Big East Morning Five: Cincinnati-Xavier Fallout Edition

Posted by mlemaire on December 12th, 2011

  1. It is never a dull weekend in the Big East. Only this season, the basketball has been taking a backseat. At this point, even if you don’t follow college basketball, you have some idea what went on between Cincinnati and Xavier Saturday. Yesterday, both teams announced the suspensions that were a result of one of the nastier brawls in recent college basketball history. As always, the blogosphere reacted nearly immediately, and most of it was negative. It might be redundant but the national site here at RTC had an excellent take on hollow talk in press conferences that many have accused Mick Cronin of in the wake of yesterday. Bearcats Blog actually did a frame-by-frame breakdown of the actual brawl and we used it to weigh in on the penalties. So we broke it down by each player’s punishment and called it an excuse for a Morning Five.
  2. As the person who did the most real damage Saturday, it’s stunning that Yancy Gates only got six games, including just one conference game. It was in the heat of the moment and both teams were mixing it up, but whether it’s a public sidewalk or a basketball court, you can’t be allowed to sucker-punch someone in the face. Everyone saw that punch in slow motion. It was brutal, it was malicious, it was flush in the face, and it came from a man who stands 6’9” and is a chiseled 250 pounds. I am surprised he will get to play again this season.
  3. I think Cheik Mbodj deserves a little bit more sympathy and only a little bit. There is nothing more cowardly then trying to stomp on a man while he is down and then fade into the background like Mbodj did. But if you watch closely, his kick is pretty cowardly as well. It didn’t look like much. If anything, Mbodj should feel embarrassed watching himself in that video, because he did nothing until Kenny Frease was already on the ground. It was pathetic, but it didn’t seem to do any damage. It probably deserved at least ten games and the sincere public apology that Cronin is promising.
  4. Octavius Ellis is the winner of ignominious “only Bearcat player involved that no one bothered to identify yesterday” award, but he might have played a bigger role than most realize. It was Ellis that ended the first half jawing with Xavier’s Mark Lyons and those two tangled again at the end of the game with Ellis instigating. Which brings us to the real crux of this paragraph, which is, how in the world did Ellis get involved with Lyons in the first place? Cronin said the Musketeers were talking trash to the Cincinnati bench, but either Ellis has a quick temper or Lyons was going after him directly. I could be wrong, but I have never seen anyone that angry over trash-talk. He probably deserved ten games as well given how many punches he threw and perhaps an explanation we definitely won’t get.
  5. The only punishment that seems reasonable… almost, was the one given to Ge’Lawn Guyn. He was definitely provoked by Tu Holloway into the staredown that started the fracas, but it seemed non-physical until Dez Wells decked him. If Guyn had done nothing else, he might have escaped without a suspension. But he was so incensed at being blindsided he lost control. If you watch closely he is in the back being held by a coach, then he breaks free and at 21 seconds, he attacks Brad Redford who is literally the last man off the Xavier bench. He seems to keep looking for a fight and even breaks free again to aid Ellis. He got pushed, but that doesn’t mean he gets to run around picking fights with anyone in the opposing uniform. Give him two games.
mlemaire (324 Posts)


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