The Heartbreaking Harrison Barnes Dean's List

Welcome to this week's Dean's List where we're blowing up like Mike Tyson at an airport ticket counter.

Honor Roll

From all the Duke fans out there: Damn you, Harrison Barnes. You and Roy Williams, a plague on both your houses. Heading into Friday's press conference, everyone and their mother thought the top high school basketball player in the country would choose to play hoops at Duke. Barnes was smart and business-oriented and seemingly a perfect fit for Coach K's tutelage. He was to be the next Shane Battier. He was going to return the Blue Devils to the promised land. But after building up hype during a nationally televised press conference, Barnes called UNC coach Roy Williams and told the world he would play ball in Chapel Hill. With the Blue Devils' recent recruiting woes, it's bad for Duke to lose such a player, but it's just a kick in the nuts to lose that kind of talent to the Tar Heels. To make matters worse for Coach K, two days before Barnes made his decision, freshman forward Mason Plumlee broke his wrist and will be out 4-6 weeks. Tough times for the Dukies.

It took Jim Boeheim 33 years to win 800 college basketball games but the Syracuse coach finally did it last Monday in a 75-43 win over Albany. He's still a ways behind Bob Knight's record 902 victories, but if Boeheim's wife is any indication, he still has many years of coaching left ahead of him, which is great for Syracuse. Not only has Boeheim led the Orange to 31 seasons with at least 20 games, but he's done it at one school. In Division I, Boeheim trails only Jim Phelan at Mount St. Mary's (1,354) and Dean Smith at North Carolina (1,133) in number of games coached at one school, but I'll bet you that neither Phelan, nor Smith have a wife that can box out like Boeheim's...

It's the second major upset of the season, but the first that actually counts. (Le Moyne upset Syracuse last week, but it was only an exhibition game.) Rider beat No. 19 Mississippi State 88-74 on Friday night in the Bulldogs' home opener. Despite Jarvis Varnado's 22 points, 14 rebounds and seven blocks, Rider out-rebounded and outscored their opponents in the paint. Seems like the Bulldogs could have used a nice helping of Renardo Sidney.

When your team mascot is a Peacock, you'll do almost anything to get on national television, including waking up at an ungodly hour in the morning to play basketball. St. Peter's will play Monmouth at 6 am on Tuesday morning as part of ESPN's "24 Hours of College Basketball" event. Lest this be considered punishment, St. Peter's basketball coach John Dunne admitted to campaigning for the time slot. "When you think of people in fitness centers working out in the morning or others getting ready for work, they'll turn on ESPN and see us," he said. "I thought it was a good opportunity to get us on ESPN regardless of the time." It just proves that the only thing better than a cup of coffee in the morning is college basketball. (Alternative last line: It just proves that the only thing worse than waking up at 6 am to work out is waking up at six am to watch St. Peter's play Monmouth.)
Detention

Coach Bill Self could suspend half the Kansas basketball squad and the Jayhawks would still be the number one team in the country. They are just that deep. But there's one man that Self can't replace. Jimmy Tucker, better known as White Owl, a gray-haired dancing hippie who has become a tie-dyed staple at Allen Fieldhouse, was arrested after he failed to show up to court on October 30th in advance of his jury trial for violating a protection order. And this is not White Owl's only legal issue. He was also charged with marijuana possession (surprise, surprise) in 2007 and theft for stealing three books from KU's Anschutz Library. Will the Jayhawks bounce back from the loss of White Owl? Super frosh Xavier Henry seems to think so. Henry scored 27 points in Kansas's first game of the season, a 101-65 trouncing of Hofstra.


You would think that Isiah Thomas would be used to losing by now, but losing is like eating jello mold, it never goes down easy. In Florida International's 81-49 loss to Tulsa on Sunday, the former Knicks coach all but begged his Golden Hurricane counterpart to take his starters out. FIU was losing 63-25 with nine minutes left in the second half, when Thomas shouted at Tulsa coach Doug Wojcik and asked for mercy. The only problem was that Tulsa only had eight scholarship players and there was nothing Wojcik could do but continue to kick ass. Thomas didn't like that and, after the game, he only answered three questions before excusing himself to catch a flight.

If there's one thing everyone can agree on it's that, no matter what, it's always the refs' fault. Even when they don't show up, it's still their fault. Oklahoma State's season opener against Seattle was delayed by almost two hours because the refs never arrived. They were apparently under the impression that it was a night game when, in fact, tip off was at 1:30 pm. Once the game did tip off, OSU shot 15 more free throws than their opponents and prevailed 86-64. Seattle fans, feel free to blame the refs.

I mean, how drunk do you have to be to drive the wrong way on the Garden State Parkway? Haven't we learned anything from the Taconic tragedy? That's just not a good idea, especially right before the start of the season. Seton Hall guard Keon Lawrence didn't get that memo. After scoring 13 points in an exhibition game against Carleton University of Canada, the Missouri transfer drove an unregistered red Chevy Equinox the wrong way on the expressway in New Jersey and hit another car. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt. Lawrence has been suspended indefinitely for stupidity.