In the Field: Elliott Sadler

Sunday was a rough day for me. As if battling that danged COT all day at Bristol wasn't bad enough, then my boys -- the North Carolina Tar Heels -- lost in the regional finals of the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

As soon as the Food City 500 was over, I had to think about getting home as fast as I could. I was flying with Jamie McMurray on his plane, so right after the race, I saw a little bit of the end of the first half.

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During halftime I jumped on the helicopter, got over to the airport and jumped on Jamie's jet. We flew home and I got to listen to the rest of the game on the radio on the way back to my apartment.

As everyone knows, the Heels pretty much had a 10-point lead with about eight minutes to go, and they went into, like, the stall offense to use up some clock. They lost their momentum, the boys went cold and I just felt like they gave the game to Georgetown.

I just hate it because the boys played so good all through the tournament. They had a young bunch of guys and it's very heartbreaking [to lose]. I really thought they had a team that could go to the Final Four and contend with Florida and Ohio State and teams like that.

But it just wasn't meant to be.

So Sunday was not a great day for me -- either professionally, or as far as my Tar Heels were concerned.

It was just one of those days, but I'm still a basketball fan and I'm still going to be watching the Final Four this weekend. I don't know who I'm going to pull for, yet -- but I'm just going to watch and enjoy those guys playing.

I don't know. My travel plans didn't leave me any choice, so I don't know if it wasn't better that I didn't get to watch the end of that second half, and overtime.

I was listening to [the Carolina game] on my radio on the way home, and you wanted to see and to visualize what was going on. I would have liked to have seen it, but it just didn't work out because of my travel plans.

But I got to kind of put some of the visual stuff together with some of the highlights I saw on TV Sunday night when I got home and Monday morning.

So that helped me to put it all together. All I know is, you can't shoot two-for-23, the last 25 shots of the game, and beat a team like Georgetown. It's just not going to work.

Should they have kept running? If you said Monday morning quarterbacking is easy, you just hit it -- whether it's basketball, football or racing. (Continued)