We Must Protect This House: The GW Preview

Today is the day we get to find out if the performance at the Terrier Tip-off worked. Coach Chambers can scream all he wants to rally the students, but if they still don't come to fill up The Greek tonight for GW, you have to wonder if they ever will.

I remember vividly the first game at Agganis Arena, a hope-filled win over Vermont seen by over 5000, a number that hasn't been matched since. Here's hoping today brings us back to that first game.

GW and I go back a long time. As they're my local team now and knowing quite a few alums, I attended quite a few Colonial games in 07-08, and flirted with sub-fandom for a while. I even have GW t-shirt. But it was a love/hate relationship, and ultimately the inferiority of the First Ladies dance team and the creepiness of the mascots pushed me to Howard instead.

However GW is a team that should be doing better. Long-time readers will know that a frequent target of mine is "Little George," who was described thusly by a blog ranking the 25 worst college mascots:

For some reason, the Colonial reminds me of the Norseman, McKinley High's mascot in "Freaks and Geeks." Both are unintentionally terrifying, with their gigantic heads and soulless eyes. While the Colonial isn't sporting a spine-tingling grin, somehow his look of placid indifference is even scarier.

The bad mascot news doesn't end there those. GW features an odd mix of several miscast mascots (see chart).


Now, there fantastic news for Colonial Nation, as Little George has been retired. I guess they got tired of re-painting his papier-mache face every year (really..) and replaced him with a much, much, much better version of Little George. Now they just have to puncture the 10-foot tall inflatable Big George and we'll be in business.

Damian Hollis has been my favorite Colonial for a while, mostly because he constantly looks like he's about to fall asleep. He comes from a long line of tall, athletic GW forwards like Rob Diggs and Pops Mensah-Bonsu, but has never achieved on the level of those two - again, mostly because he's about to fall asleep.

Hollis is the best player, and I'm not sure what to expect from the rest of the team. GW sucked last year, but still beat us.

I do know that BU is going to have to cut down on fouls and turnovers this game. The shots will fall eventually. Hopefully, many will be there to hear it. Hmm, there's a tree-falling-in-the-woods analogy somewhere in there...

Just the Tip-Off

PAT CHAMBERS.

I could end the post there and I would have said enough. But it deserves a few more words. We have heard Pat Chambers talk a lot about getting kids fired up for basketball. This is the first time we saw it in action. Like a mad man, Chambers sprinted out onto the court, screaming at the fans to stand up, even jumping up on the scorers table. And the fans responded by standing up, and screaming back louder. Chambers lost his voice in about 2 seconds. He went on for about 5 minutes talking about supporting the team, getting fired up, the team has a new attitude.

It was a far cry from a Dennis Wolff tip-off performance, or even the BU women's coach. It might even succeed in getting people to go to games, who knows.

Random observations from the rest of the night:

-- Is it just me, or were the guy's intro songs slightly outdated? I think the time for "Hey Shorty, It's Your Berfday" and "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" has passed. (And John Holland, lose the Yanks cap dude. You're trying to connect with the student body!)

-- Speaking of outdated songs, someone with access please slip some newer material under Chris Parks' office door. I love the BU Band -- they are probably the most devoted BU sports fans there are -- but the old songs they have been playing since I was a freshman (a decade ago!!) just remind me of the OLD BU basketball. Pat Chambers is trying to re-invent this program with new life, but that old intro song the band plays (whatever it's called) keeps me back in the DWolff era. And were any students even born before "Push It" came out?

-- The Dance Team was good as usual, but I'm feeling the MJ fatigue. But the collab with the hoops team was "Bad" (meaning good). John Holland was not good, Tyler Morris was surprisingly good, and Jeff Pelage looked like he was having the most fun out there.

-- My ranking of the different dance performances of the night:

1. Fusion
2. BU Dance Team
3. BU Cheer Team
4. XCeption
5. Status Quo - not impressed by them. Bring back Lil' Phunk or Phunk Phenomenon!
...
99. BU Men's Basketball team - points for effort. At least it was better than this:



-- In the first round of the 3-point shooting contest, both girls beat Tyler Morris and Corey Lowe. In fact, both guys appeared to be drunk. But then Tyler redeemed the men by getting on fire in the second round, proving once and for all the men are the dominant gender.

-- The best dunks from the dunk contest were pretty impressive. Carlos Strong was the clear winner, so I'm glad he took the title for the second staight year. My favorite comment, courtesy of Dean Elmore: "Show 'em what it means to be from Maine, Carlos!"

The Return of Sully

I had to do a double-take while I was watching the Terrier Tip-Off video last weekend and saw this:

Nevermind his goofy grin and arm flail, but it seems that Brendan Sullivan, who appears to be on the 2008-09 roster, is the same one that appeared on the 2005-06 statistics page. However, all evidence of him has been scrubbed from the 2005-06 roster archive.

Brendan, who was only on the team for one year, was best known for two things:

1)
His 15 point explosion against Rider, where he canned 5 three-pointers, scoring all but 6 of his 21 career points.

2)
The questionable circumstances under which he left the team. After being suspended for team rules, rumors flew about locker room fights between Sully and another member of the team, never substantiated. He ended up missing the last game of the regular season and the entire America East tournament due to his suspension, as mentioned in the Game Notes for the February 26, 2006 game against Hartford. Then, after the season, Brendan either quit the team or was kicked off the team -- we never found out, because he didn't comment for this Freep article.

Who knows what he did between then and now -- but he's back as a junior (did he go to school or play ball for one of those three years?) and he's paying his own way as a walk-on.

So... Brendan did something bad enough to be suspended by Wolff for the remainer of a season and leave the team for "off-court troubles"... and now he's welcomed back by Wolff 3 years later? And where the eff did he go? I'd love to hear more about how this happened.


[Update]: Looks like America Least beat me to the punch on this.

Just The Tip-Off

The Hot Dog does a good job of summarizing Non-Midnight Madness this year, but he cheated since he was actually there. On the other hand I wasted an hour and a half of my Saturday watching the complete video which is helpfully uploaded on the BU site. Little did I realize that many of the highlights are viewable separately, and without some of the grating radio commentary, by going here.

The atmosphere looked pretty good - crazy light systems and whatnot. They collapsed the bleachers on one side, I guess so they could make a crowd that would normally be half-full look, well, full. They should think about doing that against Stony Brook.

New uni's

Looks like the Terriers got new jerseys this year (away ones at least), and get this: they have NAMES on the back. Making the jerseys that the High Roller and I bought last year for 65 bucks charmingly obsolete. I guess they are throwbacks already.

Seems like the names on the back has its pluses and minuses. While it'll be easier to identify our freshmen right away, it may also open our players up to Popoko-style harassment/torture while on the road.

Clear winner: Carlos Strong. His name is badass, you can't argue with someone whose jersey says Strong on it.

Clear loser: Matt Wolff. For those opposing fans that weren't giving Matty a hard time because they forgot he was the coach's kid... sorry Matt.