RAGING BULLY
UConn coach proud to cruelly run up score
I DON’T like bullies. Never did. Doesn’t matter if they’re Mike Francesa, Rex Ryan, LaVar Ball, Chris Christie, Bobby Knight or Popeye’s nemesis, Bluto.
Blame my parents. That’s how they raised me, invoking the old “Treat others as you’d have them treat you” thing. Shame on them, I suppose.
And though the TV folks regularly kiss his fanny and pretend they don’t see what can’t be missed, Geno Auriemma is a consistent, remorseless bully.
He’s women’s college basketball’s version of Vlad the Impaler. And he’s here to punish you — stomp you when you’re already thoroughly beaten — in the names of the University of Connecticut and NCAA student-athletics.
The only thing worse than a bad loser is a bad winner, and Auriemma specializes in annihilations and humiliations. Why win by 40, 50, 60 when you can win by 70, 80, 88, making your opponents appear as small and as worthless as possible?
But according to Auriemma, those who would dare fault his winning methods are “dopes.” Then I’m a dope, proud of it, too.
Saturday, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, UConn, playing at home, did what its does under Auriemma: It pulverized its opponent. Yet even by Auriemmea’s long-established standards, this one was extra twisted. UConn broke several NCAA Tournament scoring records including total points. UConn defeated St. Francis (Pa.), 140-52.
At 94-31, it was a blowout by halftime. But Auriemma still had his team pouring it on, blocking shots, making steals, taking and making 3s, not killing the clock. One of his starters played 29 minutes of the 40, another 24.
Auriemma needlessly, cruelly sent the St. Francis kids back to their 2,100-students campus in Loretto as record-breaking losers, perhaps too embarrassed to be seen.
His latest brutalization was noted by USA Today’s Josh Peter, who wrote that women’s college basketball, “could use a mercy rule. Or a coach who knows how to show mercy.”
Asked about that by the Hartford Courant, Auriemma said, “That dope from USA Today — I don’t even know his name — I guarantee he didn’t see the game. He doesn’t know what happened.”
I’ve seen dozens of his games, and most were similar to this one — only not quite as twisted.
And unless the play-by-play sheet and boxscore were sabotaged, what went down was inexcusable, as 33-0 UConn, already ridiculously lopsided winners, piled it on.
Auriemma’s team played, as he explains it, “the way we always play,” which seems more a self-indictment than a reasonable explanation.
These aren’t the SATs. It’s not the Crimean War. They’re college games. Mercy isn’t the issue as much as dignity, specifically how much lies beneath Auriemma’s, and it’s clearly not beneath his to beat a visiting team by 88 points.
Holding the score down to, say, a 50- or 60-point win should not be difficult for any coach, let alone one of Auriemma’s acumen. And if he doesn’t know how it’s done, I’ll be happy to show him.
But paid over $2 million a year by the publicly funded state university, he’s entitled to produce and direct slaughters; he’s another who demands respect in exchange for none.
Two weeks prior in Massachusetts, not far from UConn, a girls’ high school tournament game was won, 93-7, by East Bridgewater, its coach — ostensibly a responsible adult — flooring the gas though up, 48-4, at the half.
Unlike at UConn, where the administration indulges Auriemma with look-away passes — he’s the headmaster of Our Ladies of Perpetual Silence — East Bridgewater school superintendent Elizabeth Legault knows right from wrong — and isn’t afraid to speak it. She apologized for the dehumanizing result and for a coach who kicked kids when they already were way down — under the heading of “sports,” no less.
On Legault’s watch we can reasonably surmise that such will never again occur. She doesn’t want her students to be bullied any more than she’d want them to be bullies. Perhaps she, too, can’t help it. Perhaps that’s the way she was raised.