Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
The athletic season is in full swing right now, with college basketball being the most recent sport to start its competitions. It is certainly my favorite sport to watch and to follow, and it seems every year there is more and more parity. Anyone can beat anyone on a given night — unless we’re talking about University of North Carolina at Asheville.
Tuesday night, the UNC-Asheville Bulldogs traveled to Knoxville to take on the University of Tennessee Volunteers. With Tennessee being ranked No. 11 in the country, it seemed like a good chance the Vols would be improving their record to 2-0. As expected, that’s what happened.
But it would be remiss of me to not discuss the fashion in which Tennessee won the game. Plain and simple, they embarrassed the Bulldogs. The final score was 124-49. Did I mention that both of these teams are Division I programs? Or that this was the seventh match-up between the two since 1996? It’s not like this was the first time these two teams ever played. The average margin of victory for Tennessee in the previous six meetings was only 17 points.
The score at halftime of the game was 66-14. UNC-Asheville had just two field goals in the first half on 26 attempts. The first made field goal didn’t come until there was only 3:10 left on the first half clock. As a player or a coach sitting in that locker room at halftime, what do you do? Is there anything you can say at that point to make your team want to go back out on the court? If I were the athletic director at UNC-Asheville, I would have called the coach at halftime and told him his program was cut in fear they might go back out and get beaten by 100 points. Anyway, they could use the extra cash on something more important, like the womens’ water polo team.
After the game, coach Eddie Biedenbach had this to say: “I am embarrassed for UNC-Asheville, for Tennessee folks, because we wanted to come in here and make them learn, make them a better basketball team. All we did tonight was give them some exercise.”
Don’t give yourself so much credit, Eddie. I’d be willing to bet that Bruce Pearl (Tennessee’s head coach) broke more of a sweat than any of his players. They got more exercise laughing at your embarrassing excuse for a basketball team from the bench than they did by actually stepping on the court.
As an athlete, I can’t understand how anyone would let his team get beat like this. The level of talent on these two teams is not the same, however just a little bit of pride and effort from UNC-Asheville could have made all the difference. It makes me sick to see a bunch of Division I athletes who are on scholarship come out and not even compete. If it were up to me, the UNC-Asheville Bulldogs wouldn’t play another game this year.
Bangor Daily News