Rush The Court

John Stevens is a featured columnist for RTC.  His columns appear on Tuesdays throughout the season.

I can’t believe how I soaked my parents when I was a kid.  Right after Thanksgiving they’d start asking me to make a Christmas list so they could just go ahead and start buying me everything on it and I’d have yet another memorable holiday.  My sisters did the same thing.  True, we were good kids; we racked up enough academic and athletic achievements during the rest of the year to keep them stocked in stories to bore the crap out of their friends and the rest of the extended family with, but looking back on it, we were really lucky.  Still are.

These days, when Christmas rolls around, my wants are not of games for my Atari 2600, or life-size Shogun Warriors, or the like.  Today, I only ask for one thing for the holidays, and that is Time.  I want to sit in the recliner at our home in the country with a drink in one hand and a remote control in the other, my brain awash in college basketball images, Christmastime tournaments and match-ups lighting up my television screen until I can hardly remember my own name.  There will be family time, present-opening time, time for playing with the nieces and nephews of the family.  All of that is fantastic and it can’t be beaten.  But this year I’m especially looking forward to having the time to just devour Mom’s cooking, forget what my next obligation is, stay warm from the marrow-cracking cold outside, and enjoy some college hoops as we close the book on non-conference play for this season.

But make no mistake.  I’m a giver, as well.  I don’t just want those things above for myself, I want them for everyone.  And as I got a headstart on things this past Saturday by watching some freaking amazing games, I couldn’t help but wonder – what would be my college basketball wish list for this year?  Hey, sounds like a column idea!  So, here goes.  Six things I want inside the world of college basketball for this season.  Why six?  Because I say so.  I even ranked them for you.  You’re welcome.

John Stevens’  Holiday Wish List

#6.  Davidson to find other options. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE watching Stephen Curry and his lightning-quick release go nuts for 42/8/10, and I don’t want to minimize the work by Andrew Lovedale (13.5 and 10.1), for whom I actually feel a little sorry.  Its not easy being Salieri, is it?  Those are solid numbers and yet almost nobody knows this guy’s name.  But after him there’s just not a lot going on.  I think this is something we all suspected but didn’t want to admit because we’ve been mesmerized by Curry’s game, and we wanted to think this Stephen could lead this team to heights even loftier than last season.  That is yet to be disproved, but the Purdue game this past Saturday was damning.  Davidson’s tournament chances hinge on other options emerging when Curry is smothered by excellent defense like he was this past weekend, or when he’s just plain having a tough shooting night.  ESPN’s Pat Forde had a great article about this topic yesterday, incidentally.  We’ve seen what Curry can do as a virtual one-man show.  Now I’d like to see other fellows step up and for the team to go even farther even if it means that Curry might take a hit on his scoring average.

(Will settle for:  more amazing feats by Curry; no matter how deep Davidson’s tournament run, Curry is that enjoyable to watch.)

#5.  A nice airplane companion for my Vegas trip in March. I haven’t taken that many flights in my life, but the ones I have taken have been pretty lengthy and there’s only been one case where I had an enjoyable neighbor in the seat next to me.  I was flying to California this past Summer to attend a friend’s wedding and the fellow to my right just happened to play Division I college hoops about 40 years ago.  He told me stories of games he played against Wooden’s UCLA and Rupp’s Kentucky; the secret, behind-the-scenes stuff was amazing, some of the best sports stories I’ve ever heard.  I sat there motionless and listened until he got tired and actually had to take a nap.  But that was my only pleasant experience so far, as far as who I’ve had next to me on a plane.

We’ve all been there, haven’t we?  You’re sitting there in your seat as the plane loads, watching who’s coming down the aisle, and every attractive girl who approaches you’re thinking, “Come on, come oooooon…” but then you end up getting some foul-breathed 400-pound pet store employee who didn’t have time for a shower that morning and wants to talk to you about how his life totally changed after he saw The Blair Witch Project.  I don’t care if you’re single, married, or whatever, if you’re a male and you’re flying alone on a long trip, it’s the same.  We all want the Padma Lakshmi or Robin Meade look-alike, or maybe the stray USC Song Girl, to slide into the neighboring empty seat, look at us with puppy-dog eyes and whisper to us about how she’s “the bad girl of the team” but, alas, doesn’t have a place to stay in your destination city.   Hasn’t happened yet.  Maybe someday.

(Will settle for:  the plane to land in one piece, both coming and going.)

