Saturday, February 26, 2005

On Chaney Sending in Ingram

Alrighty.  So that last entry about perl/M.Pearl was a bottom-scraper EWM.  Then let me say something about Temple Owls' coach John Chaney.  "If you're going to use a foul, make it count."  He crossed a line; it's not excusable. Fine.  Went too far by coaching 6-8, 250-pound Nehemiah Ingram to impact the loss against St. Joseph's by going in there and stopping somebody. "I don't care if you foul out.  You can't let him look like an All-American on us.  He's kicking our ass.  I want somebody who will play defense.  I want somebody to stop somebody.  You've got just a few minutes to leave a mark."  So I agree that it's terribly unfortunate that senior John Bryant of St. Joe's suffered a broken arm, and I didn't even see the play, which means I'm just spouting off about some stuff I know barely anything about.  But my point is less to defend Chaney or Ingram than it is call out the resulting spike of oh-my-goodnesses aimed at college basketball, as if it's not a contact sport, as if coaches don't commonly urge players to play physically, as if intentional fouls are never coached. 

Pat Forde's column is especially exemplary in this regard:

I watched one recent college practice that included very matter-of-fact coaching orders to "stand up" all cutters coming through the lane. Translated, that's a forearm shiver to the chest, or higher. It's such a common off-the-ball practice today that officials almost never call it a foul.

Impede progress of a lane-cutting player?  That should be a foul?  How in heck are you supposed to play post defense, Pat?  What is post defense if it doesn't involve a heckuva lot of wrangling for position, especially between the colossus bodies of forwards and centers?  So that's all.  Chaney messed up.  Ingram went too far.  And five fouls in four minutes, including an arm-breaker gives it away.  But coaches urge extra-physical play all the time (shoot, SU's Hakeem Warrick has been getting stood up, pulled down, wrestled all season), and it goes by mostly unnoticed--un-addressed by officials, little mentioned by reporters, and unflagged as proof of up-trend of violence in sport.  In short, the "stand up" method observed by Forde was inconsequential until it was translatable to a grander association with Ingram. 

Bookmark and Share Posted by at February 26, 2005 4:50 PM to Sport
Comments

i have the same concerns. i agree that chaney went next level, but i seriously doubt that he intended for ingram to break somebody's arm. i am waitin for the first article or commentary that connects the infamous "nba brawl" with the "temple incident." you know it's going to happen.

and if st. joe's was playing rough, it was chaney's responsibility to watch out for the players. and yellin at refs doesn't always do it. i'm like you...didn't get a chance to see that game. and, of course, the clips that i've seen are of chaney looking crazy and the st. joe's player either on the ground or sitting on the bench, cradling his arm.

i hate that this happened, and i especially hate that the injured player is a senior. this is no way to end a college basketball career.

Posted by: elisa at February 26, 2005 5:27 PM

1. Chaney always looks intense, yes? He might be the no. 1 crazy-looking coach in the whole college ranks. I'm with you that he probably didn't mean for anyone to suffer a severe injury.
2. I'm waiting on that correlation between the Pacer-Piston-brawl and this one, too. Figure it'll take a minute or two for the purists to decry sport at large for the indecency of all this violence. Cover your eyes, kids!
3. It reminds me of a scenario a few years back where a coach pulled his team from a game on the road in a hostile clime. Just walked off in the second half rather than risking injury, humiliation, etc. (full details in a f2f, I promise). That was waaaay worse in terms of local hoo-ha and character mire. And it's worth speculating that refs can be partially responsible for flare-ups in physical play, although I don't have any sense of that having missed the game.

Posted by: Derek at February 26, 2005 5:44 PM

Look. I won't pretend I know what you're talking about (and I did play HS basketball, believe-it-or-not, so I should).

BUt I DO know Hakim! He was a student of mine for WRT 307. I always yell when he's on the news "Look! Look! I taught him everything he knows!" :)

Posted by: madeline at February 26, 2005 10:49 PM

Cool. Just two degrees of separation with Hakeem now. And my former coach used to play in the Eastern Basketball League against Jim Beoheim, so two degrees there. Basically, I'm well-connected to the SU hoops team. What, no break on tickets with all these weak ties?

I'm not sure what my point was other than that Warrick's been getting fouled like heck all season--strategically. And only a few of them get called, much less make it into the ESPN sportswriters columns categorized as violent acts.

Posted by: Derek at February 27, 2005 8:33 AM

I'm coming a little late into this one... but I agree with the overall assesment here -- particularly about the "Oh my God, how could a coach do such a thing." I heard Vitale spouting off about how Chaney went to far, how he crossed a line, blah, blah, blah. So tell me, when ol' Dicky V was pacing the sideline in Detroit, did he never ever send in a player to "slow things down"? Anybody who watched Big East basketball in its early years can attest to how physical basketball is and how players will do what Ingram did whether they're "instructed" to or not. If the St. Joe's kid doesn't break his arm, there's no story here. Dicky V, Frank Deford, and the other pundits can take the high road because that's where the story is.

Posted by: mike at March 2, 2005 9:48 PM