On Friday at the NCAA Tournament, Kevin Willard made his voice heard, and Herb Sendek did not. And that allowed observers to revisit old grievances about loyalty and officiating.
Start with Willard, Villanova’s first-year head coach. During a timeout early in the Wildcats’ game against Utah State, he was asked by CBS sideline reporter Lauren Shehadi about his team’s interior defense, which had enabled the Aggies to score 16 points in the paint to that point.
“I’m gonna fire my staff,” he said.
“Not now,” Shehadi said.
“Yeah, I am,” he answered, “because we’ve given up eight points on underneath out-of-bounds defense. The only thing I’m gonna do is fire them and get a new staff.”
His demeanor suggested he wasn’t serious, and after the game – an 86-76 ‘Nova loss – he told reporters it had been “a joke.” That didn’t stop Maryland fans from taking to social media to once again express their displeasure with a man who had coached the Terps the previous three seasons, the last of which ended with a Sweet 16 run.
The paying customers’ vitriol was rooted in the fact that Willard criticized the school’s athletic apparatus on the eve of last year’s tournament, then seemed evasive at best and duplicitous at worst when discussing his future in the weeks that followed.
In short, Maryland felt used – that Willard had played everyone in College Park like a fiddle, while plotting a course for the Main Line. And well, I get that. But doesn’t everybody in college sports do that anymore? Isn’t every player and coach looking to improve his station in life? And isn’t loyalty an outdated concept?
It could be argued that the only ones who do remain loyal are the fans themselves – that as Jerry Seinfeld once said, they continue to root for laundry. Everyone else has a suitcase packed and one foot pointed toward the door. Everyone else has a price.
Everyone, it seems, is a mercenary.
Bottom line: Willard could have conducted his affairs better before parting company with the Terps, but ultimately he did much the same thing everybody has been doing for a while now.
Sendek is coaching Santa Clara, his fourth stop in a 32-year career. And with two seconds left in a pulsating game against Kentucky, he tried to call a timeout after one of his players, Allen Graves, hit a 3-pointer to give the Broncos a 73-70 lead. The timeout was not granted, however, and the Wildcats’ Otega Oweh nailed a bomb from just over midcourt to tie the game at the buzzer. Kentucky then went on to win in overtime, 89-84.
Sendek explained to reporters afterward that he was quite sure he called time, and the video confirms as much – his intent obviously being to set his team’s defense for Kentucky’s final possession. Alas, that didn’t happen.
It was an officiating gaffe, but not a huge one. I mean, Oweh had to make a miraculous shot – off glass, no less – to force OT. And CBS studio analyst Seth Davis argued on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter that the fault lies with a rule change 10 years back that enabled coaches to call timeouts in live-ball situations. Previously they had been allowed to do so only in dead-ball situations.
As Davis noted, that leads to an issue as to where referees’ eyes might be trained at critical moments. They obviously need to be looking at the floor, not the coaches. And that can result in situations like the one that befell Santa Clara.
Cream of the Crop
Gotta love Saint Louis center Robbie Avila, the guy with the dorky eyewear, deft passing touch and raft of cool nicknames – the best of which is “Cream Abdul-Jabbar.”
Speaking of which, is there any doubt he is a Laker waiting to happen? They’ve always cornered the market on four-eyed guys, dating back beyond Kareem and James Worthy, all the way to George Mikan.
Would it be correct to say that Avila looms as a Worthy successor? (I’ll see myself out now …)