MBB: North Coast Athletic Conference

[David Collinge]

Whoa, big fella!  Let's see if we can keep the flagrant fouls confined to the gymnasium.  We don't want any ejections or suspensions in here! 

[Li'l Giant]

Screw you, too, Wittenbastard.

I'm thinking there's an answer to jscwittfan's question in there somewhere.

[jscwittfan]

I just have to wonder if a Wooster player committed the same type of foul if all of the Wooster people would be calling for ejections and suspensions for that player.  I highly doubt it.

Screw you, too, Wittenbastard.

Well, I think that proves my point.  You guys can feel free to gang up and dump the criticism on everybody else when something bad happens to your players and anyone who even tries to defend those "bad" actions, but anytime somebody brings up even a question about something that would put Wooster in a negative light, we get responses such as this one.

[wally_wabash]

Three or four guys on this forum alone saw it, and all have basically the same take on it.  Yet you, who did not, continue to say that we're wrong.

Those three or four guys saw the incident through Black and Gold colored glasses.  Anybody who sees a player from their team take an intentional foul of any kind, particularly of the kind described, and even more particularly in the immediate wake of having another one of the team's players hurt by a similar foul is going to see the thing as being way more underhanded, dirty, and malicious than it actually was.  That's just human nature...and that's the point I'm making.  When you apply the correction factor for homerism, the end result is a dumb, hard foul that deservedly received the intentional foul call.  I would guess that the offending player got an earful about using his head in the future.   Just as likely is that the player knew he screwed up as soon as it happened.  There's no need to pile on.  

[woosterbooster]

I just have to wonder if a Wooster player committed the same type of foul if all of the Wooster people would be calling for ejections and suspensions for that player.  I highly doubt it.

Your remark insults my integrity.  I'd have been exactly as upset if a Wooster player committed such a foul.  Not that I'd expect someone who would make a remark such as yours to believe that.

So, again, screw you.

And screw you, too, Wally, and the rest of you Wabash idiots.  You have no ****ing idea what you're talking about.  NONE of you were there, period.  You didn't see what happened, yet you all have a complete ****ing understanding of exactly how it went down, and exactly why I (and others) feel as I do.  All that proves to me is that you're a bunch of loudmouth assholes.

[wooscotsfan]

"I'm sensing some hypersensitivite reactions..."

From Wooster folk......nah never happens, they handled the Albion/Wooster game with............ah well nevermind. 

Sac -- Given your tasteless post, I now would love to see Hope make the NCAA tournament, play a tight ball game on the road, go down to the very end of the game and then have your beloved Dutchmen lose the game on an atrocious call by a referee with several guys all jumping together for a rebound in the last 3 seconds.

When that happens....guaranteed, I will post a big hypersensitive note to all the screaming Hope fans on the MIAA board, with a dumb wink included!!! 

[wally_wabash]

I think somebody needs a nap. 

[smedindy]

Remember what I have said, because some people are not reading along.

1. This kind of foul happens in games. Not all of the time, not some of the time, but it happens - that's a fact.
2. This kind of foul warrants an intentional foul call. And that call was made.
3. This kind of foul does not warrant a suspension - nor is it a blight on the game.

I don't understand the commotion - unless people are reading into what I'm saying that's different? WooBoo - you act like I'm condoning it - I'm not. These fouls happen and you all acted like it was the Hiram foul all over again.

However, because some people can't read and infer into my posts - and now they feel they must denigrate and insult people - that's caused me to lose respect for a couple of people that I before now I had valued and treasured their insight - all because they chose not to read the words I was posting.

[Li'l Giant]

All that proves to me is that you're a bunch of loudmouth assholes.

Let me get this straight....you tell jscwittfan "screw you", twice. Tell Wally, "screw you" and the rest of us "idiots", throw in a couple of f-bombs, and then call us assholes.

And WE are the loudmouths?

Man, I wish it was OAC vs. NCAC in football again. Those conversations seem productive by comparison.

[smedindy]

Oh WooScotsFan -

"Here you go again."

Can't even take a joke? Yeesh!

Remember, that game was not lost on one play, and, gasp, even other Wooster fans admitted it. Because any play made in another direction can change the game.

[smedindy]

Man, I wish it was OAC vs. NCAC in football again. Those conversations seem productive by comparison.

Ah, the thing is we KNOW that enemy, and know what buttons to push with those maroons!

[Li'l Giant]

Well, apparantly there's another button labeled "intentional fouls".

[smedindy]

Well, intentional fouls, on the road, versus an overmatched opponent, against a star player, committed by a scrubnee.

Alas, though, when Wabash goes to the NCAC tourney, it needs a compound fracture to draw a foul. But I don't want to be perceived as hypersensitive, nor bring anything up from the past...

[David Collinge]

Yes, Wooster fans tend to be somewhat sensitive about their team.  We think our team is the best, finest, smartest, cleanest bunch of All-American Boys this side of Hudson High.  And that's good.

