By now, you’ve probably caught wind of the comments Gary Parrish made toward an SU fan who questioned his balloting methodology. In case you didn’t, here’s a very quick breakdown, and you can find more details here:

Parrish Article: Kansas is better than SU because SU loses at home whereas Kansas loses on the road.
SU Fans Tweet Collectively: We disagree – conference quality, common opponents, undefeated on the road, etc.
Next Parrish Article: Comment about one female SU Tweeter’s appearance which can possibly be construed as sexist, but definitely unprofessional.

As much as we may disagree with how they vote, dissenting journalists in the minority like Parrish have just as much right to vote how they please, but that’s not what this is about. When Parrish decided to call out one reader with a low reference to her personal appearance, he essentially put himself on the level of a six-year-old and only made himself more vulnerable to criticism, or if you want to look at it another way, more publicity.

Monday afternoon, Parrish went on Brent Axe’s radio show to address his ranking and defend his remarks, but all Parrish did was dig himself deeper when Axe called him out on his remarks. Rather than apologizing, Parrish tried to justify the unjustifiable with the shaky-at-best reasoning of  “don’t dish it out if you can’t take it,” and even questioned how he could have crossed a line if he didn’t know where the line was. Essentially, Parrish was given a golden opportunity to save face and make the only right move there was to make, and he completely blew it.

The victim in this situation is in the process of filing formal complaints to CBS and is considering legal action, and as Twitter is constructed to enable, is gathering up arms and making sure everyone knows about it. More power to her, but I would probably handle the matter in a quieter way. This isn’t over, and for all we know there could be an interesting case study on the impact of social media on mass communications when all is said and done.

But until there are further developments, that’s all I’m going to contribute. Life as an SU basketball fan is simply too great right now to focus on the dirty laundry between a writer and a reader. The Orange just clinched their first regular season conference title in seven seasons by throttling the second-place team in front of a record home crowd on national television, was named by both major polling systems as the top team in the country, and a number one seed in the NCAA tournament is theirs to lose.

The final two games of the regular season have plenty of meaning, however. Tuesday night’s matchup against St. John’s comes on Senior Night, the final home game for Andy Rautins, Arinze Onuaku, and, barring something crazy, Wesley Johnson. Being seniors of the fifth-year variety, Rautins and Onuaku have been through it all – an incredible conference tournament run, a huge NCAA tournament snub and the best postseason game played this decade, for starters. But what makes this pair special to me is their perseverance. Since they stepped on campus in 2005, NINE scholarship players left the team for various reasons, some of those reasons being better than others:

Louie McCroskey
Devin Brennan-McBride
Josh Wright
Mike Jones
Donte Greene
Paul Harris
Jonny Flynn
Eric Devendorf
Sean Williams

That’s a ton of roster turnover to witness. There are programs that go through major coaching changes that don’t see that kind of shakeup, but both Rautins and Onuaku will leave Syracuse with a degree, plus the opportunity to pursue basketball professionally if they so choose.

Then there’s the toughness of battling constant health issues. Both players had to take redshirt years due to injury and still have nagging problems: AO’s physique is tough to support on a bad ankle and a surgically-repaired knee, and it seems like Rautins can’t go two games without walking off a stinger or a turned ankle.

Neither player’s ceiling was never thought to be that high, especially after getting sidelined, and they’ve overcome those road blocks by maximizing the potential that remained, a welcome change after the 2003 recruiting class underachieved so mightily and considering the flakiness of some of the players listed above.

There’s plenty of basketball left to enjoy this season, so if you have the opportunity, get to the Loud House and give them the sendoff they deserve.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 7:00 am by Brian G. . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.