The Dean's List

Welcome to this week's Dean's List, where we'd like to thank Plaxico Burress for teaching us a very valuable lesson. Guns don't shoot people in the leg; People shoot themselves in the leg.

• In the great state of North Carolina, Tyler Hansbrough's sweat could be bottled and sold as holy water. The reigning national player of the year can do no wrong in Tar Heel country. And that was before Psycho-T began saving lives. After winning the Maui Invitational, the North Carolina men's basketball team was on American Airlines Flight No. 6 back to Chapel Hill when fellow passenger Melvin Ridley was discovered unconscious in row 25. Responding to a flight attendant's request for "big, strong basketball players," Hansbrough, teammate Deon Thompson and video coordinator Eric Hoots lifted and carried the 45-year-old Ridley to the galley, where paramedics revived him after almost 30 minutes. Fortunately, the flight had yet to take off and Ridley was quickly taken to the hospital where he was kept overnight for observation. Now that's some heavy lifting.

• Throughout Cincinnati's 30-10 victory of Syracuse, Bearcat fans tossed oranges on the field to celebrate their team's possible trip to the Orange Bowl. Despite repeated warnings over the public-address system, the fans threw oranges onto the field after every score. The irony here is that if this game were played in Syracuse instead of Cincinnati, Orange fans probably would have pelted the field with oranges as well to celebrate the culmination of Greg Robinson's miserable four-year stint as head football coach. How else do you appropriately mark the end of a period in which your team went 10-37 and only won three conference games? So, tossing oranges seems like the most appropriate way for two teams at opposite ends of the standings to celebrate the end of a season.

• At 5-foot-9, 195 lbs., Nate Kmic isn't exactly the biggest name in college football, but he's a hero in Alliance, Ohio, home to the Mount Union Purple Raiders. In Mount Union's 42-7 victory over Hobart on Saturday in the second round of the Division III playoffs, Kmic carried the ball 37 times for 235 yards, making him the Division III all-time rushing leader with 7,449 career yards. The only player who has rushed for more yards in college is Chadron St. running back Danny Woodhead, who accumulated 7,962 yards on the ground between 2004-2007 and set the Division II rushing record. But the newfound fame hasn't gone to Kmic's head. After the game, he showed up for his big, post-game press conference in shoulder pads and couldn't even remember on which play he broke the record.

• Emory University has never been a big fan of autumn. Until last weekend, the Eagles had never won a title in any fall sport. But last Saturday, the Emory women's volleyball team beat the No. 4 La Verne Leopards to capture their first Division III national championship. After losing the opening set 25-16, the Eagles rallied behind Amelia McCall's offensive prowess to win the next three sets -- 25-21, 25-17, 25-22 -- and capture the school's first national championship since the men's and women's teams won it all in 2006. Senior middle hitter Dani Huffman earned tournament Most Outstanding Player honors after notching 49 kills and 19 blocks. This was a big win for Emory. So big, in fact, that when the Eagles returned to Atlanta, they received a police escort from the airport to the campus gym, where close to 40 students and administrators welcomed them with cheers and applause.

• Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. In last week's game against Davidson, Loyola (Md.) men's basketball coach Jimmy Patsos implemented a triangle and two defense meant to shut down Davidson star Stephen Curry. The strategy worked, as Curry failed to score, but Loyola also lost by thirty, due in large part to the fact that it played a man down on defense for the entire game. You would think that at halftime, with his team losing by 22, Patsos would've switched up defensive strategies, but it seems like the former Maryland assistant was more concerned about shutting down Curry than winning the basketball game. After the game Patsos said, "Anybody else ever hold him scoreless? I'm a history major. They're going to remember that we held him scoreless or we lost by 30?" No need to answer a rhetorical question. Stop coaching to be remembered and start coaching to win.

• How many chances is Doug Wiggins going to get? The University of Massachusetts guard was suspended from the basketball team after an arrest for breaking and entering. You might remember Wiggins from his days as back-up point guard for the Connecticut Huskies. After twice failing drug tests, Wiggins was suspended for two games after UConn police found him with alcohol. As for his latest run-in with the law, the 6-foot-1 guard, who was highly-recruited out of high school, was arrested after he was found in the bathroom of another person's home. In Wiggins' defense, when you got to go, you got to go.

• It would be an understatement to say that neither Dayton nor Auburn was exactly shooting the lights out in the semifinals of the Chicago Invitational Challenge on Friday night. You could have built a house from all the bricks they shot. The two teams combined to miss their first 29 three-point attempts. In fact, the Flyers missed every single three they attempted for the entire game, shooting 0-24 from behind the arc and setting a new record for three-point shooting ineptitude. Yet amazingly, Dayton still won the game 60-59. Turns out, you can miss all your three-pointer as long as you hit your free throws. Flyers guard Marcus Johnson, who missed five threes on the night, made four straight free-throws in overtime to clinch the game for Dayton, which would go on to upset No. 15 Marquette in the finals.

• The rape charges filed against Mississippi State tennis player Christopher Richard Doerr didn't make the headlines in the United States, but it's big news in England. The Bromley Times reports that friends of Doerr in his hometown just outside London are worried that "such a quiet and respectable" kid won't be treated well in a Mississippi jail. Doerr, who reached 11th in the English rankings and 420th in the world, was arrested two weeks ago and charged with raping a 20-year-old woman during a party at his apartment in Starkville, Mississippi. He's also charged with furnishing beer to a minor. Doerr admits that he and the victim had sex, but claims it was consenual. If convicted, the tennis prodigy faces a possible life sentence. A shy, British tennis player in the Oktibbeha County Jail -- what could go wrong there?

Does your sister already miss me? Send all Thanksgiving stories to Jacob.Osterhout@gmail.com.