BLOODY HELL

It’s been described as the most intense rivalry in sport.

Duke and North Carolina could play competitive tiddly winks and draw interest. Between these schools, there is so much bad blood that everything gets magnified.

Today, we saw some of that bad blood on the floor at the Dean Dome at the end of the regular season basketball finale, another chapter of this feud we’ll be seeing for years to come every time these two teams take the floor.

In case you missed it, with UNC comfortably in the lead and 14 seconds from victory against the Blue Devils, Duke’s Gerald Henderson landed a WWF-style forearm to the face of driving Carolina star Tyler Hansbrough. Hansbrough left the game with a bloody nose (and will probably look like Marcia Brady tomorrow), while Henderson was ejected and suspended for the team’s opening ACC tournament game.

Of course, the debate raging now is whether or not Henderson’s shot was intentional. Both Henderson and Coach K claim it accidental, with K saying that his program “doesn’t play like that.”

Some bloggers, such as one simply identified as LD, beg to differ.

“Everything about the punch/elbow/forearm leads to one interpretation: that Henderson was frustrated with his team's performance and the result, and in order to protect whatever sense of self worth, he had to do something violent and outside the bounds of the rules of the game. This was a vicious, violent assault (http://gunslingers.blogspot.com/2007/03/wow-how-embarrassing-for-him-and-cbs.html)”

My whole point in writing this is to establish where to go from here in a PR/Marketing sense, but I couldn’t go forward without giving my take.

-I believe that first and foremost, Hansbrough should not have been in the game in the first place. Shot to the grill aside, when a game is out of reach, most logical coaches take the stars out on the off chance a freak injury happens. Let’s say Hansbrough had broken his wrist falling on a slick spot or sprained his ankle. Roy Williams would have been hung next to the burning effigy of Bill Guthridge in Chapel Hill.

-Looking at the footage, frustrated as Henderson might be, the shot looked accidental. With Hansbrough driving, Henderson extended his arm to swat it; instead, Hansbrough had the ball knocked out to the side by a previous foul, forcing Henderson to “short-arm” the block instead. After that, it was a momentum play.

-I also think that Henderson should not have been suspended immediately. I know that is NCAA policy, but I think that there should be some remedy where league officials (not the three on the court in the heat of the moment with thousands of Carolina fans breathing down their necks) review the tape tomorrow and then determine a course of action. Knowing this, the officials should have called an intentional or flagrant foul, which would have hurt Duke today and not down the road. Personally, I would have just ended the game after the shot with 12 seconds left and the result secured.

Now on to where to go from here. The ACC tournament starts this week, and there is an off chance Duke and Carolina could face each other again. Thus, my suggestions to avoid disaster and move past “The ‘Was it Really a’ Punch”.

-Have Gerald Henderson hold a press conference before the ACC Tournament starts (maybe Wednesday or so) just to clear the air. I know he spoke to the press afterwards to clear his name, but doing so later would make his efforts seem more genuine…even if his intentions weren’t good.

-Have some official from the ACC issue a final verdict. Sure, it won’t change Henderson’s suspension, but word from the league giving final opinion will help both sides come to grips with the incident.

-This one’s a little more out of human control, but Duke needs to beat NC State Thursday without Gerald Henderson. Should Duke win, they’ll advance and get Henderson back for Friday’s second round bout. But if Duke loses, their fan base will blame the outcome on the suspension, and this incident will further simmer.

-Do whatever it takes to bar ESPN, CBS and whomever else from showing the footage ad nauseam. Sure, YouTube will always be there, but you know the networks will show this forearm for the next few weeks over and over and over and…well you get it. The best way for it to blow over is for people to move on, and seeing the clip will only make the sports fan want to go out and knock someone across the nose themselves in overexposure frustration.

I guess perception is all about which team you’re more a fan of, as was written by one blogger:

“If you're a Duke fan, the forearm with which your Gerald Henderson decked North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough was: (A) a nudge; (B) an accident; (C) a blatant offensive foul on Hansbrough. If you're a North Carolina fan, the forearm with which Henderson knocked your Hansbrough to the floor was: (A) vicious; (B) horrendous (intentionalhttp://memigo.com/info?id=630380)”

Personally, it’s March. There’s bigger and better things on the horizon for college basketball. Duke, UNC, their fans and the media should be focusing on prepping for a national championship run.

In three years of student-paper writing, I’ve heard countless times from coaches and players that they have to forget about the previous game the minute it ends and look ahead.

I hope they all take their own advice

JC