Purvis with the Hashtag of the Year

[tcf15]

 

[MexicoHusky]

I've never noticed Burgess* in the background before. What a stiff

 

[upstater]

I've never noticed Burgess* in the background before. What a stiff

Thing that kills me bout Burgess and the rest of that Duke team is how the Huskies were portrayed as thugs compared to the upstanding Duke kids. Burgess flamed out on multiple levels. You had the Corey Maggette-Myron Piggie stuff. The William Avery's Mom stuff. Brand left early. A lot of problems on that Duke school full of upstanding kids.

Meanwhile, the UConn guys all seemed to move on well in life afterward, El-Amin, Freeman, Ricky Moore, Rip Hamilton, Jake Voskuhl, Souleymane Wane, etc.

There is a disgusting article from a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer who wrote the real students lost the game to a bunch of thugs.

 

[UC990411]

Thing that kills me bout Burgess and the rest of that Duke team is how the Huskies were portrayed as thugs compared to the upstanding Duke kids. Burgess flamed out on multiple levels. You had the Corey Maggette-Myron Piggie stuff. The William Avery's Mom stuff. Brand left early. A lot of problems on that Duke school full of upstanding kids.

Meanwhile, the UConn guys all seemed to move on well in life afterward, El-Amin, Freeman, Ricky Moore, Rip Hamilton, Jake Voskuhl, Souleymane Wane, etc.

There is a disgusting article from a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer who wrote the real students lost the game to a bunch of thugs.

Would love to read that if you could find a link

 

[MexicoHusky]

Thing that kills me bout Burgess and the rest of that Duke team is how the Huskies were portrayed as thugs compared to the upstanding Duke kids. Burgess flamed out on multiple levels. You had the Corey Maggette-Myron Piggie stuff. The William Avery's Mom stuff. Brand left early. A lot of problems on that Duke school full of upstanding kids.

Meanwhile, the UConn guys all seemed to move on well in life afterward, El-Amin, Freeman, Ricky Moore, Rip Hamilton, Jake Voskuhl, Souleymane Wane, etc.

There is a disgusting article from a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer who wrote the real students lost the game to a bunch of thugs.

A bunch of thugs! Ha! I lived in a dorm with Khalid, Rip and Kevin. They were always at practice or on the road so you never really got to know them, but they were hardly thugs. They were pretty friendly.

 

[Jaker]

That team was no portrayed as thugs , Khalid was portrayed as being cocky though.

 

[Jaker]

Purvis is going to have a monster season. iMO

 

[guyergym]

I also never remember that UConn team portrayed as thugs.

 

[Jaker]

Yeah, the biggest thug on the team was Jake V. Lmao

 

[upstater]

Would love to read that if you could find a link

This is less than 10% of the article so it meets fair use:


BEATING DUKE DOESN'T MAKE UCONN A WINNER
BY BRUCE KEIDAN
4 April 1999
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

* Pardon me if I don't get tingly all over because Gentleman Jim Calhoun and his UConn Huskies managed to upend mighty Duke in the Mother of All College Basketball Games.

I'm supposed to feel good because a school that graduates fewer than one basketball player in three wins the national championship by defeating a school from which nine players in 10 depart with a degree?

Here's a personal promise to Calhoun in lieu of heart-felt congratulations: If a simple majority of your supposed student-athletes who played for you Monday night leave your campus with a sheepskin in hand, I'll drive to Storr's and polish the championship trophy annually. I'll even supply the Brasso.

Go ahead. Make my day.

* Schools such as Connecticut doubtless will take full advantage of the recent appeals-court decision outlawing Proposition 16, which prohibited athletes from participating in varsity sports as college freshmen unless they achieved a modicum of success on standardized tests given to high school seniors. That's why the NCAA adopted Proposition 16 to begin with. But the court was right.

The fact of the matter is, the NCAA had no business telling its member institutions whom to admit, whom to give grants in aid, or whom to play. All that should be up to the individual institutions to decide. If UConn chooses to recruit and play an entire basketball team with a collective IQ in single digits, that's up to them. It's up to other schools to decide whether they want to play those teams or not.

The NCAA has neither the expertise nor the authority to tell Stanford which of its freshmen can dribble a basketball and carry an academic load simultaneously. Stanford knows best.

And if it makes bad, short-sighted decisions, it will pay for them in the end.

 

[upstater]

I shouldn't have said thugs. This was over 16 years ago. I did not remember the article very well. 16 years is a long time to go on memory. But clearly the guy thought UConn had recruited a bunch of nitwits and idiots compared to the Duke scholars.

 

[Huskies4ever]

I shouldn't have said thugs. This was over 16 years ago. I remembered the article. But clearly the guy thought UConn had recruited a bunch of nitwits and idiots compared to the Duke scholars.

There was the talk of them being thugs, though. Skip Bayless, perhaps?

 

[UChusky916]

PEEP MY AVATAR!!! #slickickfaceondemfolks

 

[CAHUSKY]

To be fair, our grad rate was abysmal. That said, it took me 28 years to graduate so I'm not in a position to talk.