Where the problem comes in is what I think of as the "echo" effect.  Someone will make a point, generally civilly and within reasonable bounds, but as others reinforce it, they tend to push it out towards the extreme.  This is only human nature; there's no point is just repeating what someone else has already said.  With so many Wooster fans posting in here, this sort of effect is bound to happen.

Then when the inevitable counter-comment comes in, it just forces the Wooster folks to gird their loins and vigorously defend their position, which causes the non-Wooster commentators to step up the rhetoric, and back and forth we go until, sometimes (like tonight, or more particularly after the Albion game) it goes over the line.

Here's where this argument was yesterday evening:

POINT:

Once again the Scots were the victim of an intentional foul when Vandervaart had a breakaway, went up for the dunk only to get a 2-handed shove in his back.  They called the intentional, but that guy should have been out of the game.  If not by the refs then Croce should have done it.

This was followed by posts by Woster Booster (who called it a "cheap shot") and goscots ("Vandervaart...could have been seriously hurt. [...] This cannot be tolerated.") that basically reinforced imderekpoe's point, but pushed it out a little further.

COUNTERPOINT:

I'm sensing some hypersensitivite reactions to hard fouls here...likely because of what happened to Port.  Hard fouls happen.  Sometimes basketball is a physical game.  Sometimes players get injured because of this.  I won't deny that shoving a guy in the back as he's shooting a layup (if that's an accurate description of the play...sometimes we homers have a tendency to make a hard foul sound like attempted homicide) is probably not necessary, but calling for the league to suspend a player because of it is a bit much.  Was there intent to injure?  I'm doubting it.  More likely is that the kid was playing hard and got a little too aggressive.  I'm sure a Wooster player has never  committed a hard foul.

A little snippy, perhaps, but a reasonable response.

This brings an immediate response from imderekpoe, which includes this line: "IMO, there is no place in the game for this type of play or the player that would make it."  He probably meant that the player should have ben ejected, which was his original point, but it was immediately read to as "suspension."  Smedindy immediately replies that "t happens" and we should "put the torches down."  I'm not sure where the "torches" came from, but this post certainly lit a fire, and the rhetoric began to escalate even more rapidly.

Then we get to the entirely unhelpful observation that Wooster fans never complain when their own players commit hard fouls.  Well, duh!  Do Witt fans complain about their players?  Who does do this (besides DenisonFan?)  This post was clearly intended to pour gasoline on the fire, and it sure worked.

I guess my point here is that there is blame to go around, including blame that can be assigned to the environment of this chat room.  And maybe we all need to take a step back and take a breath.

Please note that I haven't taken any position on the foul itself (or the previous foul at Hiram), since I was not there to see it myself.  I see no reason to doubt the initial observations of the folks who were there, tempering them a bit due to the Wooster bias and open wound inflicted at Hiram.  In other words, he shouldn't oughta have done it, he deserved the intentional foul call, and I'm glad nobody got hurt.  End of story.

Of course, in the time it took me to write this, another nine posts or so have come up.   

[ScotsFan]

I just have to wonder if a Wooster player committed the same type of foul if all of the Wooster people would be calling for ejections and suspensions for that player.  I highly doubt it.

It's real easy to act high and mighty when your best player didn't go down as a result of a dirty play. Let's play hypothetical and say this same thing happened to Russ or Borchers?  I highly doubt that Witt fan's reaction would be much different than how Wooster fan's have been reacting!

Those three or four guys saw the incident through Black and Gold colored glasses.  

Actually, according to smedindy, I believe they were the more popular jaundiced-eye view.

Anybody who sees a player from their team take an intentional foul of any kind, particularly of the kind described, and even more particularly in the immediate wake of having another one of the team's players hurt by a similar foul is going to see the thing as being way more underhanded, dirty, and malicious than it actually was.  That's just human nature...and that's the point I'm making.  When you apply the correction factor for homerism, the end result is a dumb, hard foul that deservedly received the intentional foul call.  I would guess that the offending player got an earful about using his head in the future.   Just as likely is that the player knew he screwed up as soon as it happened.  There's no need to pile on.  

I do have to agree with Wally here.  I think this foul, was more a result of bad timing, more than anything.  I'm not condoning the foul by any means, but, these things do happen and I would bet that if the injury to Port hadn't occurred, this foul would have gone unnoticed.  But since the Port incident is so fresh in our minds, now every flagrant foul will be looked at with extra animosity.   I'm sure the player that committed the foul did get an earful from his superiors.  And the refs didn't hesitate to ring up the intentional.  At least they got that part right this time around.  

As for the use of  "hypersensitive" to describe Wooster fans, I didn't see any "hypersensitive" behavior from Wabash fans during and after the football playoffs after several OAC fans made some negative comments towards Capital's playoff win over Wabash???

Of course, I'm sure that they have some sort of spin to explain that away as well???