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What Should We Call This St. John’s-Xavier Incident?

Is it a scuffle? A dustup? A scrap?
Dan Gartland|
What Should We Call This St. John’s-Xavier Incident?
What Should We Call This St. John’s-Xavier Incident?

Xavier easily handled St. John’s in the quarterfinal of the Big East tournament on Thursday, 88–60, in a game that I watched out of the corner of my eye.

I happened to glance at the screen after the final buzzer and notice that the two teams were going toe-to-toe. I got the office a bit excited by saying, “Oh! I think Xavier and St. John’s just had a fight.”

When I saw the full video of what actually happened I realized it wasn’t really that exciting. 

But this led to an interesting discussion about the taxonomy of sports disputes, so I decided to rank the terms we use to describe these sorts of things in increasing order of severity.

• Confrontation

• Altercation

• Dust-up

• Scuffle

• Scrap

• Fight

• Fracas

• Donnybrook

• Brouhaha

• Brawl

• Melee

• Literal murder

So where does St. John’s and Xavier fall on this list?

Published | Modified
Dan Gartland
DAN GARTLAND

Dan Gartland writes Sports Illustrated’s flagship daily newsletter, SI:AM, and is the host of the “Stadium Wonders” video series. He joined the SI staff in 2014, having previously been published on Deadspin and Slate. Gartland, a graduate of Fordham University, is a former Sports Jeopardy! champion (Season 1, Episode 5).

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