The Right Decision

I'm glad to see that Rutgers made the decision it did this morning to end Mike Rice's role as the men's basketball coach, but we have to ask ourselves how much more quickly the University would have acted if you change the words "coach" and "player" to "professor" and "student".  There would have been no second chance after the first blow. Period.

No employee of our favorite school (or any school) should be able to grab, push, kick, verbally abuse, and throw basketballs at any student.  Just because we're joining the Big Ten, we don't have to tolerate that sort of BobbyKnightWoodyHayes bullying and thuggery.

Fire Mike Rice or Get Rid of Men's Basketball at Rutgers.

It's that simple.

I don't read sports pages when Rutgers isn't playing football and I'm not a big follower of the game of "basket-ball", but this tape on ESPN was brought to my attention today. The asshole shown in these videos reminds me of the kind of fascistic gym teachers who made me hate scholastic sports when I was in Junior High in Los Angeles. If I played for him, I'd lose on purpose.

Not only does he need to be fired immediately, but every player on the team needs a free shot to throw a basketball at his balls before he leaves. I wish one of them would have decked him when he laid hands on them during practice.

Any reader of BeatVisitor.com will know that I'm not a sports fan, I'm a Rutgers fan. But fuck Rutgers Men's Basketball until Mike Rice is gone.

Pittsburgh won't want to see any Scarlet uniforms again soon.

Tonight:
The Rutgers men just beat the Pittsburgh Panthers 62-39 for their first Big East road win of the season in Pittsburgh.

Last night:
The Rutgers women beat the Pitt Panthers 63-39 in their Big East road opener in Pittsburgh.

So much for home court advantage.

Go Knights!

Video of Yesterday's Upset

This video of the sights and sounds of Georgetown's loss at Rutgers on Valentine's Day was posted by The Hoya Online.
Enjoy.

Rutgers 71 -- (#8) Georgetown 68

Congratulations to the Rutgers Scarlet Knights on their victory over the nationally-ranked Georgetown Hoyas in the game that just completed at the RAC, otherwise known as the Louis Brown Athletic Center in Piscataway, NJ.

Despite my doubts voiced last month, it seems that there is a men's team playing the game of basket-ball on the Banks of the Old Raritan.

Congratulations!

College sports don't end on New Years Day? Who Knew?

This morning I opened a Scarlet Letter yearbook from the era when coaches were required to wear plaid sport jackets and I found evidence, between pages on major Rutgers sports like football and ultimate frisbee, that there was once a men's team playing the women's sport of "basket-ball" on the Banks of the Old Raritan.

Who knew?

It's not really a question, is it?

"Which means more to you as a Rutgers fan, winning a fourth straight bowl game or beating West Virginia?"
It's not really a question is it? If you're a true follower of the Scarlet Knights, beating the Mountaineers has to mean more to you than beating an ACC or C-USA or MAC team, but maybe I'll add it to the sidebar as my question of the week anyway just to see if I'm wrong.Yesterday I was out of state for the holidays and didn't catch a single second of Rutgers sports news on Thursday or Friday. So what happened over those two days?

• The football team beat Louisville 34-14 and put the final nail into Steve Kragthorpe's coffin on Friday morning and afternoon.
  
• The men's basketball team beat UMass yesterday 83-75.
  
• The women's basketball team beat Southern Cal by 66-51 on Thursday and Mississippi State by 62-54 yesterday.
  

So, should I continue to help the success of the Scarlet Knights by ignoring them? Should I keep my eyes closed while sitting on my bench at the Stadium next Saturday at noon?

Today is already Tomorrow in New Zealand

So, today, July 7th (which was yesterday in New Zealand), Mike Rosario's Puerto Rico team lost to the USA by a score of 61-82 in the FIBA U19 World Championships. The full box score is here. Mike scored 11 points (1 [20%] from 3pt, 3 [30%] from 2pt range, and 2 [100%] of his free throws), which was not up to his amazing 54-point performance against France the day before, but he's still having a great summer of international competition nonetheless.

