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Thursday, January 19, 2006
Morning readaround
We don't cover the women's side of the league here at Hoop Time. No disrespect for the ladies, who have serious game. There's just a limit to what a small (one-man) staff can do.

But we stumbled across a story from yesterday's Annapolis Capital that we feel a need to comment on.

Seems the Capital felt the need to make a big deal out of Bucknell women's coach Kathy Fedorjaka apologizing to Navy for her team's postgame celebration when they thumped the Midshipmen (Midshipwomen?) 88-51 back on Jan. 7 in Navy's Alumni Hall.

After the win, the first league win for five of the ladies on Bucknell's young (2 juniors, no seniors) team, the Bison huddled at midcourt, bouncing up and down and chanting "This is our house."

Navy was offended. Very offended. How dare they celebrate on the Navy logo, they asked, as if it were Terrell Owens celebrating a touchdown on the Dallas Cowboys' star. How dare they celebrate while our team is standing at attention for the alma mater, the oh-so bothered Navy folks asked.

Our response is simple: Get over yourselves.

Now understand, we are big believers in acting like you have been there before. A celebration like that makes it look like you didn't expect to win; like winning a regular season game is as big as winning the championship.

But this was no intentional insult. This was an enthusiastic group of inexperienced players who had not been there before.

The chant, by the way, is one the Bison women use as a pregame psych when they are waiting back in the corridors under the stands before a game. It was not trash talking. And it was not an attempt to insult Navy by dancing on its logo. It was a spontaneous gathering at center court. The logo just happened to be there.

Navy folks have applauded Fedorjaka's apology. It was a class act, which is to be expected from a lady who has been a class act since her days as a graduate assistant at Bucknell.

It was also unnecessary.

Sorry Navy, with all due respect for your institution, its traditions and the brave and honorable men and ladies who play for the school (and those who don't play, too), the righteous indignation was hypocritical.

When the Midshipmen in the stands stop being college kids yelling the same sorts of taunts at opposing teams that you hear anywhere and just clap politely to support their teams, maybe other teams should react to winning in your gym differently.

But that ain't going to happen. Why? Because they are young kids full of youthful enthusiasm, blowing off steam as a welcome relief from a rigorous, demanding educational and institutional regimen.

Just like Bucknell's ladies are young women who were letting loose after a big win.

There was no taunting, no in your face behavior. Just a healthy celebration by a team too young and inexperienced to know better.

Besides, as some of the Cowboys mentioned after that infamous TO exhibition, if you don't want them to celebrate, don't let them have a reason to.

Elsewhere:

  • Chuck Woodling, of the Lawrence, Kans. Journal-World, is no stranger to Patriot League basketball, Woodling covers Kansas for a living. Bucknell's win over the Jayhawks is fresh in his memory. He remembers Holy Cross putting a scare into the Jayhawks, too.

    In New York recently for his grandson's birthday, Woodling took a side trip to West Point to catch the Holy Cross-Army game. He writes about his visit to the anti-Kansas in a column this morning.

  • In Wednesday's Morning Call, beat writer Andre Williams takes Lehigh to task, finally, for its handling of the Joe Knight situation. It's about time somebody in the so-called "mainstream media" wrote something about that debacle. Unfortunately, the paper's site had some tech glitch and it cuts off some of the column, so we don't know if Williams calls for sanctions against the school, which thus far has skated while Knight has been punished for its mistakes.

  • R-E-S-P-E-C-T . . . that is what the Roanoke Times gives Holy Cross in a gamer on last night's Radford-High Point game. It is a brief, but telling, mention:
    So far this basketball season, nobody has poured the points on the Panthers like Radford did Wednesday night at the Dedmon Center -- not Kentucky, not Utah, not Holy Cross. The Highlanders turned this Big South Conference game into a rout, winning 96-76.
    When writers praise a team's showing like that, by comparing it to what you did, it says something. Heck, you don't see anybody writing "They beat them worse than Savannah State did," do you?

  • We missed this Ed Laubach column in the Express-Times the other day, but it is still worth a read. Ed is one of two guys (aside from us) still around who were covering the league when it started play back in 1990 (the other is Don Bostrom who now covers the Phillies beat for the Morning Call). Ed is the sports editor at that paper these days, and his managerial duties don't allow him to write as much as he used to. That is too bad. The guy knows his stuff.
    • Published at 8:47 AM by Hoop Time.
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