The Dean's List

Welcome to the greatest Dean's List to be published since the last time someone converted thongs into robbery masks and the British Transport Police tried to ban drinking on London's subway system.

• Somebody build this kid a statue, or maybe just give him a plastic trophy like we used to get when we won our division in Little League. Bucknell senior pitcher Mathew Wilson pitched the game of his life on the opening night of the NCAA tournament. Wilson threw a complete-game, six-hit shutout against -- now here's the really impressive part -- perennial powerhouse Florida State as the Bison pulled off an improbable 7-0 upset. The Seminoles entered the game ranked fourth in the nation with a 48-9 record and a .350 team batting average, but Wilson dominated from the mound, tossing the fifth overall shutout of his career and his first nine-inning complete-game shutout. To make it even sweeter, the victory was Bucknell's first ever in the NCAA Tournament.

• How's this for an analogy: Western Washington is to D-II women's rowing what Tiger Woods is to golf. They're so good, the only way to beat them is to pray for an injury. The Vikings, who were ranked No. 1 all season long, receiving every first place vote out there, won their fourth straight national title this weekend. To put that in perspective, no rowing team in any division has won three straight championships, never mind four. Led by four seniors Metta Gilbert, Samantha Marikis, Staci Reynolds and Amelia Whitcomb -- all of who are undefeated in their college careers -- Western finished with a perfect score and brought to fruition a forgone conclusion.

• As the Clemson tennis coach for 33 years, Chuck Kriese dedicated most of his life to Tigers tennis, but now Coach Kriese is moving on. After leading Clemson to 10 ACC titles and 24 NCAA tournament appearances, Kriese is relocating to Bangkok to become Thailand's national coach and Southeast Asia's technical director of tennis. Imagine that, a guy who's spent three and a half decades perfecting the forehand in rural South Carolina suddenly up and moving 9,000 miles to the 22nd largest city in the world. That takes some courage. Nice to see the get-up-and-go hasn't got up and gone. (Note to Coach Kriese: If you ever miss home. just get yourself to Koh Phangan for the Full Moon Party and you'll forget all your problems).

• I'm not sure if this is Honor Roll or Detention List material, but Notre Dame's become the Penn Station of college athletics: athletes coming, administrators going, but no one just hanging out. The Fighting Irish's athletics department seems to be stuck in a constant state of flux. First Mississippi State's Ben Hansbrough, who helped the Bulldogs advance to the second-round of the Tournament last march, announces that he's transferring to play for Notre Dame. Then, Purdue's 6-foot-8 freshman forward Scott Martin, an agile and talented lefty, says that he's joining Mike Brey's squad, as well. Now, Athletic Director Kevin White holds a press conference to say that he's leaving South Bend to take up the same position at Duke. In this case, I'd make that trade: two solid ballers for one average athletic director.

• Ever wonder who benefited from the Kelvin Sampson fiasco at Indiana? I mean, Indiana certainly didn't come out on top. The Hoosiers lost their coach, a promising season and a bunch of recruits. Sampson didn't come out on top either. Sure, he got a nice chunk of money in his buyout and is now an assistant with the Milwaukee Bucks, but he will forever be remembered as the coach who got caught cheating not once, but twice. And the NCAA, the organization investigating the allegations, lost as well, having to watch as one of its flagship programs imploded. Well, as it turns out, at least one group of people prospered off the Sampson Scandal -- the lawyers. Indiana University spent $203,000 in fees to lawyers to handle the allegations. Most of that work was done by the Indianapolis law firm of Ice Miller. Well, I guess if you're going to be a flock of vultures, Ice Miller is pretty cool name.

• Generally speaking, good things don't happen when guns are around. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out. So why does it seem that college athletes are always getting arrested on gun charges? Just this last week, a highly-touted recruit for Oklahoma, Josh Jarboe, pleaded guilty to gun charges. Jarboe, a top 10 wide receiver according to Rivals.com, was arrested after an assistant principal at his high school saw him grab a gun from his car in the school's parking lot. (An interesting side note: Jarboe was kicked out of school but managed to complete his high-school degree online, which apparently is enough to get in to OU). Also last week, former Illinois football player Erique Robertson pled guilty to one count of unlawful use of a firearm. Robertson was arrested for firing shots in the air outside a Champaign bar. (Not to be confused with a champagne bar ...) Stop it with the guns. If you hit people hard enough on the gridiron, why do you need to shoot them?

• Memorial Day weekend was not kind to the University of Nevada football team. Three -- not one, not two, but three -- players were arrested for DUIs. On Friday night around 3 a.m., which actually makes it Saturday, senior wide receiver Rocco Bene was pulled over for reckless driving. Then, on Saturday night at about the same time, which actually makes it Sunday, starting tight end Mike McCoy, the Wolfpack's third leading receiver last season with 598 yards, was arrested. An hour later, sophomore defensive back Kenny Viser got picked up as well. All three of them were arrested between the hours of 3 and 4 a.m. The two reserve players were cut from the team while McCoy was placed on probation. (Funny how that works). Now I'm not a football coach but maybe it's time that Nevada coach Chris Ault give his team the ol' "Don't drink and drive" speech or he's going to be playing shorthanded come August.

• If just making it to the championship game was good enough, Johns Hopkins would've had a great week. The Blue Jays upset Duke to make the D-I lacrosse finals and they fought their way into the D-III baseball finals to face off against powerhouse Trinity. But we compete to win and the Johns Hopkins lost both championships in agonizing fashion. The lacrosse team blew an early lead to fall to Syracuse 13-10 and, after handing Trinity its first loss of the season, the baseball team lost a one-run lead in the ninth (on two bases-load walks, no less) and fell to the mighty Bantams. On top of all the second place finishes, the Hop also lost its men's soccer coach Matt Smith, who resigned on Friday because of personal reasons. Take if from The Wire, Baltimore's a tough city in which to succeed.

Jacob E. Osterhout can be contacted at jacob.osterhout@gmail.com