Tuesday, August 25, 2009

FIU's Bizarre Coaches vs Cancer Problem

There's a strange story out about the draw that Florida International got in the Coaches vs Cancer tournament. Apparently they had been expecting to draw Ohio State, and had actually been promoting the game against OSU, but were shocked and upset to draw North Carolina instead. The Athletic Director is actually threatening to pull out of the tournament.

This is bizarre for a few reasons. First of all, this doesn't matter - are there really any fans who are going to be upset that they're going to have to watch North Carolina instead of Ohio State? Are some fans giving back their tickets? And it's not like FIU has a chance to beat either team with the squad they're heading into the 2009-10 season with. Dominique Ferguson is a year away, and even throwing Ferguson onto this year's squad still wouldn't give them any chance to beat either team.

If anything, North Carolina is a better team to play for two reasons. For one, they're more college basketball royalty than Ohio State, and will excite FIU fans more. Heck, they're the defending National Champions. Also, while FIU has no chance of beating either team, there's a big difference between getting blown away and at least keeping things competitive. You want to go into a game like that hoping to grind things out, maybe go into the half only 6-8 points down before finally losing it in the second half. And I think they'll have a much better shot going against a North Carolina team that will be insanely young and inexperienced. My most recent BP65 has North Carolina as a 2 seed and Ohio State as a 3 seed, but teams that are very dependent on freshmen tend to start off the year making silly mistakes and getting off to a slow start before pulling things together later on in the year. I expect North Carolina to be a lot better in March than they'll be in November. If you're going to play North Carolina in 2009-10, their first game of the season is the best time to catch them.


And besides, this will be the formal re-introduction of Isiah Thomas to the basketball floor. Do they really want to start off his career there by reneging on a contract and causing meaningless controversy? As I said here, this season's FIU team is bad - possibly worse than last year's team. If they can find a way to start off the season with a competitive loss to North Carolina, that can be the highlight of the year. They can keep that in everybody's mind as Isiah continues to put together his 2010 recruiting class.

So not only is this controversy stupid, it's not even in FIU's best interest. It just makes no sense any way you look at it.

No comments: