ncaa – might be baloney

On March 19, the Virginia Commonwealth University Rams (VCU) upset the North Carolina Tarheels (UNC) in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

This was in the first round of the tournament. VCU was seeded eleventh and UNC was a six seed.

VCU overcame a 19 point second half lead, and then beat the Tarheels in overtime 82 to 78.

Ten days later on March 29, the Duke University Blue Devils joined their arch rivals, the Tarheels, as Duke also blew a 19 point lead. Duke lost to the University of Connecticut Huskies (UCONN).

Following a Duke turnover, UCONN beat Duke on a last second shot 73 to 72. Duke and UCONN were playing in the Elite Eight for a berth in the Final Four. Duke was a number one seed, and UCONN was a number two seed.

Before going any further, let me tell you that I have always cheered for Duke in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Perhaps some of that grounding came from my parents who thought I might end up going to Duke Divinity School to become a Methodist pastor. The good Lord is thankful that didn’t happen.

I am no expert on college basketball.

I loved the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) that I grew up with as a kid. In my opinion, because of money and illogical geographical expansions the ACC has been destroyed.

Also, because of money, including Name Image and Likeness (NIL), the Transfer Portal, one and done players, I worry that the NCAA could fall further into disarray.

I do not watch Duke basketball games. I follow the season from a safe distance. I’m too chicken to put my life in the hands of 18 and 19 year olds with a round ball that has a mind of its own.

Watching missed foul shots and mindless turnovers at critical times during a game would cause me to lose what little real time sanity I have left.

When Duke plays, I check in on line, read the post game analysis, and look carefully at the boxscores.

I’ve watched enough basketball games to know that big leads in the second half are always a concern. Big leads can be tough to sustain. Look no further than the games that UNC and Duke loss.

If UNC took VCU lightly, they shouldn’t have. In 2007, VCU upset Duke 79 to 77 in the men’s NCAA tournament. True that was nineteen years ago, but Duke didn’t expect to lose to VCU either. I guarantee you the Duke players on that team still remember that loss.

If a team has a big lead in the second half with lots of time left, at some point, the basketball gods switch the momentum. Suddenly, everything starts to work for the team playing catch up, and everything starts going wrong for the team with the big lead.

Living here in Richmond where VCU is located, I’ve heard that the UNC players talked trash to the VCU players. Whether that is true or not, I can’t confirm.

But, I know this— trash talking with a big lead isn’t a good idea. If your going to trash talk a team, your talk best be in a really obscure foreign language that no one, not even a student manager on the opposing team can translate. Trash talking your opponent ensures trouble.

And speaking of talking, a reliable friend of mine, a lifelong UNC fan and graduate, noticed that neither Hubert Davis nor Jon Scheyer congratulated the winning coaches and their players in the post-game press conferences.

Perhaps, Coaches Davis and Scheyer were too shellshocked from losing. I understand these were excruciatingly painful losses. However, these coaches have been around basketball all of their lives. They know better—you congratulate the winning coach and his team.

Another source of frustration for me is the coaching carousel. Again, money is the ruler.

Quite often, I think to myself I went into the wrong profession. I should have been a men’s college basketball coach.

I could coach somewhere, turn a losing program around, lead my team into the NCAA tournament, sign an extension contract for millions of dollars, and then fail to continue to win and make it into the NCAA tournament.

Even with this lousy downturn, and the end of my coaching career at this school, it is likely that I a mediocre coach will walk away a millionaire. I can thank my wise agent and attorney for negotiating this sweet deal.

These ridiculous coaching contracts are all about the desire not just to have a winning season every year, but to win conference championships and potentially the national championship.

Alumni with deep pockets are willing to support these coaching contracts while also providing funds to bring in the best players.

Gone are the days when a player is loyal to his school and he plays there for all four years.

Loyalty is a dying word.

The same lack of loyalty can apply to coaches too.

N.C. State’s Athletic Director, Boo Corrigan learned about the lack of loyalty when he hired former LSU coach Will Wade.

Will Wade coached at N.C. State this year. Coach Wade bolted at the end of this season. He agreed to return to LSU where he had been a mediocre coach. Down in Tigerland, Coach Wade will continue to play second fiddle as football is still king of the campus there.

I imagine Boo Corrigan wishes he had never hired or ever heard of Will Wade.

And in truth, I feel bad for Hubert Davis. He might not be a great coach, but he was loyal to UNC.

