Final note from last night: JMU fans are getting on Give ‘Em Hell Denzel for his, uh, lack of defensive prowess. Let me put this as gently as I can: Kid has five double-doubles in eight games and just put a 26/13 on a 5-1 team who keyed on him. He doesn’t have to play defense. Let the kid be a statue and keep pouring in 23/10.
Would you prefer Gabe Chami?
***
A few links to chew on, as we sort out the NCAA-sponsored comedy that is the Brad Kelleher case. There is a committee within the NCAA–shocking, I know–called the athlete reinstatement committee. That’s the next step.
Here is a primer of that committee.
Want to be geekier? Here’s an intro power point.
And the highest form of comedy? Here’s Bylaw 12, which makes the United States tax code look like a haiku.
One final link, the story of Muhammed Lasege. It isn’t as much the story that gripped me as much as the commentary on page two that points out the director of the NCAA Reinstatement Committee was 26-years old.
And that she testified in court that if someone held a gun to the head of a kid and said they’d pull the trigger if the kid didn’t sign the contract, and the kid signed the contract, that the kid would be ineligible.
Really, you cannot make this stuff up.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
To be fair (and as a Tribe fan) Brady was playing Bowles for 39 and a half minutes last night.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
Love your blog and read it daily; Chami comment especialy fitting … but … Denzel needs to find just a little bit more in him to play just a little bit of D.
We were close in last night’s game and an extra step or an extra help on the defensive end could have tipped this game to JMU.
Maybe all of us JMU fans are just a bit crabby and are only looking at the negative side of things; of course, we can’t be helped with the luck we have had for the past 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 years.
January 15th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
I’m very interested in seeing how Bowles responds to my Mason big men on Sat. in Harrisonburg. They don’t have the height or bulk compared to Bowles, but based on his lack of defense (I haven’t seen him play yet, so I don’t know), they may be able to work around those issues. Take Ryan Pearson, for example, who somehow manages to take his 6’6 frame around bigger opponents for shots and foul shots. It would be nice if Mike Morrison showed up for this game, too. I’d like to see our big boy freshman Williams on him, or our revived senior defensive stopper in Birdsong put a body on him. We may have enough bodies to get him into foul trouble. We’ll see. Of course, the game is on the road, so that means my Patriots will lose by 30.
Maybe Andre Cornelius can save us by beating Dre Smith’s 3-pt. record…that was a Harrisonburg event…
January 15th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
http://www.ncaa.org/wps/portal/ncaahome?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/ncaa/ncaa/ncaa+news/ncaa+news+online/2009/association-wide/cosida+announces+2009+hall+of+fame+class_05_13_09_ncaa_news
FYI. She’s a hall-of-famer…surprise, surprise…