Rivalries and Things

I got on Twitter just in time to catch probably the funniest string of tweets ever as NunesMagician went on and on about the fact that the Rutgers-Seton Hall basketball rivalry had beaten out Syracuse-Georgetown (or Syracuse-Anybody) as one of the hot college basketball rivalries in Pat Forde's estimation on ESPN.com. You can get a good taste of his (NunesMagician's not Forde's) comic tone here.
~~~
Maybe even more ridiculous, in Forde's "Red-hot" football rivalries for '09 published on July 2nd, he picked West Virginia-USF over the real rivalry of WVU-Pittsburgh. The Backyard Brawl between the Mountaineers and the Panthers is THE football rivalry in the Big East. Period. It will take decades before any other two BE teams develop the historical animosity that exists between those feuding neighbors (I'm jealous; I wish we had that kind of hate between us and Syracuse, or UConn [though they'll never deserve it], or Penn State).
~~~
And as long as I've had my attention diverted to basketball for a second, I'd like to point out that I (like every good Scarlet Knight fan) will be rooting for Mike Rosario's Puerto Rico team to beat the USA tomorrow in New Zealand (it's the Brian Leonard effect; Scarlet affiliations trump all other team and national loyalties).
~~~
Finally, thanks to Every Day Should Be Saturday and Bleed Scarlet for driving so much traffic to my last entry today. Who knew history was such a popular subject??

Here's to the Pitt Panthers

The Panthers have two important games starting at two this afternoon.

We'll be rooting hard for their football team to win the Sun Bowl in El Paso versus the Beavers of Oregon State to keep the Big East's bowl record perfect at 4-0.

But we'll be hoping that the bowl distracts them enough for their #3 ranked basketball team to fall to Mike Rosario and the Knights of the Hardwood at the RAC in today's Big East opener.

Do they have students in plush cat suits at sports venues in Texas and New Jersey today? Or will one of these games be without their frightening mascot?

--update @ 2:55pm e.s.t.: At the end of the 1st quarter at the Sun Bowl, it's Pittsburgh 0--Oregon State 0. Go Panthers! And at the end of the 1st half in at the Louis Brown Athletic Center in Piscataway, it's #3 Pittsburgh 39--Unranked Rutgers 43. Go Knights!

We can only hope that, like the football team, the Rutgers basketball team got all its losses out of the way early in the season. But there are major differences. In roundball, the loss to North Carolina is not as embarassing, and the early losses don't count at all by the end of the season.

--update @ 3:45pm e.s.t.: THIS IS ALL WRONG PANTHERS. At halftime in El Paso, you should be winning, not losing by 3! And what's the deal in New Jersey? You decide with five minutes left that it's time to take your largest (6-point) lead of the day?? THIS IS ALL WRONG.

--update at 4:10pm : It's still halftime in El Paso with the Beavers using their mighty incisors to hang on to a three point lead, but at the RAC it's all over with Pitt winning by 6, 78-72. So that's the #1 and #3 teams in the country beating the Scarlet Knights in consecutive games with #2, UConn, up next. Rough week for the basketball Knights (and now I'm not rooting that hard for the football Panthers anymore).

-- final in El Paso: You lost 3-0 to the Oregon State Beavers?? Now we need Cincy and UConn to win their bowls to salvage a 5-1 Big East Bowl record. (Update January 2: OK, except for one play, Cinncinnati looked as offensively inept against Virginia Tech as the Panthers did against Oregon State, so now it's up to UConn to salvage a 4-2 Big East Bowl record.)

Congratulations to the Rutgers Women on making it to the Elite Eight

It's just awful to have to lose to the UConn Huskies on the way to the Final Four (the game in Greensboro just ended -- 66-56 -- and On The Banks of the Old Raritan is being played by the band in the background as I listen to the game on WRSU through my computer speakers).
But thanks again for another great season from C. Vivian Stringer and her team!

Did Don Imus help create a Rutgers Basketball Dynasty?

This Sunday all Scarlet eyes will be on the Sweet Sixteen game between Rutgers and George Washington in Greensboro, North Carolina (while trying hard not to look forward to meeting UConn again in the Elite Eight and Tennessee again in the Final).

But earlier this week at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee, it was the Rutgers stars of the future dominating the McDonald's All-American Game. Future Knights Nikki Speed of California and Brooklyn Pope of Texas were the co-MVPs for the winning West team. The West team had a third Scarlet Knight, Jasmine Dixon of California, and the East team also featured future Rutgers players April Sykes of Mississippi and Chelsey Lee of Florida.

Five MickeyD All Stars coming to the banks in one year! Rutgers has recruited stars from outside the New York metropolitan area in recent years (WNBA Rookie and Finals MVP Cappie Pondexter from Chicago comes immediately to mind), but they haven't previously had this ability to pick the biggest high school stars from every corner of the nation. Making it to the NCAA finals last year probably had something to do with their increased stock among the high-school elite, but I have to believe that Don Imus's racist and sexist rant, and the Knights' memorably classy response to that juvenile attack, put the Scarlet Knights firmly on the national map, and near the top of every recruits' wish list of top schools. So thanks Don (you jerk).

And aren't Nikki Speed and Brooklyn Pope two of the best names that you've ever heard?? I can't wait until they take the floor with Epiphanny Prince next year! Speed to Pope to Prince! They sound quick.

