The Dean's List
• Losing is not an option for the Trinity College baseball team. This weekend, the Bantams swept Wesleyan in a doubleheader to complete a perfect regular season (34-0). Trinity outscored its opponents 323-81 and set a new Division III record for most wins to start a season. But the Bantams still have their work cut out for them. No college baseball team has ever gone undefeated and won a national championship. Plus, they're not even the BMOCs in Hartford. The Trinity squash team hasn't lost since 1998.
• Face it, some dudes just have it better than you. Take, for example, former Ohio State center Kosta Koufos. The seven-foot freshman, who averaged 14.4 points and 6.7 rebounds per game, has not only decided to throw his name in the draft, but he's hiring an agent. No more school for Koufos. He doesn't seem to mind though. His mother is from Greece and he plays on the Greek national team. So whether he gets picked in the first round or not, he'll no doubt land a massive paycheck if he chooses to cross the pond and play for Panathinaikos or some other team we can't pronounce.
• Just because Joe Paterno is past his prime, it doesn't mean all hope's lost in State College -- Penn State still has volleyball. Last Saturday night, the Nittany Lion beat Pepperdine to win its first championship in 14 years. The title comes on the heels of the women's volleyball championship in the fall. Penn State joins Stanford ('97) and UCLA ('84) as the only schools to have won NCAA men's and women's titles in the same academic year.
• If you believed everything you read online, then you'd have thought Arizona State disbanded their cheerleading team due to the appearance of a few salacious photos late last week. Thrown into the depths of a deep depression, life would've suddenly lost all meaning. But you can't believe everything that you read online. Turns out, ASU is not cutting cheerleading from its athletic program, but simply restructuring so that the director of the marching band will oversee the cheerleaders. The change in oversight and the appearance of the racy photos, which featured six cheerleaders in bras and panties, was a coincidence, nothing more. This is truly great news. In the end, everybody wins -- nobody more so than the director of the marching band.
• During the college basketball offseason, star players check their NBA Draft status while players who used to be stars test the transfer market. In the past week, a slew of college hoopsters have opted to change to schools. UCLA freshman reserve and former California high school player of the year, Chace Stanback, announced his decision to transfer, as did Georgetown sophomore forward Vernon "Big Ticket" Macklin. They join Taylor King (Duke to Villanova), Ben Hansbrough (MSU to Notre Dame), JaMarcus Ellis (Indiana to ?) and Doug Wiggins (UConn to ?). Imagine if these transfers got together and formed their own team. Would they have a shot at cracking the top 25? That's a lot of talent floating around.
• Having grown up in a community saturated with marital issues, the Dean's List understands that divorce is nothing to joke about, especially when kids are involved. But how often do two college basketball coaches at the same university finalize their divorces in the same week? Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt finalized her divorce after 27 years of marriage just days before men's hoops coach Bruce Pearl finalized his divorce from his wife of 25 years. Considering the timing, could love be in the air in Knoxville between the most renowned women's basketball coach and the hottest men's coach? That's a hypothetical; no need to answer.
• It was not a good week for college quarterbacks. First, the NCAA turned down Cincinnati QB Ben Mauk's appeal for a sixth year of eligibility. Then, the NCAA ruled that Ryan Mallett, Arkansas' sophomore quarterback, must sit out a year after transferring from Michigan. And finally, former LSU quarterback Ryan Perrilloux was kicked off the team for failing to "fulfill his obligation as an LSU student-athlete." Maybe the UCLA quarterback jinx is spreading.
• Indiana basketball is rebuilding, but that's no excuse for a temper tantrum. While relaying his intention to transfer, Indiana freshman center El Holman threw a fit in coach Tom Crean's office. The meeting started genially, but quickly spiraled into emotional chaos. Holman wasn't hearing the answers he wanted from Coach Crean and grew so angry he broke a flower pot. Campus police were called to the scene, but by the time they arrived AD Rick Greenspan had already calmed Holman down. Oh, the drama of IU basketball ...
• Oh, Billy! Rocking the cradle, have you no conscience? Last week, Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie offered a scholarship to Michael Avery, a 6-foot-4, eighth-grade basketball phenom. And, after deliberating for less than a week, the 15-year-old accepted Gillispie's offer. Am I taking crazy pills here? I don't care how good this kid is or how many quarters he can grab off the top of the backboard, he's not going to college until 2012! The kid doesn't even know what high school he's going to attend yet. Didn't the story of Taylor King teach Avery anything? Before high school, King committed to UCLA but later changed his mind and went to Duke before changing his mind again after only one year and transferring to Villanova. Avery is 15! He can't even drive an Oldsmobile, never mind the lane.
• Andy Roof was going to get into that party whether they wanted him to or not. The Washington State defensive tackle was arrested for assault last weekend after he was denied entry to a private party in Pullman and he head-butted the bouncer. This comes after Roof told reporters this spring that he'd stopped drinking. (He was suspended from WSU last year for alcohol related offenses.) In Roof's defense, he's used to his opponents wearing helmets and that was a great party.
