YOU'RE not going to believe this. BYU will be no match
in The RematchBut the BYU women's volleyball coach Elaine Michaelis looks exactly like my grandmother.
Hey, if she would have danced an impromptu Irish Jig after the Cougars knocked off Pacific last night at the Special Events Arena, I would have fainted.
I'm serious. Even her old-fashioned reading glasses are identical.
Of course, I doubt if Mrs. Michaelis can knock down the beers like old Grandma Fitz could, especially on St. Patrick's Day.
Why her brother - my great uncle - used to say that she would drink it out of an old shoe if she had to.
Hang on a second. My editor is looking over my shoulder. Now he is tugging on my right ear, so I better take a timeout.
He is asking what my deceased grandmother and her beer-drinking past has to do with covering NCAA tournament volleyball.
Well, obviously, I am trying to disguise the fact that I know absolutely nothing about volleyball, unless it is played at a VFW picnic or on the beach.
But I do know about the Hawaii-BYU rivalry.
And, by the time you read this, THE REMATCH will nearly be at hand.
AS fate would have it last night, I was forced to sit in a press row seat within earshot of the Brigham Young radio team.
You've heard of the popular "Mark and Brian" show out of Los Angeles. Well the BYU team is called "Peter and Paul".
I swear.
That's bad enough, but what's really ridiculous are the halo headsets they wear. How tacky.
Then they had the nerve to complain that the crowd was anti-Cougars during the first game.
Then they really went overboard by saying on the air that Mike Fitzgerald of the Star-Bulletin, who has written many anti-BYU columns, was seated just to their left.
Can you imagine what all of my churchgoing relatives in Utah must have thought when they heard that on the airwaves?
Not to mention my pals at the three taverns in the Beehive State. (You didn't know Utah was called the Beehive State? Well, it is.)
Plus, the biggest BYU hater in history, Bill Kwon, was just down the aisle from us and they didn't even mention my Cougar-cutting colleague.
I considered suing the radio nerds for slander, but settled for tweaking their halo headsets a few times instead.
They should have been happy that the Lady Cougars beat Pacific by the hair on their chinny chin-chins, resorting to that borderline cheating process of rally-spiking or whatever they call the fifth-game scoring.
HAWAII, on the other hand, beat Texas like a rented mule in the nightcap.
Hey, who did the Longhorns think they were playing, some wimpy football team from Nebraska?
So now the UH women have an opportunity for revenge, since BYU upset them a few weeks ago to win the WAC Tournament.
This is a chance for Hawaii to get back at those damn Cougars for embarrassing their school in football this season, not to mention stealing most of the state's good players.
Just because OUR volleyball players didn't get to go on a mission to Huntington Beach won't matter.
In fact, I spotted some of the BYU volleyball players in biker disguises late last night in Waikiki.
They were drinking kamikazes and arm wrestling a group of longshoremen at one of the 4 a.m. joints.
And I heard that the BYU players are so confident of beating the Rainbows that they already have cases of guava juice on ice for the post-match celebration.
Here's my prediction: BYU will crumble tonight.
Like a bag of Tostitos.