Hey there – hope you’ve been keeping up with your college hoops, but if you’re a little behind, you can catch up right here! First off, let’s remember one thing – you have one weekend of college hoops left in the year! Then it’s Gone Till November like it’s a Wyclef Jean track from back in the day. Saturday has the Final Four games and the national championship game will be on Monday. Who ya got? Louisville? That Kevin Ware injury was insane, but more on that below. Are you shocked by Wichita State? (if you knew the Wichita State mascot, you’d get what I did there) Are you feeling Michigan and think Trey Burke has what it takes? They were so close to being out in the Sweet 16 – and then, well, the madness crept in a desperate three became the game changer. Do you have faith in the Orange of Syracuse to do it in what has been speculated time and again as Boeheim’s last season? I say it isn’t but you never know. I feel like someone like him will go through a bit more fanfare for his final season.
All I can say is that no matter who you are rooting for, watching the games while playing the Babes Dig Balls March Madness Drinking Game is the best way to do it!
Final Four
Well, if you keep up with the blog, you know that my picks tend to mean nothing. I liked Georgetown and New Mexico in my Final Four and they both went out in the “second” round (it’s the first round, c’mon). I picked Miami to win it all and they were down a player and lost to Marquette in the Sweet 16 at the East Regional in Washington, D.C., former stomping grounds of Miami Coach Jim Larranaga. So, when I say I’m picking Louisville, you should probably be ready to bet on Wichita State because I’ve been wrong all season. But this girl is picking Louisville. I think the Kevin Ware injury (oh dear, if you saw it, I’m sorry. If you’re looking for a link here, I’m sorry – you can google that – I refuse to show it) is enough motivation and would be a great story for that team to come together and win one for him.
Coaching Carousel
If you look at the state of college basketball coaches right now, it’s a bit insane. Any other day, I’d lead with #DunkCity relocating to the West Coast as, according to a statement released by the school, USC has poached Andy Enfield from Florida Gulf Coast, everyone’s new favorite team just one week ago. The Eagles lost on Friday. Enfield was announced on Monday. But no, that is not the lead in coaching news – the lead is actually a rather unbelievable story that hails from the East Coast with much footage coming from “the RAC” the famed venue of Rutgers basketball. On Tuesday, ESPN’s Outside the Lines showcased video of (now former) Rutgers Head Coach Mike Rice abusing his players using racial slurs and throwing basketballs at his players, at times hitting the player in the head. What’s more shocking is this is not the video has JUST been unearthed and Rutgers quickly got rid of the situation. No, the administration saw the video in the summer and they gave Rice a three-game suspension and fined him. The video has surfaced this week and FINALLY the university administration took further action. Check the entire video from ESPN’s Outs the Lines below … you can see how this all unfolds with footage starting around the 1:40 mark:
Needless to say, add that to the jobs open on the carousel.
Are we really in a place in college athletics where the pressure to win surpasses the norms of human decency? I certainly hope not. The university’s decision to fire Mike Rice on Wednesday is a sign that perhaps there is right and wrong in the world. But what is upsetting is that this is not new footage. A matter that the university hoped would stay private went public and that forced the hand of Rutgers. Not the abuse of student-athletes, some as young as 18-years-old, in a school-sanctioned practice. Because if that forced the hand, this would have been taken care of last summer.
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Feature image: @shocker_athletics / instagram.com
