Bullis Preview and a Very Useful Dialogue with a BSN Reader over excesses in MY Post on the RP game

BULLIS PREVIEWBULLIS PREVIEW

• The Bullis game will be a challenge for the Bears. By winning, the home team could tie for 2^nd in the IAC. The Bulldogs are a big and talented team.

• Their 19-3, 5-3 record merits them a # 5 ranking by WaPo.

•  Their size causes the Bears lots of problems—with a 6’6” center, 6’6” PF, two 6’2” guards.

•  The Bullis losses are ALL against Episcopal, while the Bears just beat the Maroon at Landon in overtime.

• The WaPo lists on its recruiting page a Bullis player who has committed to DePaul, but his name does not appear on the Bullis team page. Otherwise, the services that cover college recruiting anomalously list no Bulldogs.

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• An hour before the Fox deadline, the Bears v. Bulldog had a substantial vote margin over the 2^nd place game. Thus, it is assumed that Senior Night will be the subject of Channel 5’s HS sports coverage Friday night.

  • ALL GOOD BEARS SHOULD BE IN ATTENDANCE TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT OF THE CLASS OF 2012 BB PLAYERS AND THEIR PARENTS

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Once in a while and far too often, the writing of BSN deviates from some modicum of taste and objectivity. Thus, it was VERY INSTRUCTIVE AND INCREDIBLY APPRECIATED to receive the following from Jack Falvey, Landon 2011. Hopefully the response puts the poor judgment underlying the writing of the post on the Landon v. Prep game in context (no excuse) and more importantly,based on Jack’s note,  it is the goal that such an excess not be repeated by me.

Mr. Murdock,

Thank you for all of the updates on the Hoops squad this winter. As my first year away from the program, it has been great to be able to keep up with how Coach Luther and the team have been progressing this season, and hopefully they’ll be able to make some noise down the stretch here. If I may, however, I found the most recent article about the Georgetown Prep game to be fairly troubling. I am sure that the game was riddled with poor officiating, as is every game, but I’m sure that Prep had to deal with calls that they seriously disagreed with as well. As you noted, that is simply the nature of the game at the high school level.

I have generally found that the articles on bearsportsnews contain a significantly greater amount of meaning and substance when the quality of officiating is left unmentioned, even if Landon received the majority of the unfair calls. Obviously this is just the opinion of one die-hard here, but I do know that you always take constructive criticism in stride so I hope that you do not find this as any sort of attack on the site.

Again, you do not have to put too much stake in what I have to offer, but I just wanted to let you know my take. Anyways, thanks again for all that you do for not only the basketball team, but the school. I know you take a ton of time out of your day to do this, and I’m incredibly appreciative of that. I just found that the quality of the article was severely diminished by including commentary on the referees.

Respectfully,

Jack Falvey

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Jack—

Well said and much appreciated. Your writing for BSN for the 2010-2011 seasons set an upper level of journalism.

For much of the time my writing (the BSN “editorial” statement specifically underlines a prohibition against such comments as you have identified), officials are not mentioned. As I noted in the last sentence, I should have emulated Coach Luther’s equanimity. I violated my own standards

Why did I deviate from that practice? The game was officiated under very loose rules throughout the game; Joe hit the deck many, many times; as did Strickland. At the end, twice the clock started before anyone touched the ball. That is an objective standard and perhaps the first error was attributable to excitement by the time keeper. The second was egregious in that it was a repeated error and unlike the first, the referees just ignored it. YOU ARE RIGHT, EVEN THOUGH THOSE MAY HAVE BEEN OBJECTIVE STATEMENT, THEY WERE NOT THE CAUSAL NEXUS OF THE BEARS’ LOSS!!

Back to your point, I should be more disciplined and should not have let my emotions get the best of me. Having , days before, witnessed the team’s incredible victory over EHS and Joe’s performance, plus the anticipation of a win over RP would have set up the Senior Night against Bullis, I failed to curb my emotions and gave way to expressing my disappointment.

Well said, Jack and in the future your thoughtful points will hopefully remind me to discipline my comments.

Sincerely,

Sandy Murdock