Hoops absurdity testing patience

IF YOU ever feel the need to measure or even abandon your common sense, spend a weekend watching college basketball. We’ll start slowly. On ESPN, Virginia led Syracuse by 12 when SU started the second half by hitting a bombs-away 3pointer with one second left on the shot clock. Play-by-player Tom Hart then sent it to sideline reporter Kaylee Hartung, asking “what kind of halftime adjustments did Syracuse make?”

“Tom, you just saw it in that first possession — patience.”

Patience? We saw strong UV a defense leading to SU’s desperation 3. Had SU shown any more patience it would have lost the ball to the shot-clock buzzer.

Anyway, in the next, oh, 10 minutes, Syracuse pa

tiently slammed it into overdrive, running and gunning to take the lead, win the game.

Later, on CBSSN, St. Bonaventure hit a 3-point shot to take a one-point lead with half-a-second left.

But these are the days of mug-for-the-TV-cameras and obligatory audience participation, thus Bonnies fans stormed the court, bringing with them jurisdictional confusion and chaos, which yesterday the Atlantic 10 Conference remarkably blamed on the game’s referees after first fully supporting them.

Regardless, with the court cleared, SBU was hit with a home-crowd technical, VCU made the free throw then won in overtime.

On Sunday, for some odd reason, CBS again chose to distract its audience by having a live basketball game — this one appeared to be Indiana-Wisconsin — played in the background while it flashed graphics carrying its usual must-read statistics of no known value or relevance.