I. Renko is an RTC columnist. He will bring you his analysis of the 26 other non-power conferences each Friday during the season.

It was supposed to be a quiet week in college hoops, but as you know, when you’ve got more than 340 teams playing 30-game schedules over the course of four months, it’s never that quiet. And we found that out in a big way this past week as the fallout from the melee at the Crosstown Shootout reverberated through the college hoops world.  Lots of ink has been spilled on this, and there’s little that I could add to the various rounds of media condemnation and outrage.  So rather than trying to piggyback on all of that commentary, I thought I might take moment to, well, comment on it. 

It should go without saying that college basketball players should not throw punches at each other, stomp on people, or otherwise let the emotion of a high-intensity rivalry spill over into extracurricular violence.  That’s an easy enough point on which we can all agree.  But what has sparked an unusual amount of outrage among the commentariat is not the physical altercation itself so much as the post-game remarks about it by Tu Holloway and Mark Lyons.  Journalists have been tripping over themselves to decry Holloway and Lyons with as much self-righteousness as they can muster.  In this race to prove just how indignant they are, sadly, many observers have obscured the content of what Holloway and Lyons said.

Commentators have oversimplified Holloway and Lyons' post-game comments

To be clear, it didn’t seem like Holloway and Lyons had processed just how unacceptable the ending of the game was.  And they certainly didn’t choose their words carefully given the national audience.  But some of the more inflammatory language that media has seized on has been badly misconstrued and inaccurately portrayed.  Some have condemned Holloway for declaring his team to be a bunch of “gangstas.”  Others have criticized him for throwing around the word “thugs.”  And still others have suggested that the senior guards thought that the fight was simply an acceptable demonstration of their toughness.  It makes me wonder if they watched the whole press conference or simply seized on the most sensational statements that most easily lent themselves to moralizing outrage.

Here’s what Holloway said about his team being “gangstas”:  “We’re a tougher team.  We’re grown men over here.  We got a bunch of gangstas in the locker room — not thugs, but tough guys on the court.”

And here’s what Holloway and Lyons said about toughness and fighting: “Toughness isn’t like a fight or something.  It’s what we do every possession.  How we play defense, how we stay in the game when a team makes a run.  A fight after the game, that’s not toughness.” — Holloway

“No, that’s not toughness.” — Lyons

Effective communication is a two-way street.  The speaker has some responsibility that his words are understood, but the listener has an equal responsibility to make a good faith effort to understand what the speaker is saying.  That’s especially true for reporters whose job, literally, is to accurately represent and reflect what people say.  Instead, too many journalists have zeroed in on the most inflammatory words — gangstas, thugs — and ignored the comments that put those words in context.

Again, that’s not to defend everything that was said at the press conference and certainly not everything that happened on the court before it.  But if we’re going to indulge in the business of being publicly outraged at the behavior of college kids, let’s at least try to do so in a way that is honest and reflective rather than reactionary and blinkered.

/soapbox

Top 15 Rankings

Looking Back:  The Four Biggest Wins of the Past Week

• Murray State 76, Memphis 72 — Whether the Racers can run the regular season table, as some now think they might, is an open question.  But what’s indisputable is that this was a great win for a program that had lost a lot of firepower in the offseason.  The Racers graduated three starters — B.J. Jenkins, Isaac Miles, and Jeffery McClain — but returner Isaiah Canaan has carried a big load, while senior guards Donte Poole and Jewuan Long have stepped up their game.  If they do the improbable — and to be sure, I think it’s improbable — you have to consider first-year coach Steve Prohm a National Coach of the Year favorite.
• Temple 78, Villanova 67 — Villanova may not be as good as they’ve been in recent years, but this was still a big win for the Owls in a Big 5 clash.  Ramone Moore’s 32 points rightly stole the headlines, but perhaps the more important statistic was the 23 combined rebounds from 6-9 freshman forward Anthony Lee and 6-6 forward Rahlir Hollis-Jefferson.  Temple’s ability to hold down the frontcourt while Michael Eric recovers from a knee injury has been an open question, and the win over Villanova went a long way towards answering it favorably.
• MTSU 65, Belmont 62 — These teams already met earlier this year on Belmont’s home floor, where the Bruins squeaked out an overtime win.  The Blue Raiders returned the favor on their home court last week, as they beat Belmont in another close game.  MTSU has a strong, balanced offensive game that features post man Laron Dendy and a surfeit of three-point shooters.  But this game also exposed a weakness that could pose trouble in important games the rest of the year — free throw shooting.   Despite getting to the line often, the Blue Raiders shoot just 63.5% from there.  Against Belmont, they were a woeful 16-30.
• Marshall 82, Iona 63 — While it wasn’t a big enough win to get them onto the national radar, Marshall’s 19-point victory over a very good Iona team should make TO26 readers stand up and notice.  With a frontcourt comprised of two strong JUCO transfers, Dennis Tinnon and Robert Goff, and a strong backcourt led senior Damier Pitts and sophomore DeAndre Kane, the Thundering Herd may have enough balance to contend with Memphis for the C-USA crown.  While Tinnon and Goff have carried the team in previous wins this year, against the Gaels, it was the backcourt duo who led the way.