~~~~~~

Update 3/28: Here's a Harvey Araton article that appeared in the New York Times on March 8 that talks directly about the appeal of the team to the players and their families in the aftermath of the Imus attack.

What a Tease!, or That's enough of the Pink Uniforms

The gametracker at UTLadyVols.com ran the following final score a few minutes ago, confirming that the Scarlet Knights had done the impossible and the unprecedented, beating the #1 team in the country in consecutive games:

Then I called a friend who actually had a television with cable who told me that there was a foul and time on the clock. And two minutes later the teases at UTLadyVols.com posted this alternate (and final) final score:
The Scarlet Knights will have to save their victory over the Lady Volunteers for a date in very late March or very early April (and put their pink jerseys back into the closet).

Games don't get any bigger than this (... at least in the regular season)

Tonight at seven -- in just two hours -- the Rutgers women will have the opportunity to:

1) ... avenge the loss of April 3, 2007 in the NCAA finals (and the losses to Tennessee in 2005 and 2006 that ended the Scarlet Knights' runs in those NCAA tournaments).

2) ... become the first team to beat the #1 team in the country in consecutive games.

3) ... almost certainly clinch a top seed in the NCAA tournament.

&

4) Do it all while wearing pink uniforms.

Beating #1 Connecticut last week was only a warm up for tonight's match against #1 Tennessee.

No pressure (but if they win this one, they should be the Pink Knights for the duration of the '07-'08 season).

Go Knights!!

Hanging in there....

Pitt just took a time out because Chandler just hit a 3 to tie it up at 27 with 5:16 left in the first half. We are shooting the lights out, just missed a dunk. God I hope this continues like this. Offensive foul on Pitt....I'll be back at halftime.

RU @ Pitt Tonight at 6:00 P.M. on ESPN Classic

At 6 PM tonight on ESPN Classic, the Knights face the 17th ranked Pitt Panthers at the Petersen Events Center, where the Panthers are 91-8 all time. This will be an extremely tough test for our Knights, coming off of a shocking upset win at the RAC defeating Villanova 80-68. While I'm not sure if it was more Rutgers playing well than Villanova playing poorly, I do know that all that mattered was the conference win we got that we desperately needed. That being said, as well as Coburn and Farmer have been playing, with Coburn scoring 23 to lead the team against Villanova, I don't see them stopping Pittsburgh. It will be closer than people think, but I like Pitt 68-54. Guard Levance Fields is still out for the Panthers, but for this game to even be close, the entire Rutgers team needs to show up. Yes, that means you, JR Inman, who refuses to play defense from time to time. If UConn can go into Indiana and hold a 5-6 point lead for the majority of the game (they lead 42-37 with 10:00 left), than we can go into Petersen and keep it semi-close. The horrendous conference season continues, as I see Rutgers falling to Pitt by around 15 points.

Spotty Basketball Coverage comes to Beat Visitor!

Starting with todays game at Pittsburgh, We at Beat Visitor will be giving the occasional basketball report as to stay updated. While they may be few and far between, this still remains mainly a football information center for Scarlet Knights both past and present. Go Knights!