BY DAVID BALALRD Ugly. A simple word, yes, but it’s one that politely sums up the last night of the college basketball season. The game, a 53-41 brickfest won by UConn, eerily reflects the state of the sport right now. Before this mockery of a championship game, the madness of March was as unpredictable as ever, leading two mid-majors, Butler and Virginia Commonwealth, to the Final Four in Houston. The two teams represented everything right with the sport: young, overachieving coaches and an emphasis on team basketball. However, the glory of winning the Big Dance went to the red hands of recently sanctioned head coach Jim Calhoun and his big, bad Huskies.
The NCAA charged Calhoun with failing to create an atmosphere of compliance, leading to a three game suspension at the start of Big East play next season, in addition to scholarship reductions. This petty suspension does not solve the problem. It is a subdued scolding, a mere slap on Calhoun’s wrist. These sanctions, coupled with those of Tennessee’s Bruce Pearl and Ohio State’s football head coach Jim Tressel, have led to a very public unveiling of college ethics, or lack thereof. College sports as a whole needed Butler to win; they needed a hero to come in at the 11th hour and save us, the damsels in distress, from those horrible huskies. But it was not to be. Shots didn’t fall and David’s trusted slingshot was not enough to overcome mighty Goliath.
But this Butler loss is begrudgingly expected. It seems like in this current state of disarray, the little guy has no chance; David is doomed for failure every time. The Bulldogs don’t have the resources of a UConn or a Kentucky, but what they lack in funds they make up for in integrity. And for now, it seems like they’ll just have to settle for that moral victory while the big bad huskies trot away with their tarnished trophy.