#4.  A Final Four for Gonzaga. I’m not affiliated with the place in any way – didn’t go to school there, never have even been to the state of Washington, though I’d love to visit – so here’s my thinking on this.  I’m hearing more and more alleged college hoop pundits using the terms “high mid-major” and “low mid-major” to denote a certain cadre of teams that…well, I probably don’t have to explain it.  A few years ago there were just mid-majors.  A few years before that there were just the big time programs and the rest of the world.  I kind of miss those days.  Now we have teams that actually feel insulted when you call them a low mid-major when they think they’re a high mid-major, and so forth.  That’s pure crap.  Gonzaga was the first team to really relish the “mid-major” moniker since I’ve been into this sport and they’ve certainly put in their time.  Mark Few has always come off as a perfectly nice guy and quite honestly his teams, without exception, play a brand of basketball that’s always been fun to watch for me, even though I can’t point to one particular thing that makes it so.  We’re long past the honeymoon phase with Gonzaga, meaning that it was one thing when they did well in the tournament while nobody was looking, but for over a decade now we’ve come to expect more from the Zags.  It’s important that they get to a Final Four when people actually expect something from them – like maybe this season.  I specifically admire Josh Heytvelt’s comeback and Austin Daye’s a pleasure to watch.  A Final Four would also move Coach Few more toward that elite level of coaches, which is due for a new member.

Another reason:  go back a few years to another Vegas trip.  Some of the boys and I are in the front row of a standing-only section of one of the sportsbooks watching the end of a game; the start of Gonzaga’s first game of that tournament was a couple of minutes away.  The Gonzaga supporters – and there were well over a hundred of them – gathered behind us and were definitely a polite crowd, meaning no pushing or jockeying to steal a spot in front of us, or anything.  And they certainly came prepared to support their team.  They were a fun lot, and definitely social.  Many of them started conversations with us and we shared a few beers and so on.  Pretty cool, eh?  Well, I noticed that from where I was standing, just behind and to the right of me was a pretty dark-haired girl in a big Gonzaga sweatshirt and an almost-empty beer in her hand.  I figured I’d maybe talk to her before the game started, so I turned to say hello, when, at that very millisecond, she takes a deep breath and, at a deafening volume, belts out:  “GOOOOOON-ZAG-UH BAAAAAAS-KET-BAAAAAALLLLL!!!!”  The crowd behind her echoed this offering.  I thought, “OK, she’s cool, probably knows the game, definitely loves her team.  Here we go…” and I turned around again.  What does she do?  She lets fly another, “GOOOOOOOOOON-ZAG-UH BAAAAAAS-KET-BAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!” at twice the original volume.  The crowd behind her really began frothing.  I was impressed on one hand but hoped she would be able to at least carry a conversation or scream another cheer.  I never really found out, because for the next two hours, at random times she would scream this same cheer, in the manner of the Detroit Pistons’ announcer Mason.  I never heard her say anything except that as she kept pounding those beers.  So, maybe if Gonzaga finally gets to a Final Four, this girl, wherever she is, will feel that her yelling has done its job and she can now preserve her voice, or learn another cheer.  In all seriousness, they were good fans, and they deserve a Final Four.

(Will settle for:  an iTunes gift card.)

#3.  Eric Devendorf to get this nonsense settled and rejoin his team. According to the ESPN.com article, Devendorf’s suspension for introducing his hand to a female student’s face earlier this year is that he has to complete 40 hours of community service before he can ask to be reinstated as a student by Syracuse University and resume his place on the basketball team.  The spring semester on the Syracuse campus starts January 12th and the Orange(men) have a game two days later at Georgetown.

Devendorf has said all the right things in the press since this incident, and he seems genuinely contrite.  He probably knows that to sock a female student in the jaw with the heel of your hand for any reason is the move of a black-belt douchebag and I’d speculate he understands the need for punishment.  Fine.  40 hours.  I say get it done as fast as you can, Eric.  Do a Monday-through-Friday, eight hours a day.  Better still, do four ten-hour days.  By getting it done quickly, you get it over with, and you send a message to your teammates that you really can’t wait to get back on that squad, if they’ll have you.  You’re showing them that you want to miss as little game and practice time as possible.  That ruling, in point of fact, came down on December 19th, which means that by the end of today you could been DONE with this if you’d have chosen the ten-hour-day option.  Whatever schedule you can set – the point is, get it done as fast as you can.  You’ll impress your teammates, you’ll fulfill your obligation, you’ll send a message to your coaches, and I bet you’ll return to the Carrier Dome to more cheers than anything.  Your team is good, but they’re better with you there.  Despite their curious history in the NCAA Tournament, they are a dangerous team this year and I wouldn’t want to be the guy responsible for Syracuse fans wondering how good they could have been.

(Will settle for:  Nothing.  This one’s not negotiable.)

