A little ice adds spice to ‘rivalry’
Published 6:00 pm Friday, March 16, 2018
Maybe you could really care less if LSU and Louisiana-Lafayette ever play another basketball game.
No need, really. It’s just basketball.
But, by all means — and get the State Legislature involved if necessary — keep bringing these two together for something or another just so they can keep having post-whatever news conferences.
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It’s only 55 miles or so, give or take a pot hole or two, a mere three or four hours in Louisiana traffic across the Atchafalaya Basin.
Get ’er done.
You probably can’t have a news conference about nothing, so maybe another fling at hoops is the best option, if only as an excuse for another nyah-nyah-na-nyah-nyah like the one Wednesday night following LSU’s win in the NIT.
This state needs a little light entertainment, preferably tinged with petty bitterness and laced with heavy doses of nasty.
The basketball game was a basketball game, never an easy sell in this state. Mostly LSU was a lot quicker and proved, to its satisfaction, that the ninth-place team from the SEC could beat the Sun Belt regular-season champion.
Ho hum. That’s about all you need to know about that.
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We will even need a ruling as to whether “bragging rights” are redeemable for something as meaningless as the NIT, an event even LSU admits it’s using as a dress rehearsal for bigger dreams ahead.
But, oh gosh, the bickering and finger-pointing and name-calling and name-changing on display.
It was obvious the two fan bases, of which ULL provided a sizable contingent, couldn’t stand each other.
It was football-worthy.
Maybe it’s just the jolt basketball in this state needs, maybe even get somebody from Louisiana into the Big Dance.
Thank you, LSU and ULL, for Wednesday night.
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For sure, it will never be a chapter in Profiles in Sportsmanship, but it was fun.
LSU won the scoreboard, 84-76, and also, as the home team, controlled the scoreboard, right down to the nomenclature. So while the Cajuns wore “Louisiana” across their jerseys down on the floor, it was “ULL” that got beat on the scoreboard.
LSU apparently is like that third-grade teacher you had who insisted on addressing all students by their full proper name, no matter if all your friends called you Snapper.
The tone continued.
LSU came across as perhaps the most ungracious winner in the history of basketball. Nobody ever gloated better than first-year LSU head coach Will Wade after the victory (to say nothing of rubbing it in during the game’s final seconds), all with a twinkle in his eye and a sneer on his boyish face.
ULL played the sorest loser imaginable. Ragin’ Cajuns coach Bob Marlin may have been beaten, but he sure wasn’t’ done whining.
Perfect.
What more could you ask for in a bitter grudge match?
It even has a motto: “Well, since they don’t get to play us very often, I thought they should sit there and enjoy the opportunity to play us.”
That was Wade explaining, with no small delight and sarcasm, why he called time out with 12 seconds to play and game well in hand.
For the most part the kids did fine, actually.
There was a brief shoving dustup early in the second half between two players, but it was quickly quelled without the unusually heavy police presence getting involved.
It was the adults, the coaches, acting the fool (that’s a good thing for entertainment value).
Wade and Marlin were as cold as ice to each other before the game and spent a good portion of it glaring at each other, even before they had to be restrained from getting face to face during Wade’s crowning timeout.
Louisiana may not know basketball, but it knows what it likes, and it would pay attention to anything with the possibility of that.
Maybe by the time they play again we will learn what this mysterious “NCAA nitty-gritty sheet” is, that thing that Wade kept referencing.
Whatever it is, even though he didn’t appear to have one handy, Wade was waving it around like Sen. Joe McCarthy’s list of communists in the State Department. It supposedly explained why LSU was the higher seed and got the home game even though the Cajuns had a far better record and RPI than LSU.
That was the biggest gripe Marlin had in providing LSU with mucho bulletin material, which Wade wasn’t shy about using as motivation.
“They’re big on beating teams from Louisiana,” Wade delighted in saying after the fact. “Unfortunately for RPI, you can’t count wins against Louisiana College and Xavier of New Orleans (because they’re not Division I). It’s not the way it works.”
He spent a good part of his told-you-so tirade trashing the Cajuns’ schedule, even insinuating that there was some SEC rule that discouraged its teams from scheduling ULL’s ilk.
But he also revelled in pointing out ULL had “an 18-point loss to Ole Miss, the last-place team in our league.”
So apparently scheduling ULL wouldn’t get LSU kicked out of the SEC.
As tough as sequels are to match to match the original, maybe it’s time it happened.
The state would surely pay attention to basketball.
<strong>Scooter Hobbs</strong> covers LSU
athletics. Email him at
shobbs@americanpress.com