Looking Forward:  What to Watch This Week

Power Conference Tests

As the non-conference season begins to wind down, a number of teams still have a chance to make their mark against quality power conference opponents.  Whether it’s for the elusive “quality win” to bolster their at-large resumes or simply to prove to themselves and everyone else how good they can be, there should be no shortage of motivation for the TO26 teams heading into these battles.

• BYU v. Baylor (12/17) — In their only win against high-end competition, BYU lost by 17 to Wisconsin on a neutral floor.  Their efficiency numbers are impressive (ranked 38th offensively and 15th defensively, per Kenpom.com), but they’ve yet to notch a meaningful win.  They’ll have their chance tomorrow when top 10 Baylor comes to town.  This will be a tough matchup for the Cougars.  Brandon Davies and Noah Hartsock will face an imposing interior defense, and stylistically, Baylor’s weaknesses (turnovers, defensive rebounding) are not areas that BYU’s style exploits.  If they don’t notch this win, the Cougars will have a chance to solidify their top 15 ranking above with games against solid mid-majors Buffalo and UCSB.
• Memphis v. Louisville (12/17), v. Georgetown (12/22) — When you schedule a tough non-conference slate, December can feel like anything but a month of celebration.  The Tigers are about to find out just how happy their holidays will be, as they have to try to bounce back from a disappointing home loss to Murray State by traveling to Big East powers Louisville and Georgetown.  While neither will be a bad loss, if the Tigers can’t pick up a win, they’ll stumble into the conference season giving teams like Marshall and Southern Mississippi hope that they can knock off the perennial kings of C-USA.

Other BCS Test games watch:  Temple v. Texas (12/17), UNLV v. Illinois (12/17), Gonzaga v. Arizona (12/17)

TO26 v. TO26

This week also features a number of intriguing inter-conference matchups featuring top TO26 teams facing off against each other.

• Denver v. Boise State (12/17), vs. Wyoming (12/19) — Denver has been one of this year’s surprise teams, as Joe Scott’s men are executing the Princeton offense quite well.  They have two games this week against Mountain West teams that have not been mentioned alongside UNLV, SDSU, and New Mexico, but who may yet shake things up at the top of the conference.
• LBSU v. Xavier (12/22) — Tu Holloway will return for this game, but Xavier will still be without his backcourt running mates, Mark Lyons and .  Casper Ware and co. will try to take advantage.  Despite the early press they got for their win at Pitt, they haven’t been able to replicate that feat against the other tough opponents on their schedule.  This will be their last chance before conference play kicks off.
• Belmont v. Marshall (12/19) — Marshall will have a chance to build on its win over Iona, while Belmont gets the opportunity to bounce back from its loss to MTSU.
• Northern Iowa v. Ohio (12/20) — Both teams have been lurking in the distance, but aren’t far from making the top 15.  DJ Cooper will lead Ohio against Anthony James and the Panthers.

IRenko (64 Posts)

This entry was posted on Friday, December 16th, 2011 at 1:01 pm by IRenko and is filed under Regular Features, the other 26. Tagged: byu, creighton, mark lyons, san diego st, tu holloway, unlv, wichita st, xavier. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.