There are some things I wanted to reply to- I was at both the Catholic and Salisbury games-

The Catholic Game-

In addition to the "at least we can hear" sign (which I saw), there was a "You Sucks" sign too, a sign that I think crosses the line as well. But I have to say to some of the Catholic students that learned a few insults in ASL, that was pretty creative. The signs were overboard however, and nobody has the right to defend those just because you didn't see them, or your university prez was there, because all of us sure as heck did.

And the incident with the racial slurs etc- believe it or not not every deaf person is profoundly deaf. The vast majority of us have some degree of hearing, and many of us can hear very well. You add that in with lip reading, we get by a lot better than you may think. And to think that not a single hearing person would support Gallaudet or sit wtih us as well is absurd- anything said behind our backs is more likely to be heard than you may think. And that racial slur was one of the things said behind the girl's back, and I bet the guy who said it was shocked the girl could hear that well. But that aside, I had a fun time jawing with the Catholic fans and I thought the game went well and security took care of the situation a little slower than I would have liked, but it was handled niceley.

The Gally/Salisbury game:

I'm just absolutely disgusted with what happened, and I hate to see that the actions of such few students are marring what was a superb season. Let me recount the story from what I have been able to find out (I even talked to the person who punched the ref) and the entire situation could have been avoided. Let me tell u the bottom line before I go any further, and that is the few Gallaudet fans that would have failed breathalizer tests should have just backed off when the game was over. There is no arguing this point, and if everyone had just gone home when the game was over, nothing would have happened. This was poor sportsmanship on their part.

That being said: We are talking about 5-6 fans who pursued the refs and just continued to give him an earful. They followed him to his car and when he got in his car (which I must point out was a very nice Mercedes Bentz), they wouldn't back off the car and kept yelling at the ref. The ref then proceeded to get out of his car, and the car door slammed open, hitting some students, and the referee threw a punch which landed squarely on the jaw of a female student. The other students went livid at this and started to scuffle with the other ref, both throwing punches that missed. Another ref saw this happening as he was leaving and he ran and jumped on the fan wrestling with the first ref. The fan then swung one punch which connected on the second ref and bloodied his nose. DPS pulled everyone apart, DC police arrived, and statements were taken. No arrests were made, because it seems the Gallaudet students were acting in self defense (again I say the students should not have been there in the first place) and the girl who was first punched by the ref ended up going to the hospital to check out a possible whip lash.

I think its safe to say those refs will probably never ref a game again here at Gallaudet, and I think its extremely unfortunate. Believe me when I say Gallaudet will take action against those students.

But moving on from this incident, I hate the fact that every one of you are referring to us as animals and talking about how crazy we are. We love our basketball team, believe it. And when we have home court advantage, we're gonna make sure we use it to make up our undersized team.

Braveheart, the fan painted blue and screaming at the Salisbury bench all night certainly did his job. He annoyed the hell out of me all night, and I'm sure fans across the court couldn't stand his voice as well. But I have to say, he kinda did his job. He annoyed the Salisbury players a lot more than he did the Gally players, and I think it's worth the tradeoff. But again, once that buzzer sounded, he should've washed off the paint and called it a season.

The last thing I wanted to talk about was about the push-off call.

I thought the call at first was absolutely horrible, but after watching the video replay, I was just sickened, and partially glad the ref got a bloody nose (bad joke, I know). Several things to talk about here on this play- Jon was pushing off the defender the entire night, and no calls were made. To make that call with 1.1 seconds left and no prior warning is just unfair. The second thing is that he didn't push off the player. The separation between the defender was already made, and the forward momentum that he had going for him when he stopped and pulled back for a fadeaway jumper let his arm get away from him, but it did not make any contact with the defender (there's video evidence). The other thing I wanted to say is that in a playoff game, with just seconds on the clock and one team up by one, shouldn't the refs just let the players play and let the shot decide the game? To make an offensive call that was not clean cut (if Jon had run over the defender, or the defender fell, it would have been different, but the defender was still in position to contend the shot) and for the referee to decide the game is just unfair. The rule of thumb is to let the players decide, not for the ref to make a call against the home crowd that maybe 6 out of 10 refs would let slide. Any of the seven other CAC teams would have been livid at the call, and believe me we were.  Every fan had every right to chew that ref's ass out for the remaining 1.1 seconds, but once that buzzer sounded, that's where it should have stopped. It was great seeing a freshman step up and take this shot (which he nailed, by the way) and I think that a freshman with this type of confidence should be a shoo in for ROY honors.

Major props to Haney's 37 in his final collegiate game. (He opened 5-5 from 3-point range)

We're looking forward to next year, and hopefully the ugly mess with the refs can be left behind us. Without a doubt security will be beefed up at games from now on, and I don't see this happening again, ever.

Lets not forget that Gally beat Salisbury, who everybody's raving about for beating York.

