As I've said before, March is the best sports month of the year. There is only one glaring problem with it: the annual resurfacing of Billy Packer. Since he primarily does ACC games during the regular season, I rarely have the misfortune of listening to him until tourney time or a big game late in the year, like yesterday's Duke-Carolina contest. As you can see on the video below, with scant seconds left in the game, Gerald Henderson of Duke (he's the black guy) hammered UNC's star player, Tyler Hansbrough, on a putback attempt. For the five minutes that it took to sort things out, Packer adamanty insisted that Henderson was going after the ball...WHICH WASN'T EVEN ON THE SCREEN WHEN HE SWUNG! Obviously I just gave away my stance on the incident, but I'm willing to listen to someone reasonably try to explain otherwise. Conversely, Packer won't shut up about how Henderson was clearly trying to block the shot, intimidating his too-polite partner Jim Nantz into an awkward silence that screams disagreement, or at least evenhanded-ness. The lesson, as always, is that Billy Packer is an idiot.
As for the foul itself, admittedly, Hansbrough probably shouldn't have been a 12-point game with fifteen seconds left, but that doesn't mean that Duke gets to crush his face. At the very least, Henderson's play was sloppy and irresponsible. Realistically, I think his cheap shot is as dirty a play as one can make in a basketball game, and is more than worthy of any suspension he might get. (I can't believe I'm defending Carolina.)
As for the foul itself, admittedly, Hansbrough probably shouldn't have been a 12-point game with fifteen seconds left, but that doesn't mean that Duke gets to crush his face. At the very least, Henderson's play was sloppy and irresponsible. Realistically, I think his cheap shot is as dirty a play as one can make in a basketball game, and is more than worthy of any suspension he might get. (I can't believe I'm defending Carolina.)
