Miami in trouble without Johnson

Posted: February 28, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Miami’s hopes of making it to the NCAA Tournament were already iffy, but it will likely get even more difficult for them.

Miami is going to miss the size of Reggie Johnson

In case you didn’t see it over the weekend, the Hurricanes’ starting center Reggie Johnson has been declared ineligible after an investigation revealed some of his family members took travel benefits that came for the Miami coaching staff.

There is a good chance Johnson will be out for the remander of the year, and if so, it will be a big blow for the Hurricanes. Johnson is fourth on the team in scoring at 10.6 a game and is first in rebounds with 6.9 per contest.

In a conference with the North Carolina’s duo of Jon Henson and Tyler Zeller, as well as Duke’s combo of the Plumlee brothers and Ryan Kelly, Miami will miss Johnson’s size when the ACC-tournament begins next week.

Miami will move F-C Kenny Kadji to the center position. Kadji is second on the team in both points and rebounds, averaging 13 and 5.7 a game. The Hurricanes don’t have much depth with their big, and with Miami already having a guard-heavy roster, they are now faced with literally no one to anchor the middle with Kadji.

Raphaeal Akpejiori started on Sunday in their game against Florida State, but was not much of a factor, totaling four rebounds and zero points in just seven minutes of action. He has only scored more than five points on two occasions this year, never going above seven.

Miami will play 6-foot-8 guard-forward DeQuan Jones a little more, but I’m not sure if he is the answer. There really isn’t an answer. Miami will just have to rely more on their guards and hope for solid play with no foul-trouble from Kadji.

They were still able to beat Florida State on Sunday, moving them to ESPN’s Joe Lunardi’s ‘Last Four In’ in today’s Bracketology, but Miami still needs some wins to feel more comfortable come Selection Sunday. A big game at North Carolina State on Wednesday could bring the victorious team near a lock-status .

Miami will close the season with a very winnable game against Boston College. If they lose that NC State game, one and maybe two wins in the ACC Tournament will be a must for the Hurricanes. The season isn’t totally lost for the Hurricanes. It may just make them play even harder, or who knows, an unsung hero may emerge to carry them to the Big Dance.

Advertisement

Officials gone wild

Posted: February 19, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

It’s usually a coach or player that gets ejected. Today it was two former NC State players that were in the stands for the game against Florida State. Tom Gugliotta and Chris Corchiani were sitting behind the scores table today when ejected by Karl Hess. CBSSports.com talked to Corchiani, who said “There were seven or eight different calls we were contesting, we were yelling, but we didn’t even yell a profanity or even threaten him.” Corchiani also told CBSSports that Hess tried to have another fan ejected earlier in the game.

Karl Hess is in his 16th season as an official (Google Images)

ACC Supervisor of Officials John Clougherty released a statement about the ejection. “Under Rule 10, when circumstances warrant, an official has the authority to request home game management to eject fans when the behavior, in the officials’ judgement, is extreme or excessive. It’s unfortunate in this instance that ACC protocol of communicating directly with the home game management was not followed, and instead, a building security officer was solicited. We will re-communicate this policy with all officials to ensure proper protocol is followed.”

According to statsheet.com, Hess is in his 16th season as an official and has 11 ejections in 1251 games, with 3 coming in the 2008-09 and 1999-2000 seasons.

This ejection had me thinking which ejection is more unbelievable; the ejections of Gugliotta and Corchiani or the ejection of Sammy the Owl from Rice in 2009 by Curtis Shaw?

What do you think, should officials be able to eject fans or mascots for yelling at them or is it just part of the game?

Back to the game, Florida State’s Ian Miller led the Seminoles from off the bench with 17 points in a 76-62 victory over the Wolfpack who was led by C.J. Leslie with 21 points. and 9 rebounds.