It's an age-old saying that "sometimes life just isn't fair." There are a bunch of guys in western New York that could use a friendly reminder.
The players on the St. Bonaventure men's basketball team have had quite a traumatic couple of days. Last week, the school declared that junior center Jamil Terrell, a transfer from Coastal Georgia Community College in Brunswick, Ga., did not successfully meet the requirements for NCAA junior college transfers and was not eligible to play.
Monday, the Atlantic 10 conference went a great deal further, forcing the school to forfeit its six conference victories in which Terrell participated and banning it from participation in the A-10 tournament.
In an instant, the Bonnies went from 7-7 conference mark to 1-13. Rather than looking ahead to a conference tournament that could lead to a berth in the NIT or even the NCAA Tournament, St. Bonaventure was instead looking only at games against Massachusetts and Dayton.
Apparently, even that was too much to ask. Tuesday, the players refused to travel to Amherst, Mass., for their game against the Minutemen, deciding instead to forfeit their remaining two games and call it a season. ESPN.com quoted school spokesman Dave Ferguson as insisting that the decision was made by the players, not the school or the coaching staff.
Unfortunately, this is an age where eligibility questions arise constantly. A college basketball season hardly seems complete without investigations into athletes receiving improper gifts from boosters, schools committing academic fraud and coaches letting athletes use their cars.
Violations such as these are often quite egregious, and schools ultimately deserve whatever punishments the NCAA hands out. The injustices that do occur are frequently with regard to the team's players, many or all of whom had no connection to the scandal at hand.
One must look no farther than Michigan, where the current squad of Wolverines will watch the postseason from home thanks to self-imposed sanctions stemming from improprieties that happened when neither the current players nor coach was with the team.
A similar scenario exists at Fresno State, where the school recently removed itself from postseason considerations after instances of academic fraud that occurred during the 1999-2000 season under former head coach Jerry Tarkanian were brought to light.
But the difference between these schools and St. Bonaventure is that the Bonnies are the only team that, in the face of adversity, simply rolled over and died. Despite an 0-6 start and the knowledge that postseason play was not an option, Tommy Amaker's Wolverines fought back to achieve a 16-11 record, including a 9-5 mark in conference play. How 20-6 Fresno State reacts has yet to be seen, as games against Tulsa and Rice still await the team that has clinched the Western Athletic Conference title with a 13-3 league mark.
But at least the Bulldogs will be on the court. Facing the loss of postseason possibilities--especially this late in the season--is a daunting task for any team. But the Bonnies have no excuse for refusing to play their final two games. It's disrespectful not only to their coaches and fans, but also to college basketball as a whole.
Following nearly every come-from-behind victory, a coach will talk about how his team didn't pack it in and kept fighting until the game finally ended. This wasn't just a game. This was an entire season, and in the face of adversity, the Bonnies simply gave up.
Evan Davis is a Trinity senior and senior associate sports editor. His column appears every Wednesday.
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