An Attendee Reacts to a Random Run Through Twitter After Rhody's Rough Loss to Richmond
Like any curious human being, I decided to browse through Twitter after URI took a big, fat L to the overachieving Richmond Spiders to get a take on everyone's else views. This process consisted of a few searches with "uri" and "uri basketball", as well as scrolling through the Twitter feeds of local and national college basketball experts and journalists. I tried to reserve as much judgment as I could because I know that people often overreact to upsets like these. Although, Rhody had no business losing on the road to Richmond, their chances at an at-large bid are still plausible.
One of the first set of tweets I read was from Joe Reilly, a URI fan who relayed the sentiments of several URI basketball supporters, "Don't think I can watch this team again this year after this pathetic display of basketball." He also went on to say "We might be the worst ft shooting team in the country." This is hard to disagree with sadly. Then, I saw an even sadder tweet when I saw @ESPNCBB tweet out the Last 4 In and First Four Out and there the Rams were, right in the middle of the first four OUT. *Sigh*
Next, reading some of Bill Koch's tweets, I read his quick recap of the game, titled "Spiders trap Rams in their Web". Really my man? Could you make the loss sound any worse? Then, divulging further into the Providence Journal article, I read a bunch of fantastic quotes from Coach Dan Hurley. Just to list a few of Hurley's great words, he said, "I'm stunned by the way we showed up in the first half, I'm stunned by the way we guarded to start, the way that we executed for a veteran team and turned the ball over to start." Also, Koch wrote Hurley's other notable quotes, "We missed layup after layup after layup, and then when we weren't missing layups, we were missing foul shots." My immediate response to these statements from Rhode Island's head coach? NO REALLY, your team just got embarrassed for the second time this season. First, the Rams received a shellacking at home to the La Salle Trash Cans and now a beating they will never forget to the Richmond Ruggrats, a team who had a 6-6 conference record, including a loss to Oral Exam Roberts!
Finally, the defeat was best summed up by the best college basketball expert in the business, Jon Rothstein, when he tweeted, "One has to really wonder if URI will ever get fully healthy under Dan Hurley. Rams fell at Richmond tonight by 11 sans Jarvis Garrett." Apparently, under the lead of Coach Hurley, this team seems to be incapable of defeating clearly inferior teams with even a single member of the team out. What happened to "next man up"? In this case, Jeff Dowtin has done a great job in Jarvis Garrett's absence while he tends to his illness so that is not the reason for a bad loss like this. There is one undeniable truth that cannot be hidden at this point, URI basketball's fans are running out of excuses to defend them.
Ultimately, this was a demoralizing browse through Twitter that looked a little something like this.
