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spt_HatedEight.sPubDate = "3/1/2005 10:26:28 PM GMT";
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spt_HatedEight.sTitle = "The hated eight";
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spt_HatedEight[i-1].body = "Duke
Duke is the Martha Stewart of college basketball. Just so damned perfect. Year after year, the Blue Devils select the country’s top prospects like they were picking out avocados at an upscale produce stand. Before Elton Brand, all their players stayed for four years, long enough to establish fully developed villains. Blue Devils never swear, even when they’re sworn at. Ask yourself a question: When you fill out your NCAA office pool bracket, which team does the clueless lady from accounting or the anal-retentive dweeb from research and development select to win it all? Why, Duke, of course. Duke is for people who don’t like to roll the dice. The Blue Devils are a blue-chip stock that fluctuates occasionally but never drops. Duke is the car rated No. 1 by Consumer Reports. Unless you’re a die-hard Dukie, Duke makes you ill.
Most Hated Player: North Carolina State guard Scooter Sherrill made a “gay” remark about Duke’s J.J. Redick, which was quickly and universally deplored, as it should have been. But let’s face it, there’s something about Redick that inspires you to call him something unflattering. He fits the “too perfect” description. You put him on the line, he hits 97 percent of his throws. He probably never misses a belt loop.
The Coach: It’s difficult to hate Mike Krzyzewski. He has too much class. But feel free to be deeply envious and highly frustrated. He really never makes a misstep. His greatest flaw is a lack of a flaw. That, and a hairdo that looks like something that was applied by roofers. If he’s not going to throw a chair in anger, at least crush a paper cup in a moment of pique and miss the garbage can.
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spt_HatedEight[i-1].body = "University of North Carolina
They’re out of excuses. Tar Heels devotees had Bill Guthridge to pick on. He wasn’t “exciting” enough. So then they got Matt Doherty. How about him for excitement, huh? It’s incredibly exciting to see players mutiny and a program disintegrate.
The Heels finally went after a big fish. Roy Williams, one of the classiest and most successful college basketball coaches and a former Dean Smith assistant, returned amid much ballyhoo to save Chapel Hill and keep the sadistic Dukies from trampling on their honor. What happens? They still can’t beat Duke; they lost two weeks ago by a deuce at home. And while they will make the tournament, they're mired among pack in the ACC standings. What now? Bring back Dean, hire Michael Jordan and James Worthy as assistants, and kidnap Krzyzewski?
Most Hated Player: This school produced arguably the greatest player of all time in Michael Jordan. Now, granted, there are legions of followers — inside the North Carolina family and beyond — who love the guy. But he also set the bar pretty high. An NCAA title, then six NBA crowns. Recruits have to live with the reality that they can never top him. It must eat at fans across the nation from other schools that Carolina boasts the undisputed king of both basketball and marketing. Freakish, ungodly success is always a surefire source of resentment.
The Coach: I feel sorry for Roy Williams. I want him to win an NCAA championship. I mean, after all, Jim Harrick and Rollie Massimino won titles. So did Jerry Tarkanian. So a guy like Roy attracts a sympathy vote here. You feel Roy’s pain. You want to see him cut down the nets someday, and it doesn’t matter which school he’s working for at the time. Remember how everybody wanted John Elway to win a Super Bowl? Same phenomenon, only with recruiting hassles and unreasonable alumni.";
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spt_HatedEight[i-1].body = "Louisville
The Cardinals share the state with Kentucky, but they’ll always play second fiddle, and they have an attitude about that. It was tolerable during the days of Denny Crum, but now Rick Pitino is there, and Louisville is feeling superior. Fans have a sense of entitlement about a title.
Followers have even started adopting Pitino’s taste in clothes. They’ve discarded the overalls and the flannel shirts and now attend games with their shirts tucked in. Some of them are even wearing pompadours, including the women.
