In the wake of yesterday’s announcement of the NCAA’s WBIT, the WNIT released a statement last night saying that it will remain operational in 2024 but will reduce its size to 48 teams.
I would assume that the NCAA will cross the gender aisle in its oppression and use its rule that punishes men’s teams if they choose a tournament other than one that’s NCAA-run, so this functionally probably makes the WNIT the women’s CBI, but we’ll see how it turns out. The WNIT used to give automatic bids to every conference, even if it had to take the second-best team, so this meant the WNIT was drawing something like 48 at-large bids anyway. If they do away with that practice and the WBIT follows the NIT with regard to automatic bids, what we’re really probably seeing is the at-large window for the WNIT drop roughly twenty spots lower. That’s just a guess, but it’s all we can offer right now.
Cam Whitmore Played Well, You Say?
The word out of NBA Summer League is that Cam Whitmore turned in the best performance, and we should expect nothing else out of the NIT alum (he didn’t play, but that was because he was injured, and we will accept no argument to the contrary). Another strong performer? NIT alum Hunter Tyson. A third? Keyonte George, who didn’t play in the NIT but did play under Scott Drew, who attended this year’s NIT Final Four and was unnecessarily kind to us.
To all the children reading: If you want to cut it in professional basketball, there’s a proven path here.
Helmet Talk
Myles Garrett will be wearing white after Labor Day.
The Cleveland Browns announced this morning that they’ll be wearing white helmets three times during this upcoming season. They’ll be the normal helmets, plain with the stripe, but they will be white. Also, the stripe is slightly differently colored. Orange in the middle instead of white. It’s a reverse. They’re running a reverse. Who says the old way of running the football is dead?
This isn’t big news, but we need to stay in shape on helmet stuff. People don’t talk a lot about how, for as traditional and blue-collar as the AFC North is, it’s a breeding ground for helmet creativity. Only three teams in the NFL don’t simply put their logo on both sides of their primary helmet. Those three? All in the AFC North. Only two teams in the NFL use an orange helmet with their primary uniforms. Those two? Both in the AFC North. Say what you will about Ohio being a vanilla state, but in the NFL, no one else is serving this flavor.
The NHL Already Has a Cup
In an effort to appease its fanbase of people who spend way too much time online and think everyone in the world likes what they do, the NBA is instituting an in-season cup this year, like England’s FA Cup in soccer but without the part where small teams can go on cool runs. NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly made it clear today that the NHL will not be following suit:
“No consideration being given to in-season tournaments,” he said in an email.
I love everything about this. I too want to build the habit of refusing to refer to the NBA with complete sentences. “Sir or ma’am,” Daly seems to write. “We are a hockey league. We do not have a problem getting players to care.”
Whoa, Galchenyuk.
The police report is out from Alex Galchenyuk’s arrest in Scottsdale the weekend before last. (He’s a hockey player, if the name Alex Galchenyuk didn’t give it away, and he’s from Russia, if the name Alex Galchenyuk didn’t give it away.)
Not good.
From the Associated Press:
Alex Galchenyuk repeatedly used racial slurs toward a police officer in training and threatened to have two officers killed during a traffic stop last weekend, police said in a report, actions that led the Arizona Coyotes to terminate the player’s contract on Friday.
A Scottsdale Police Department report said Galchenyuk was erratic and aggressive toward officers after apparently crashing a car into a sign.
Galchenyuk cited connections in Moscow while saying “I’m gunna chop you, your wife, your daughter” and “One phone call and you’re all dead, your whole family, your blood line is dead,” police said in the report.
Galchenyuk, who was born in the U.S. to Belarusian parents and spent much of his childhood in Russia, uttered a racial slur several times while referring to the officer in training, the report said.
Well, that’ll do it. That’ll get you arrested.
A few thoughts here:
- I’m glad I’ve never threatened to exterminate someone’s entire bloodline while drunk. I usually just threaten to leave Yelp reviews saying the bartender in question cut off my friend when my friend due to my friend being a veteran suffering vertigo (this is never actually the case, to be clear, this is just what I threaten when I am drunk and aggrieved).
- Do you think he could actually do it? Am I putting lives at risk by blogging about this?
- I still think Americans should be booing Russian hockey players right now. Sorry, Zub, I love you to death, but I feel like we’re taking it too easy on these guys. We were all being cool. We were all not invading neighboring states. Then the Russians and the Belarusians had to go mess it up. The least we can do is boo them.
Anyway, Galchenyuk has agreed to enter the NHL and NHLPA’s Player Assistance program, and he’s apologized to police for behavior he called “despicable.” I’m not going to speak for the police here, but that’s enough for me. I will still boo you, Alex Galchenyuk, if I am somehow in a position to do so. It will not, however, be because you threatened to put an intercontinental hit out on a guy doing his job to keep society safe from you. It will be because your countrymen started a gigantic war right as the 2022 NIT was kicking off. That was a dick move of you guys, and I know it wasn’t your choice, but I haven’t heard you condemn it yet.