Seems that the UNC decision makers forgot that Coach Davis’ teams beat the despised Dookies at two critical times in 2022.

First, at Mike Krzyzewski’s final home game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, and then again in the Final Four that year which turned out to be Coach Krzyzewski’s last game.

And with all of the foolishness involved in the speculation of who gets fired and hired as college basketball coaches, it is too bad that the athletic directors at N.C. State and UNC didn’t put out a perfect April Fool’s press release.

They could have announced that N.C. State had hired Hubert Davis and that UNC had offered a contract to former Duke star, Bobby Hurley. On March 11, Coach Hurley and Arizona State parted ways.

College basketball coaches, preachers, and public school superintendents have something in common—pressure.

These individuals are supposed to succeed. Doesn’t matter that it is impossible for them to make everyone happy in their environments.

They must win every game, hit a grand slam every Sunday with their sermon, and survive every school year without controversy. Impossible.

Go take a good look at Hubert Davis’ face in the post VCU press conference. On May 17, 2026, Coach Davis will turn 56. Weariness, the wear and tear of coaching is all over Coach Davis’ face. He looks much older than 56.

The pain of joining Club 19 will linger for some like losing a member of their family in the worse possible way.

If Club 19 is like that for you, I suggest you ponder life a bit deeper, deeper than UNC and Duke’s basketball seasons. Clearly, there are many things in daily living that have a greater urgency.

The real question for Dookies is what do you, me, we, us, the players and coaches learn from blowing a nineteen point lead?

I have a handful of books about college basketball. I’ve enjoyed reading each book. But, it is no secret that my favorite book about college basketball is Pat Conroy’s My Losing Season. If you are a college basketball lover, you must read this book.

In the Epilogue of the book, Mr. Conroy writes: “There is no downside to winning. It feels forever fabulous.But there is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss. The great secret of athletics is that you can learn more from losing than winning.” (Conroy pages 394-395, My Losing Season)

I think Mr. Conroy is correct about learning from losing.

Monday, November 2, 2026 will be here in a blink. That is the date set by the NCAA when men’s college basketball games can officially start.

With that date, all of this madness starts again.

My old feeble mind hopes that some common sense might return to the college game.

I’ll hold out for hope, but I think we’re too deep into the allure of money to turn things around.

Of course that enticement could be slowed if multiple college athletic departments continue to run at a deficit. The optics for running in the red will not be favorable.

Long after I’m gone, someone might stumble upon The Andy Griffith Show. The “Mayberry Goes Hollywood” episode illustrates how the charm of the town of Mayberry is turned upside down by its citizens.

A Hollywood movie producer comes to Mayberry to scout the town for the shooting of a movie. The producer likes what he finds with the town and its people.

When Mayberry is chosen as the site for the filming, its citizens turn Mayberry into an unattractive Hollywood themed town.

It takes a gentle chastising from the producer to get the citizens and Mayberry back to normal.

As Mayberry finds itself again, Mayor Pike looks at Sheriff Taylor and says to him: “We tried to tell them didn’t we Andy?” Andy who never fell into the Hollywood trap replies to the Mayor, “We sure did, Mayor.”

Maybe, someday, someone will look back at the current state of men’s college basketball and say, “we tried to tell them.”

Even March Madness appears in a church display case during Lent (Photo Bill Pike)

Isolated in the back parking lot of our church is a dumpster. This dumpster is clearly marked for recycling materials.

Despite our attempt to be good neighbors, the dumpster was periodically contaminated by people who loaded it with items that can’t be recycled. As a result, we had to add padlocks on both sliding doors.

I don’t understand how a person can misunderstand the purpose of this dumpster.

Late on the afternoon of Friday, January 3, I walked across the parking lot with some cardboard to recycle.

When I unlocked a padlock on one of the sliding doors, I noted on the floor of the dumpster a small, tied off plastic bag. It was loaded with dog poop.

Disgusted, I asked myself how could a person do this?

Growing up in Burlington, North Carolina, I will always cherish playing baseball, basketball, and football with neighbors, friends, and cousins.

An empty field behind two houses became our “field of dreams” where we played baseball.

Out front, two lawns merged together nicely to form our football field.

And of course, whether dirt, concrete, or an asphalt court even on the coldest of winter days, we played basketball.

That love of sports made it easy to follow the basketball and football teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference(ACC).

Four of the founding schools, the University of North Carolina, N. C. State, Wake Forest, and Duke were in close proximity to Burlington.