Most Hated Player: They don't have many players easy to hate right now, so we're going back a little bit. Pervis \"never-nervous\" Ellison made his rep as a freshman when he scored 25 points and sank late free throws to beat Duke in the 1986 Final Four. That should put him on our good side, right? Wrong. We hate that he squandered his talent in the NBA, going from the top overall pick in '89 to riding the pine just four years into his career.
The Coach: Pitino was a favorite in Lexington. But a harrowing stint in the NBA taught him that there is no such thing as loyalty. He bolted to Louisville without a second thought. Now he is looked upon as a mercenary, although in coaching, that is a fairly large fraternity.";
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spt_HatedEight[i-1].body = "Cincinnati
This program produced Nick Van Exel and Kenyon Martin. That’s enough reason right there. Van Exel has been a tremendous offensive player and an incredible pain in the neck for whichever NBA team he happens to be on. Martin throws elbows from the time he arrives in the parking lot.
Cincinnati has a reputation for playing tenacious defense. But no matter how rugged the Bearcats are in the regular season, they never fail to disappoint in the NCAA tournament. They are like the bullies who strut and swagger until somebody calls them out, and then they tiptoe away meekly. Nobody likes a paper tiger, even if it’s a Bearcat.
Most Hated Player: I would like to go with Van Exel, but in an upset, this designation goes to Ruben Patterson. He got into a “situation” with a nanny a while back, and is lucky he isn’t behind bars. He is a member of the Jail Blazers. He boasted that he was a “Kobe stopper,” even while being torched by Kobe. Most of all, he epitomizes the Cincinnati roughneck image. He isn’t the biggest star the school has produced, but he is one of its most prominent knuckleheads.
The Coach: Bob Huggins is a grump. Every postgame press conference is a grumblefest. He always seems like somebody constantly suffering from the curse of acid reflux. And what’s with the mock turtlenecks? George Karl wears mock turtlenecks, and it hasn’t helped HIM win a title. Mix in a three-piece suit, Hug.
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spt_HatedEight[i-1].body = "UCLA
Look no further than the 11 championship banners hanging from Pauley Pavilion. They represent excellence, but also arrogance. Bruins fans like to lord their success over the rest of college basketball. But they also suffer from a severe lack of perspective. If their team doesn’t go undefeated and win the NCAA championship, they form a lynch mob.
UCLA partisans love John Wooden, but they seem to forget that he isn’t coaching anymore, that parity has been established in college basketball, that Westwood isn’t the only destination for blue-chip recruits anymore, and that if they don’t learn to be patient and give Ben Howland a chance to return the program to prominence, the university may lose its NCAA accreditation for producing too many imbeciles.
Most Hated Player: The current Bruins are a nondescript gathering of average talent at a marquee program. It’s hard to work up much of a lather over any individual. A unique candidate for this honor is alumnus Bill Walton. When he played, he was a radical, pot-smoking, Grateful Dead-adoring anarchist who dominated college basketball. When he was a pro, more of the same. Now that he’s an announcer, he either entertains with his outspokenness, or makes people seethe with his blunt opinions. He not only has achieved success on the floor and behind the mike, he has a son who plays for the Lakers. He’s a walking billboard for UCLA superiority.
The Coach: Howland should ease the hard feelings outsiders have toward UCLA. He isn’t a phony, a clothes horse or an egotistical freak bent on career advancement. This is his dream job, and he’s here to stay. The issue here isn’t Howland, but whether the always intrusive alumni give him a chance. He needs one or two more recruiting classes before his Bruins can play his brand of brawny, defensive-minded basketball. If Howland is driven out of town, then you can hate UCLA even more.
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spt_HatedEight[i-1].body = "Kentucky
They’re bluebloods. They act like basketball royalty. They regard the Final Four as their coronation. I’m surprised they don’t travel to games in a horse-drawn carriage. They are second to UCLA in terms of NCAA titles won, but their fans treat the Bruins and everybody else like peasants.
