An Ugly Scene at Xavier

There is nothing better in sports than a rivalry game. Yankees vs Redsox, Celtics vs Lakers, North Carolina vs Duke, Alamaba vs Auburn, Steelers vs Ravens just to name a few of the biggest throughout the nation. But when does a rivalry take things too far?

It went too far on Saturday when Xavier hosted Cincinnati. It may not be the biggest rivalry throughout the country, but for these two teams the rivalry is fierce. Students camped out for 3 days to get into the game in the freezing December in Ohio temperatures. Players took shots at each over twitter leading up to the game to add fuel to the fire.

There was typical jawing back and forth the whole game, including a small scuffle and the end of the first half, but nothing compared to what happened with about 9 seconds remaining in the game.  Xavier, who went into the game ranked 8^th in the nation was clearly the superior team, but instead of settling things on the court, ego and insecurity took center stage. 

Up by 23, Xavier’s Tu Holloway provoked a bench clearing brawl by shoving a Cincinnati player to the ground, which lead to ugliness by both sides, but especially by red-shirt senior Yancy Gates as seen in the video below.

 "That's what you're going to see from Xavier and Cincinnati, We got disrespected a little bit before the game, guys calling us out. We're a tougher team. We're grown men over here. We've got a whole bunch of gangsters in the locker room -- not thugs, but tough guys on the court. And we went out there and zipped them up at the end of the game." – Xavier guard Tu Holloway

What is wrong with that quote? EVERYTHING! Every single word. That kid needs a reality check.

I don’t know about you, but it’s probably not the best thing to refer to your basketball team as “a bunch of gangsters” or say “That’s what you’re going to see from Xavier and Cincinnati.” Hopefully we never see something like that ever again,  and we can only hope that college athletes will start acting like student athletes and grown men, like Tu Holloway said they are.

Cincinnati coach Mick Cronin’s comments at the postgame press conference were spot on. It was embarrassing, but he could not have handled it any better. He reminded not only his players, but all of us, what college athletics are all about – having the privilege of being a student athlete, and receiving a free education from a prestigious university. Along with that goes representing the university with pride, something that was not done on Saturday afternoon.