I read newspaper accounts, listened to radio broadcasts, or watched on television games with the ACC teams.

Founded in 1953, the original conference has been destroyed by an expansion that completely disregarded geography, but was entirely grounded in a full court press for money.

That fixation on money has trickled down into the athletes too.

Now Name, Image, and Likeness—NIL allows college athletes to profit not only from their skills, but by marketing and promoting themselves.

Additionally, a transfer portal allows athletes to freely shop their skills. Loyalty to the school that originally wooed the gifted athlete is no longer a consideration.

Just before Christmas, several media outlets reported that Duke University’s athletic department will be paying Darian Mensah, a redshirt, transfer quarterback from Tulane University eight million dollars to play at Duke for two years.

I guess a degree from Tulane or Duke means nothing when stacked against eight millions dollars.

I wonder what Duke University employees who work behind the scenes for the football program think about this eight million dollar deal.

And I also wonder if those program sustaining employees ever see any extra pennies in their paychecks from the payout when the football team plays in a post season bowl game?

While we’re talking about paying millions for a college football quarterback to play for a couple of years, a school might opt to spend several million dollars to build a team in hopes of winning a national championship.

Again, media outlets have reported that the current edition of the Ohio State University Buckeyes football team came from twenty million dollars raised by “the school’s collectives.”

With these millions floating around in the pursuit of gifted players and national championships, I find it interesting that at these two prestigious universities, both schools have food pantries for their students who are food insecure.

Back on December 28, 2024, the football teams from East Carolina University and N.C. State University played each other in the Go Bowling Military Bowl.

An exciting hard played game was marred by a brawl as the last seconds of the fourth quarter were ticking away.

Players involved in this fray were out of control. It took too much effort and time for the coaching staffs and game officials to get the players on both teams under control.

One of the referees was injured as he tried to help settle down the players from both teams.

Watching this melee on television, I was disappointed by the lack of self-control from individual players, and their disrespect for the coaching staffs and officials who tried to quell the disorder.

In this madness, sportsmanship was dead. I kept hoping that the referee would stop the game, and send both teams to their locker rooms.

When order was finally restored, a few players from both team were ejected. The final seconds of the game were completed. Then the teams were directed toward their respective locker rooms.

I’m heartbreakingly disgusted with bagged dog poop in a recycling dumpster, money driving collegiate athletic conferences and their student athletes, and a college football bowl game marred by players in a brawl.

Disgusted as I might be, I should not be surprised. We’ve been losing our minds for a long, long, long time.

Yes, what’s left of my old brain shows that I’m losing my mind too, but losing my mind is grounded in worry.

December of 2024 brought us more to worry about than bagged dog poop and athletic madness.

The CEO of United Health Care was brazenly murdered in New York City.

At the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison Wisconsin two students were murdered by one of their classmates.

And just as the New Year started more innocent people were murdered by a traitorous driver who plowed his vehicle into the streets of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Yes, we continue to break hearts, we continue to be disgusted, and we continue to be paralyzed to solve our madness.

At this point, you must be thinking, Bill, with these blog posts, all you do is whine, whine, whine, whine. Is your whining ever going to stop?

Fair question, and I don’t disagree with your assessment.

Maybe my whining is grounded in these questions for myself from Isaiah Chapter 1 verse 17: “when am I going to become better at helping to cease evil, when am I going to become better at doing good, when am I going to become better at seeking justice, and when am I going to become better at rescuing the oppressed?”

Perhaps, the answer can be found in Fritz Knapp’s book— The Book of Sports Virtues.

In one chapter, Knapp writes about Branch Rickey. Early in the 1940s, Branch Rickey was the general manager for the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team. Mr. Rickey helped to break the color barrier in major league baseball when he signed Jackie Robinson to be the first African American player to play major league baseball.

Mr. Rickey’s motto was “Education Never Stops.”

If I want to stop my heartbreakingly disgusted whining, then I must not let my education stop.

That learning is the only chance I have to become better at working toward ceasing evil, doing more good, seeking justice, and rescuing the oppressed.

In the time I have left in this wobbling old world, I will be heartbreakingly disgusted with myself if I don’t use my learning and my voice to keep poking at those challenges.

How about you?

Maybe your answer can be found in these words from Stephen Hawking: “Quiet people have the loudest minds.”

Thanks for putting up with me, love, Bill

Tag: ncaa

Hey Dookies Welcome To Club 19

Heartbreakingly disgusted whining: dog poop, college athletics, more murders