The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
College basketball has major case of the blues
Embarrassed sport may be sinking to irrelevance.
Mark Bradley: It was a hoops weekend like no other, as an FBI investigation shadowed the normal news of game results.
A halftime score from Saturday: Virginia 30, Pittsburgh 7. (The Panthers, an actual ACC team, made one first-half basket.) A halftime score from Sunday: Houston 62, East Carolina 13. (Know who coaches Houston? Kelvin Sampson, who ran afoul of regulations regarding phone calls to recruits at Oklahoma — and then got fired at Indiana for flouting the same regulations.)
On a weekend when nobody was talking about actual basketball, events played out as if someone stuck a screwdriver in a light socket. Arizona played without its coach (that pesky FBI investigation) and its second-best player (positive drug test for PEDs, his second) and lost in overtime at Oregon. Interim coach Lorenzo Romar was asked afterward how long he’ll be filling in for Sean Miller, whom Mark Schlabach of ESPN
reported had been caught by an FBI wiretap discussing a $100,000 payment to Deandre Ayton, now an Arizona freshman.
Romar’s response: “I don’t know. I can’t answer that. And when I say I can’t answer that, it’s because I don’t know.”
After Michigan State clinched the Big Ten regular-season title at Wisconsin on Sunday, coach Tom Izzo was asked about his relationship with Christian Dawkins, the agent runner and star of the documents seized by the FBI, the existence of which were reported by Pat Forde and Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports early Friday, touching off a hoops weekend like no other. Despite a Forde/Thamel report that “the incoming freshman in 2016 who appeared of primary interest to Dawkins was Michigan State’s Miles Bridges,” the school did a hasty bit of vetting and cleared him to play.
Dawkins is from Michigan. His dad Lou coached Draymond Green, once a Spartan. (Lou Dawkins is now an assistant at Cleveland State under Dennis Felton, who coached Georgia before Mark Fox.) Izzo admitted he’d known Lou Dawkins for a long time but refused to discuss Christian Dawkins, noting, “We’ve just won a championship.”
Most players mentioned in the documents were similarly allowed to play. (An exception: Eric Davis Jr. of Texas.) Collin Sexton of Pebblebrook scored 15 points in Alabama’s loss to Arkansas. Wendell Carter Jr. of Pace Academy scored 16 in Duke’s victory over Syracuse.
Mike Krzyzewski, who coaches the Blue Devils, described how Carter’s parents apparently aborted their meal with Dawkins: Wendell Carter Sr. heard what Dawkins was pitching and left; Kylia Carter stayed longer out of politeness but exited before ordering anything to eat. (Note that Dawkins’ expense account lists the meal at Longhorn as costing “$106.36.”) Also note that when Kylia Carter saw her son’s name in the Yahoo report, she called Krzyzewski, who was walking his dog. His dog is named Blue.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but “blue” describes the state of the entire sport. Fox said Saturday he was “disgusted,” claiming: “It starts with the coaches.” As if on cue, Yahoo’s Thamel reported Sunday that the NCAA — not the FBI — has begun checking into the recruiting practices of Will Wade, whose LSU team just lost to Fox’s.
The insanity sweeping the sport does start with the coaches, but it doesn’t stop there. The 2018 Big Ten tournament begins Wednesday. The league moved its event up for the express purpose of holding it in Madison Square Garden, which sits in Manhattan, which is in New York, a state in which the Big Ten has no member institution. (Rutgers fans better roll through those tunnels.) This forced Big Ten schools to play two conference games in early December and finish the regular season a week sooner than usual.
“Wasn’t good,” Commissioner Jim Delany told Teddy Greenstein of the Chicago Tribune. “Wasn’t healthy … We won’t do it again.”
Why do it at all? The Big Ten couldn’t play next week in MSG because the Big East has held that space forever; the ACC is again playing across the river in Brooklyn. (Never mind that the nearest ACC school sits 250 miles from Barclays Center.)
Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, the whiniest man who ever lived, spoke last March of how great it was for his new conference finally to hit the big stage and leave behind the likes of Greensboro, which he deemed of “no value.” Anyone who covered the ACC in Brooklyn can attest that the high-falutin’ ACC didn’t own New York. The Big East got more tabloid ink. Heck, the lottery-lousy Knicks got bigger play.
But conferences will go anywhere if there’s brand reputation to be enhanced. The SEC will play its tournament in St. Louis, which is in Missouri, which houses one league school and borders on three states featuring other SEC members. The tournament’s semipermanent home is Nashville, which is in Tennessee, which houses two member institutions and borders on seven states that include such outposts. Guaranteed: There will be more fuss in St. Louis over this week’s Arch Madness — the Missouri Valley Conference convocation — than for next week’s interlopers.
Not to go on a Boeheim-like rant here, but the whole thing — the oneand-dones, the shady recruiting, the cult of imperial coaches, the crazy-quilt scheduling to accommodate TV, the moving of tournaments for the sake of playing someplace new — makes this longtime observer wonder: If I were a few decades younger, would I care about college basketball at all?
My response: I don’t know. I can’t answer that. And when I say I can’t answer that, it’s because I don’t know.