down Interstate 40 so many times it was hard to remember which direction we were actually going. It had seemed like such a good idea in the morning, before the rain and the traffic and the monitor reviews. So many monitor reviews.

En route from PNC Arena to Cameron Indoor Stadium, what had started out as an audacious attempt to see four games in a single day of Triangle sports had become a bit of a slog. We had spent far more time in transit — in elevators and to and from parking lots, let alone on the highway — than we had envisioned, far less actually witnessing sports. A simple plan had turned out to be far more complicated. But there was one game still to go, and no turning back now.

History still awaited.

Four games. Three venues. Two sports. One area code. And one very long day for a sports columnist and a sports radio host dumb enough to try it. Joe Ovies of 99.9 FM and I were determined to see them all, start to finish, if not everything in the middle.

By 10:01 p.m., as Duke closed out a 81-65 win over Virginia Tech, we’d managed to witness more than 97 minutes of live action in the space of 10 hours.

On this cold, dreary, wet Saturday in late February, the various planets in athletic orbit around the Triangle all came into alignment. N.C. State hosted Clemson at noon. North Carolina hosted Virginia at 6 p.m. The Carolina Hurricanes, the building quickly flipped, entertained the Anaheim Ducks at 7 p.m. And the nightcap at Duke at 8 p.m.

(Sadly, logistics prevented an even more audacious attempt at a quintuple by making a run to N.C. Central, where the Eagles beat Howard, starting at 4 p.m.)

This quirk of the schedule presented a unique — some might say pointless, even unnecessary — challenge. Was it possible to attend all four games, to some degree, battling traffic and timing, and still see a reasonable amount of game action?

At that point, the question wasn’t why do it, but why not do it. Rarely does adventure beckon so becomingly. This situation absolutely required a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part, and we were just the guys to do it.

So we stepped into the footsteps of the great expeditioners of history. Like Ernest Shackleton (not Charles Shackleford), we would attempt the unprecedented, albeit less likely to find ourselves trapped in ice, unless the forecast changed a lot.

It looked like things would start out easily enough. The N.C. State game was supposed to be an appetizer, a warmup lap, no pressure. Instead, it should have come with an eye-wash station. The game was over in the first four minutes, at which point Clemson was up 19-6 and Kevin Keatts had already been whacked with a technical foul.

This would have been the one to leave early. Alas, we endured the full 40 minutes, having committed to the program. Undaunted, we soldiered on. We would be back at PNC all too soon.

First, though, we fought the traffic snarls into Chapel Hill — even on a weekend — to witness North Carolina’s latest rebirth, putting a first-half thumping on first-place Virginia. This, surely, is the long-awaited turning of the corner for the Tar Heels. By the time we tried to flee for hockey at halftime, UNC had turned the clock back to last March and was up 16 on the Cavaliers.

But our clock was still stalled while the officials dallied at the monitor trying to determine whether Pete Nance’s shot at the buzzer was worth two points or three. The teams had long left the floor as a security guard held us back awaiting the referees, precious minutes ticking by until we were released. As we packed up, Robert Crawford, a veteran ACC photographer, asked if we were headed to Duke.

Yes, but not quite yet. Back to Raleigh first.

“Oh my God!” Crawford blurted out.

By the time we got out of the Smith Center and down I-40, the electronic signs on the highway were telling PNC traffic to skip Edwards Mill and go all the way to Blue Ridge. Undeterred, we found the usual entrance to the (full) arena parking lots closed, with no way to get around to the media lot. We ended up improvising, cutting into a side entrance and parking, temporarily, in the television crew lot outside the loading dock.

When we stepped into the arena bowl, there were fewer than seven minutes left in the first period, far less than we had expected. As UNC was putting the finishing touches on a 71-63 win, the Hurricanes were still grinding away at the Ducks, scoreless but not having allowed a goal since Tuesday’s second period. There were five goals scored in the Canes’ 3-2 loss, but we saw none of them. The pace of that game was slow enough that we had to leave at the midpoint of Saturday’s second period to reach Cameron Indoor Stadium before halftime was over.

That final 20 minutes of basketball gave us a total of 97 minutes of witnessed live action, as Hubert Davis would say, out of a possible 180. Which was also about the amount of time we spent driving 60-something miles back and forth across the Triangle like some sort of nightmare Uber shift.

In the end, was it worth it?

Other than just to say we did, probably not.

There was less a sense of accomplishment than a frazzled sense of fatigue. We saw less action than we had expected, felt far more hurried than we ever could have imagined. We saw four games, yes, but remembered less of them collectively than we would have a single one. And the one game we did see in whole, State-Clemson, was by far the most forgettable of the bunch.

So what did we learn? Hard to say. Maybe this: Not to do it again.

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