The type of fan who roots for Kentucky also wears a white suit to Churchill Downs and attends the annual yearling sale. They don’t get blue-chip recruits, they get thoroughbreds. To make matters worse, Ashley Judd is an avid Kentucky fan. It figures. It couldn’t be somebody like Kathy Bates, right?
Most Hated Player: This is a tie between former Wildcats Pat Riley and Antoine Walker. Riley was a big man on campus under Adolph Rupp and embodied the Kentucky image of regal cockiness. He went on to distinguish himself as a head coach in the NBA, where detractors lampooned him for his sharp suits and greasy hair. Walker angers his own team’s fans for hogging the ball and taking too many three-pointers, and he also likes to talk a lot of trash for a guy who has never come close to the NBA Finals.
The Coach: Tubby Smith is really hard to hate, frankly. After all, he followed Rick Pitino. Kentucky could have hired Attila the Hun after Pitino and he would have been warmly embraced by an adoring nation. Tubby has a tendency to get a little testy at times, and he likes to ride his players hard, but he’s regarded as one of the country’s top college basketball coaches. If anything, the man is underrated, and an underrated coach at Kentucky helps to offset some of the Wildcats’ obnoxiousness.
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spt_HatedEight[i-1].body = "Arizona
The Wildcats are relatively new to the idea of antagonizing basketball fans. Arizona has only been a force for the past 20 years or so, since Lute Olson took over as head coach. But the ’Cats have made up for lost time by building a legacy of snobbery and contempt for opponents. Over the past two decades, they have supplanted UCLA as the most imperious program in the West.
They play in the desert, so there’s that country club air about them. You imagine them spending their free time playing golf, lying at poolside sipping mai tais and going to dinner in Bermuda shorts. Then when the NCAA tournament comes around, the Wildcats never choke. Sometimes they lose, but they never beat themselves. Maybe if they called a timeout they didn’t have once in a while, we’d like them more.
Most Hated Player: Damon Stoudamire was a terrific college player, but his personality came out when he left Tucson. He’s been a problem child ever since. He has an inflated opinion of his own abilities, and he apparently can’t stay away from the hippie lettuce. He represents Arizona hubris and NBA excess.
The Coach: Olson doesn’t seem like a coach, he seems like a CEO. He always wears a great suit, and his hair looks like it was borrowed from a wax museum. He shouldn’t be coaching, he should be addressing a stockholders’ meeting. He doesn’t win games, he performs hostile takeovers. I’d like to see him come down to earth like the rest of us. Spill some gravy on his shirt like Rick Majerus. Wear his tie askew like John Chaney. Maybe even toss a bowl of chick peas across a salad bar like Bob Knight. Instead, Olson is in complete control of all he surveys, and that gets a little annoying.
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spt_HatedEight[i-1].body = "Syracuse
We used to hate the Orangemen because they always seemed to gather the top talent, but could never do anything with it. That type of incompetence is difficult to tolerate. After a while, it was hard to respect Syracuse. You just wanted to tell the Orangemen not to waste our time. If you’re going to underachieve, do so in the NIT, where it is expected.
But they won the NCAA championship last year. Now they have the opposite problem. Now they are one of the chosen few. Because they no longer have the stigma of chokers, they have chips on their shoulders. Nothing less than an NCAA title will do. Looking back, I liked them better when they couldn’t get out of their own way.
Most Hated Player: Gerry McNamara is a pest. When he gets hot from outside, he can change a game. His free-throw percentage is sick. He’s a John Stockton type, the player who needles you with his energy and is constantly in your face. You just want to slip a sedative into his Gatorade.
The Coach: Jim Boeheim altered his image last year. Before he won his first NCAA championship, he had a reputation as a whiner. More of a passive whiner than an aggressive one, which is even worse. You always got the impression that he felt wronged, like the officials had a thing against bald men in cheap suits. But now he’s among the elite few active coaches with a title.
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