I didn't realize the article was talkin abt the St. Mary's in California- either way I posted it as a joke with all the hoopla about the article about the drug bust-

Are there any more important CAC games remaining before the break? I know that St. Mary's is playing Wesley on December 19th, so I think it'll be a good measuring stick for Gally's win last night.

Makes me wonder whether or not the SMC posters here have taken that class and if we should trust what they say...

Prank class tries to fool news outlets

By Matt Krupnick

CONTRA COSTA TIMES


The students in Ray Beldner's class have some great stories to tell. Imagine if they were true.

Beldner, an artist, teaches a St. Mary's College class called "Pranks: Culture jamming as social activism." Among his students' projects this term was the distribution of a news release touting a fictional bar to be opened near the Moraga campus.

The news release was sent to the Times, the Associated Press and several other Bay Area newspapers. None published the information as news, although the Times ran a brief item on the hoax itself after a reporter spent several hours researching the nonexistent bar.

Beldner said he wanted to teach students how to bring issues to the public eye using creative methods. His course syllabus defines "culture jamming" as "a resistance movement to the perceived hegemony of popular culture."

"These are serious-minded pranks," he said. "It's not just about people goofing around."

But journalists already have their hands full sifting facts from fiction without having to worry about deliberate misinformation, said Austin Long-Scott, who teaches journalism ethics at San Francisco State University. He compared the hoax to a computer virus.

"He is teaching students to try to screw up an important system that has enough trouble getting things right," Long-Scott said. "It's a destructive thing to do, and it violates a general societal ethic."

Destructive or not, Beldner said he would not stop his students from continuing to perpetuate a fictional issue, even if it led to an incorrect news story being published.

"We'd have to cross that bridge when we got to it," he said.

A college spokeswoman declined to say whether Beldner would be asked to stop his students from sending out false information, saying such a decision would be "premature."

St. Mary's sophomore Scott Leslie, one of the writers of the fake news release, said his group decided not to keep up the hoax after a journalist friend of his told him it would be a bad idea.

"Then you get into issues of the truth and stuff," said Leslie, 19.

Gally thumped Wesley 82-63 tonight, although the score was 34-31 at halftime. Robert Haney had 16 points, 14 rebounds, 3 assists, and two blocks on the night. Frank Jackson scored 12 and netted 6 rebounds. The big stories of the night were freshmen guards Jon Mowl and Luther Weedon who ran circles around Wesley. Mowl had 13 points, 5 assists and 1 turnover while Weedon went 4-6 from three point land and finished with 14 for the night. The first half was ugly for both teams, as they had a combined 34 turnovers, but the 2nd half the play turned more efficient and some real basketball was played.  Freshman standout Rashawn Johnson for Wesley, who is averaging 27 ppg, was
"held" to 18 points.

It's a great finish to a great semester for Gally, as we finished with our best fall record ever of 6-2 (the previous best was 6-3). The next time the Bison play will be in a tournament in Florida right after new year's which I'll be attending. We're hopiong for a strong start to the next semester.

Yspi- Weed isn't like it was back in the day- it's more potent and a lot more expensive- yes, 46 grams was a stash back in the day, but it's hellva lot to be hanging on to today, and probably has a street value of almost $1,000-  and .6 grams of weed today probably has a better punch than the 2-3 grams of grass back then.  So Tyson likely dealt back then, but then again SO WHAT? He's paid his debt, and as long as he's passing his drug tests I have no qualms.

But Matt, your posting this story isn't gossip, you're right, but it's seriously outdated. It'd be as relevant as me arguing that Gallaudet's "Iron 5" team back in the 40's makes a case for the quality of the Bison's basketball program today. It's just not newsworthy and you spurred a lot of interesting, but unnecessary debate. (hey, I did the same with my previous posts too)

Can we move on and start talking some more basketball? Tomorrow Gally should handle Wesley pretty easily and finish the semester with its best-ever fall record under Coach D at 7-2... the 2nd semester we'll get Senior 6'6 Center Bradley Miller back to help out in the paint, and get settled in for a grueling 2nd half of the season. If Gally loses tomorrow, I'll just stop posting here for good and call this season a wash.

BisonKiller,

Having been born deaf to deaf parents, I have to say I was quite amused with your description of a "classic deaf whipping." The only "deaf whipping" I can describe would be if someone whipped the **** out of a deaf person. But I couldn't think of how that'd apply to the basketball court, where if Gallaudet whips someone else, it would be categorized as either a blowout, debacle, or a good old fashioned ass-kicking.

Kitchenrat is right when he says that he remembers the drums and stomping when he sees Gallaudet or when he played MKSD (which for reference is now named NJSD), and this is more prevalent at deaf schools than hearing schools, but BisonKiller... "being so loud that the other team cannot hear each other"... are you telling me that other schools don't get that loud? Because if they don't, I'll be damned cuz that doesn't mean deaf people are louder, but that we have the best fans in the entire CAC.

