2020-21 College Basketball thread

I hadn't actually seen the video until now. Awful. Literally breathtaking. I'm not religious but I'm praying.

 

That’s not collapsing not a chair. That’s unconscious while falling. No defensive moves at all.

Fuck

 

That video is horribly familiar if you're old enough to remember Hank Gathers.

 

First thought that came to mind. I really hope this young man fares better.

 

I was on press row, 20 feet from Gathers when he went down. I remember it vividly. Also, the time he went down a couple of months before while at the free throw line.

 

I can't watch the video. I did unintentionally see the footage of the player, his eyes closed and clearly unconscious, wheeled out of the arena.
If that's not the SportsCenter lead story today, there's a news judgment problem.
This story, tragically, may just be getting started.

 

First off, hope he fully recovers. Frightening.

Now ... Florida's coach is Mike White.
Mike White's father is Kevin White.
Kevin White is Duke's athletic director.
Which means he oversees Mike Krzyzewski's program.

Curious of the news fallout. Saying "news" only because we can only hope that Keyontae Johnson is NOT part of this cycle other than he fully recovers.

One underreported story IMO: How COVID is causing cardiac issues with a lot of the infected.

Is someone going to have to drop dead on the floor to get the NCAA's - and the sporting world's - attention? Is this incident involving Johnson not enough of a wake-up call?

 

Probably not. "It only happened to that one guy, after all these games..."

 

FWIW, Roy Williams had zero problems with what Krzyzewski said, at least according to what he has heard (fast forward to about 5:25):

Williams: Mike (Krzyzewski) has a great concern and interest in what college basketball is :: WRALSportsFan.com

Also, Alabama coach Nate Oats apologized publicly and to Krzyzewski in regards to his remarks from a few days back:

Alabama coach Nate Oats apologizes for Mike Krzyzewski comments

Oats worked under Bobby Hurley, who played at Duke under Krzyzewski, at Buffalo. The connective tissue of some of this stuff can be fascinating ...

 

But something happened to one person. There should have been a laser focus on this from the start, but football is being played, soccer, people are jogging or doing other physical activities now. Are there cases of people who have had COVID just keeling over during physical workouts?

I may of missed them, but he is the first I’ve heard.

 

Given the 16 million cases, I can't help but think that it is statistically likely that there have been other such cases. They might not have been recognized as being related to Covid, or not reported, or deliberately left unpublicized. Having it happen to an elite athlete on the court during a game made this a very high visibility case that we heard about.

 

The NCAA was created to protect college athletes. Now it’s trotting them out during a pandemic.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/12/13/ncaa-college-basketball-pandemic/

"Never before have those who govern college athletics, or who have the gravitas to influence that authority — with Krzyzewski, also on faculty at Duke’s Center of Leadership and Ethics, one notable exception — seemed more smarmy. Never before has the multibillion-dollar college athletics’ industrial complex revealed itself more exploitative of its laborers than with college campuses all but shuttered save the two sports — basketball and football — that produce the revenue that funds the NCAA and makes conference commissioners, athletic directors and coaches multimillionaires.

“When you have schools … move all their students’ classes to Zoom, shut down most of their intercollegiate sports, but continue to operate revenue-generating men’s basketball, to me that is not just a risky choice,” Fordham Law School professor Marc Edelman told me by phone Friday. “That is showing utter disregard for the well-being of a small subset of the student population simply because they are able to bring in great revenues to the school.”