I had such high hopes for this past basketball week. The L.A. schools were visiting, including the much-anticipated return of Kevin Love, and I was sure I’d see something new and clever from the Pit Crew that would put a smile on my face.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
What transpired Thursday night at McArthur Court was an embarrassment for anyone associated with the University of Oregon. To think that our liberal arts, progressively minded (at least some of us are) school would start chanting that homophobic, hate-inspired sexual slur, well, it proves that our esteemed University just took a back seat to sports-fueled machismo in order to – what exactly? Make a 19-year-old and his family regret not playing in Eugene?
If anything, the chanting made others regret they ever attended Oregon and, surely made prospective students question their desire to attend such a school where back-water, juvenile insults are common place. All the obscene chants, signs and insults prove that the Loves made the right decision.
It was especially troubling considering that they had to have been planning this event for weeks and that’s what they came up with. Bravo. This is a institute of higher learning? It reminded me more of those confusing times in junior high where puberty and testosterone collided into one collective hallway of boys trying to deride each others’ sexuality. I guess some of us at Oregon have never evolved from those days.
The Pit Crew, at the very least, could have chanted something that Love has actually taken offense to in the past: His weight. There’s nothing hard, or too offensive, for most, to chant ‘Love’s a fatty.’
But for all that transpired Thursday night, at least Oregon officials got together – too late, however – to make sure a similar event didn’t occur against USC. While there was still plenty of gesturing and the like, at least The Pit didn’t create a spectacle that made them the target throughout the nation about what’s wrong with sports today.
Saturday night, for the most part, was what the Pit Crew was meant to be: a difference-making noise machine. It was a fantastic final few minutes of regulation where each separate student section rose and jumped to create an atmosphere that was sorely missing against UCLA. It was noisy, it was chaotic and it was clean.
USC’s Daniel Hackett swore that the rim was shaking while he was at the free-throw line. Although he buried the Ducks with his threes in overtime, his missed free throw in the final few seconds – when the noise reached its peak – allowed Oregon to tie the game.
Ernie Kent, who addressed the crowd before the game, was happy with the fans’ turnaround.
“The fans were tremendous tonight,” Kent said. “It goes to show that this is one of the loudest, most dominating environments in the country.”
On Saturday night, it was as if most of the fans realized the error of their ways from Thursday.
Now if somebody could convince you to stop swearing and flipping off the refs for every call that goes against the Ducks, maybe they’d be more obliged to give Oregon a break every now and then.
Just a suggestion, and it’s one the Ducks can’t publicly make.
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