And throwing toilet paper rolls when a ref makes a bad call- that's just plain misinformation. We throw toiletpaper rolls on the court when the first dunk of the season occurs at home, and only then. That tradition didnt continue this year because our first dunk came on the road, and we have no intentions of throwing any rolls of toiletpaper this year. If we did every time the ref made a bad call, nobody on campus would be able to wipe their asses. What we DO do however, when the refs make bad calls, is taunt him with jokes like, "Hows the job at footlocker," or occasionally I'll even offer him the use of my glasses. Booing the refs, sure we do that whenever one of our players gets called for a charge, or if we got called for a technical, but then again, doesn't every school do that?

I don't want to preach on about your ignorance, BisonKiller, especially since I'm sure countless people have pointed that out to you in the past. I'm just happy that you're countin on us to pull out a win tomorrow night, and who knows- we might turn it into a good old-fashioned blow-out.

But a classic deaf whipping? Well, only if we lose.

Not to be beating a dead horse here, because I agree with what you guys are saying. We haven't proved our worth to be considered so high in your rankings, and it wasn't my intention for to make you guys consider us at number three right now, and I remind you that I was saying that we would be making that statment as the year went on- and that we'd be doing our talking on the floor. I was making a bold prediction (which I stay with) saying that Gallaudet is capable of finishing out third this year. The reason I came on so strong was because nobody was taking us seriously. Now, I think you'll all be giving us a fair look

I know I came on with a splash here, but you'll see that I'm a fair observer and a lover of the game. And yeah, glad to see the under-representation is spoken for-

Now let's put all this Gally talk to rest until we win another game.

Our record would be 18-25, I meant in my last post. Sorry for the bad math.

BisonKiller,

Thanks for the honor of a personalized handle- the fact that my talk isn't merely being dismissed and that you have to bother creating a handle just to trash us really does mean a lot! I wanted to say that I agreed with you completely because you're exactly right about our two losses being against teams with winning records. But I ask that we keep in mind that those two losses were by a combined margin of 11 points (6 and 5 respectively) and we were in both of those games until the very end, where freethrows separated the scores a little more. But my point is this- every single player on the team feels cheated out of those two wins because they all made mistakes of their own. None of these guys feel like they have played a team better than them, and they're at the realization that with the athleticism, talent, and experience, their biggest opponents are themselves.

And the very fact that we're finally winning games that we should be winning, instead of letting the easy ones get away from us like every year in the past, should tell you all that we're more serious contenders this year. You can't dismiss a team that has two senior CAC first teamers, either of whom could get POY honors... that says a lot about our arsenal.

Oh, and our schedule with teams of a combined 18-32 record is a little decieving, considering we've played Goucher. Take out their 0-7 record and our opponents' records are a combined 18-24, not a far cry from any other CAC teams.

Yooo d-mac and everybody else-

How 'bout that? You put Gally at six to finish off the conference, putting even Salisbury on top of us. That's alright, because we always like being the underdogs. I'm gonna go ahead and be bold here, and say that we're gonna as high as third. With due respect to York and Catholic, we'll do our best to upset our way to the NCAAs. This is gonna be our year.

Anyone who follows Gallaudet basketball knows that the turnover around here is seriously high. How often do we find a four year player who can actually play, and after being plagued by the ball hogging Valencias for several years, we've finally gotten our program on track. This just may be the first time ever we have eight seniors on the same team, and with the addition of some dyanmic freshmen and sophomores we have weapons from all over the floor. This is the first year where the bar is set as high as 15 wins when we've been thrilled to get 8. You can consider the Goucher game a statement game from the Bison, and Haney's buzzer beater, which will forever be known as "The Shot" (or "The Turnover" for Salisbury) is something that shouldn't be considered luck- you have to put us higher, especially when we've already beaten Salisbury (and be we'll be happy to do it again). It's a major confidence booster that's sure to carry with us throughout the season since we've been on the losing end of those shots so many times. I know Gallaudet has a ways to go to earn respect in the CAC or anywhere else, but I'm rather suprised at how little you've given them sofar, considering this is the first time in 10 years we've won two straight CAC games, doing both in respectable fashion and with clear ball distribution. Keeping in mind that we've got former cac ROYs and POYs Haney and Jackson both entering their senior years playing some of the best basketball of their lives. Adding our newest weapon, freshman point guard Jon Mowl, who is averaging 30-plus minutes a game and the ballhandling and court vision we've not had in the past, we're better able to distribute the ball to the duo evenly, and finding more opportunties for the open three than ever.

The lack of respect here is probably because Gallaudet is underrepresented on this board, something I'm willing to remedy. But with all honesty, I don't see the need to do much talking here, because we're going to be doing it on the floor.