 

[superjohn]

To be fair, our grad rate was abysmal. That said, it took me 28 years to graduate so I'm not in a position to talk.

As we know that means nothing, North Carolina graduated all their players, it's just that some of them went into the real world with a third grade reading level. If UConn is guilty of anything over the years it's not playing the system as well as many of the other big programs.

 

[CAHUSKY]

As we know that means nothing, North Carolina graduated all their players, it's just that some of them went into the real world with a third grade reading level. If UConn is guilty of anything over the years it's not playing the system as well as many of the other big programs.

It means something and ours was abysmal. Regardless of what UNC does. APR meaningless, kids not getting their degrees, save the ones who went to the NBA, is shameful.

 

[Stinger92860]

So how many of the young men on that team either played in the NBA or graduated? It's not too late to contact the writer.

EDIT: it is too late, he's dead.

 

[Stainmaster]

So how many of the young men on that team either played in the NBA or graduated? It's not too late to contact the writer.

He died 4 or 5 years ago.

 

[Stinger92860]

He died 4 or 5 years ago.

Yea saw that. He died in 2010.

 

[superjohn]

It means something and ours was abysmal. Regardless of what UNC does. APR meaningless, kids not getting their degrees, save the ones who went to the NBA, is shameful.

What does it mean other than several players didn't graduate in four years and several of them left early to make a ton of money in basketball? It was an easy article to write at the time to make it sound like Uconn was full of illiterates, I'm going to bet the writer never did a follow up before his passing. My guess is our players from that team are doing better than most other programs from that time. I know several of the players returned and graduated and they all seem to be doing well in life from what I've heard. Rip Hamilton never graduated and made well over $100 million in the NBA, Ray Allen is on campus now to get his degree, he managed to make around $200 million without a degree. It would be nice if every kid graduates but not all will, weare doing great with APR now but I will never fault kids for leaving early to pursue a career in basketball, you can always come back and finish your studies, you only have so many years to make coin playing a game.

 

[CAHUSKY]

What does it mean other than several players didn't graduate in four years and several of them left early to make a ton of money in basketball? It was an easy article to write at the time to make it sound like Uconn was full of illiterates, I'm going to bet the writer never did a follow up before his passing. My guess is our players from that team are doing better than most other programs from that time. I know several of the players returned and graduated and they all seem to be doing well in life from what I've heard. Rip Hamilton never graduated and made well over $100 million in the NBA, Ray Allen is on campus now to get his degree, he managed to make around $200 million without a degree. It would be nice if every kid graduates but not all will, weare doing great with APR now but I will never fault kids for leaving early to pursue a career in basketball, you can always come back and finish your studies, you only have so many years to make coin playing a game.

Id be interested to know how many of the non-NBA kids graduated. Our graduation rate was one of the worst in the country and a majority of the non-grads didn't play professionally. There is a reason it's improved dramatically over the last decade, it's important.

 

[upstater]

Id be interested to know how many of the non-NBA kids graduated. Our graduation rate was one of the worst in the country and a majority of the non-grads didn't play professionally. There is a reason it's improved dramatically over the last decade, it's important.

Has it improved? I'm asking, I don't know. APR and GSR have nothing to do with graduation. GSR was invented by the NCAA to cover over the grad issues. Schools like USF report a 88% GSR. Actual grad rate? 0%. Kentucky was at 100% a couple years ago. Syracuse was at 75% GSR and 25% actual. It's OK tho because Derrick Z. Jackson at the Boston Globe was fooled by the new bogus assessment metric. He pats the NCAA on the back for the nonexistent increase in graduation.

Regardless, as bad as UConns grad rate was prior to 1999, that Pitt writer had no right to malign those players who won that game. Especially when Duke had a bunch of guys who never graduated in their team. Collective IQ in the single digits for UConns team?

 

[CAHUSKY]

I could care less about APR or GSR. I only care that our kids leave with a degree.

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

Has it improved? I'm asking, I don't know. APR and GSR have nothing to do with graduation. GSR was invented by the NCAA to cover over the grad issues. Schools like USF report a 88% GSR. Actual grad rate? 0%. Kentucky was at 100% a couple years ago. Syracuse was at 75% GSR and 25% actual. It's OK tho because Derrick Z. Jackson at the Boston Globe was fooled by the new bogus assessment metric. He pats the NCAA on the back for the nonexistent increase in graduation.

You forgot the Harvard / Kentucky comparison you always make.

I don't particularly care, because I'm in the camp that thinks, with the occasional exception, if a kid is on a hoop scholarship at a place like UConn, or Kansas, or Kentucky, that kid is on campus to 1) play basketball; 2) play basketball; and 3) play basketball. It's why I always roll my eyes when someone says "Guess he doesn't care about academics" when a kid commits elsewhere. But it's not like UConn was lumped in with every other big time basketball school back in the period Cahusky is referring to. The grad rate - whether it was indicative of anything important or not - was abysmal, and it wasn't just because Ray and Rip left early to get paid.

 

[upstater]

I could care less about APR or GSR. I only care that our kids leave with a degree.

Well then uconn hasn't improved. But the rest of what I said applies. There was no need to call those players imbeciles compared to Duke's players