Daily Fix: Jim Calhoun Is A Pussy

Connecticut’s basketball coach is so spineless he makes Democrats in Congress seem tough. He doesn’t want his UConn Huskies of the big, bad, Big East to have to square off with these guys:

Dude’s scared shitless of playing a home game against Holy Cross. This is what the whiny windbag had to say about his Calhoun’s unconscionable, chickenshit last minute scratch of Holy Cross from the Connecticut bracket of the Coaches vs. Cancer tourney:

On Tuesday, he told the Republican-American of Waterbury, Conn., that he submitted a list of preferred opponents to the Gazelle Group and that Holy Cross, because of its slow-down style of play, was not among those opponents, but he denied asking that Holy Cross be kept out of the UConn site.

Calhoun told the Republican-American, “We took teams like that, like Holy Cross, and said we’d rather play Buffalo. We didn’t demand it. Those are the kind of teams that if you aren’t ready can get your confidence down pretty quick. We now have said we have no problem with Holy Cross coming here.”

Calhoun’s account has been contradicted by Holy Cross coach Ralph Willard, one of the few coaches in college hoops that isn’t an egomaniacal scumbag, who basically called bullshit on Calhoun by pointing out that the Coaches vs. Cancer tournament should be something more than an opportunity for power conference schools to pile up easy early season wins:

Holy Cross sophomore forward Andrew Keister, a survivor of childhood cancer, and his dad, Joseph, had contacted Coaches vs. Cancer tournament organizers last year about the Crusaders playing in this year’s tournament.

“He thought his playing in the tournament would be a great example for kids suffering with cancer that they can make it, that there are good outcomes,” said Willard, a cancer survivor as well. “We wanted to be in this tournament for Andrew.”

Willard said in April the Gazelle Group invited Holy Cross to play in the tournament and assured him the team would be playing in Connecticut. HC would not have accepted the invitation had it been placed at one of the other sites (Oklahoma, Memphis or Kentucky).

Willard was told at the time HC was the first team, other than the four host schools, accepted into the tourney.

Keister’s parents, family and friends, who are from New Jersey, made plans and arranged vacation time around coming to see him play at Gampel Pavilion in November.

“I’m devastated for Andrew,” Willard said. “I feel so bad for him. I’ve been in this business for a long time and this is something that just shocks me. It’s perplexing. It makes no sense.”

If you’re going to have a tournament and call it Coaches vs. Cancer, a tournament that’s supposed to support people with cancer and support cancer research, then it has to be about more than just winning and losing basketball games,” Willard said. “That’s the way I feel.”

Chalk this Jim Calhoun-induced fiasco up as reason number 5 million that college basketball and football at the Division 1 level are a filthy, rotting, corrupt cesspool. You don’t really want to wish ill on someone who isn’t Dick Cheney, Shrub, or Karl Rove but there may be no other team and individual I detest at this particular moment as the Connecticut Huskies and Jim Calhoun.

This gin-n-tonic goes to hoping that UConn has its worse season ever and Calhoun gets a proper and much-needed beat and dressing down.