#2.  An end to the objectification of Miss Erin Andrews. That’s right.  I’m going to be the champion for Miss Andrews’ cause.  I think it’s high time that we recognize the hard work this woman puts into actually being a journalist, interviewing coaches at halftime when they’re more annoyed than anything and don’t want to convey any real information to the viewers.  It’s thankless, and I for one want to say a big Thank You to Miss Andrews.  And on top of all that, she has to do it while most of the viewers are wondering how snug her shirt is or how high her heels are, probably not even hearing what she’s saying.  I can’t even fathom the catcalls she must endure from horny college kids while she’s just trying to do her job.  I even hear that some sports blogs actually use any possible reason to post pictures of her on their sites, hoping to generate cheap pageviews.  I am appalled!  Who, I ask you, WHO would do such a thing?!?  Anyway, I think we need to do a better job of showing her how much we love her reporting as well as her…*sigh*…looks.  And, I dunno, if Miss Andrews feels like talking about this subject with me, she can use the e-mail link for this site located at right, and perhaps we can discuss it over dinner.  Not that I said all that stuff above for that reason, or anything.

(Will settle for:  Not taking a beating.  You see what I’m doing there, right?  Remember that kid back in, like, the 8th or 9th grade who was friends with all the girls because he sucked up to them like crazy?  You know the guy, he always thought he could parlay that ill-gotten friendship into something else if he wanted (even though the girls knew it would never happen) once he got to high school, and he liked to rub your nose in it a little.  I ALWAYS wanted to administer a beating for the ages to that guy.  If you see what I’m doing with my above paragraph about Erin, you’ll exempt me from a similar throttling.)

(Will also settle for:  ESPN to make some airtime for another Andrews, namely Thea, who I always dug in a major way even though Cold Pizza was an abomination.)

And finally, the number one item on the John Stevens Holiday List for 2008 is:

#1.  A Duke fan to admit that…it’s getting to be a little much. Well, this should be good.  It all started with those American Express commercials a couple of years ago where Coach K talked about how he doesn’t just prepare you for basketball, he also prepares you for life, etc.  Then I’m sitting watching the amazing United States victory over the Europeans in the 2008 Ryder Cup on TV earlier this summer and what do I see?  A smiling Krzyzewski on my TV screen doing a lead-in to the coverage about every hour; I mean, it’s a GOLF tournament.  And it happened in Louisville, which means that among college basketball coaches, Rick Pitino would have been a more appropriate choice.  It’s an event that Coach K’s mug should have been nowhere near.  In my opinion, the most mind-blowing example of the Coach K free pass is his weekly hour-long talk show on Sirius XM, called “Basketball and Beyond with Coach K,” now entering its fourth season.  It’s basically an hour of Coach K hanging out with special guests, talking about basketball, talking about life in general, talking about whatever he wants.

Many people have argued that these appearances by Krzyzewski constitute a recruiting advantage, and it’s a tough argument to refute.  He seems to be the only coach out there doing it, though it should be said that he’s probably the most desirable spokesman out there, as far as coaches go.  But honestly, in addition to everywhere else he shows up, the guy’s got an hour of satellite radio time every week where he kicks it with famous friends and espouses his opinions on just about everything – including subjects that might even come up during, oh, I don’t know…in-home and/or campus recruiting visits?

To be sure, I don’t know if these things provide much of a recruiting advantage; let’s be honest, even without Coach K’s extra appearances there’s a lot about Duke that sells itself.  We all know the place’s academic reputation, and the basketball program had reached elite status long before Krzyzewski started with the commercials/promos/radio shows/etc.  But the problem is that other coaches certainly don’t get to do these things.  Yes, Krzyzewski has created these opportunities through his achievements as a college basketball coach.  But let’s say Coach K retires tomorrow and Sirius XM decides to give a show to only one coach – say, Ben Howland, or Roy Williams, or Billy Gillispie, or Jamie Dixon.  It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if the NCAA stepped in and nixed it, saying it provided an unfair advantage.  As chronicled by this very website, the NCAA chooses to apply its disciplinary bitch-slap in such strange and uneven ways at times – but THIS, a weekly hour-long pulpit for a coach – ANY coach – to freestyle about any subject he wants to millions of people – is allowed?  The NCAA claims to try to keep things fair, to keep the playing field even.  Is that what we’ve had for the past few years with Coach K preening himself as the official brand face and name of college basketball?

So that’s my number one wish for this holiday season.  One single Duke fan to admit that their coach, despite his successes, might just be getting away with something.  In the meantime, enjoy this clever YouTube spoof of Coach K’s AMEX ads.

(Will settle for:  a winning Powerball ticket.  I’m more likely to actually get that.)

Happy Holidays, everyone!