Good morning!
Sometimes it’s better to stay in the seat. At halftime of Saturday’s UMass basketball game against Bowling Green I took a walk around the concourse and bumped into the divorce attorney who got my former wife the gold mine and me the shaft. We kept it cordial, and we kept it brief.
Richie Cook wanted a bottle of water so I grabbed a Dasani and Coke from the cooler at a makeshift concession stand and dropped the phone when I reached for the wallet. When I stooped to pick it up my dungarees split from waist to knee. I glanced behind me to see who’d noticed, tipped the clerk and walked away.
“You forgot your drinks!” she beckoned.
“It’s been one on those days,” I said, and the smirks turned to smiles.
I’ve known Richie since our beer delivery days for Luey & Abercrombie in South Deerfield. The first time I heard “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” was when he put a quarter in the jukebox at Mohawk Park in Charlemont.
A Hadley boy through-and-through his family operates a popular ice cream shop, the Flayvors of Cook Farm. Once when we were stuck in traffic amidst the urban sprawl along Route 9, I asked him, “Richie when did Hadley go to hell?”
He harrumphed and said, “When the selectmen forgot how to spell asparagus.”
The locals call it “Hadley grass” and signs for it are a hallmark of early summer, just like Deerfield for its corn and Whately for its strawberries.
Richie’s brother Gordon and his brother-in-law John Anderson were both with us, Gordon wore a bright red UMass Basketball sweatshirt that was a collector’s item. John’s a Southbridge native who used to drive prize cattle cross country.
We were in John Kennedy’s seats. He lives in Naples, Florida, but grew up in South Hadley and has degrees from UMass-Amherst and UMass-Lowell. His education helped him become wealthy enough to retire at 57 and set out to tee it up at the top-rated golf course in every state.
He is a major benefactor to his alma maters and his name is on buildings at both campuses. He was seated on the dais the day UMass basketball coach Frank Martin was hired, and athletic director Ryan Bamford looked at him and simply said, “Thank you.”
That’s when I decided to contact him and send him my column. We’ve become friends, but he doesn’t always agree with what I write. “Terrible. Your worst ever,” he said after I compared the UMass football team to the New York Jets.
John’s a fervent fan but he quickly forgives and forgets.
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Outside it was cold and blustery, but inside it was “Disco Night” at the Mullins Center and the crowd of 2,574 shucked and jived to Funkytown.
It’s a new era for UMass basketball. After decades of futility in the A-10 it joined the Mid-American Conference this year. The MAC is considered a weaker conference than the A-10, but don’t tell that to Frank Martin. “The MAC is not what the talking heads reported,” he said after last week’s loss to Bowling Green. “I used to live in that part of the country. I understood the MAC. It is a really good basketball conference.”
Dressed in a gray sports coat and maroon turtleneck, Martin sat in a seat near the scorer’s table. UMass fans love him for his stories and honesty, and they tolerate his outbursts. He’s a big man, about 6-5 and 250 pounds. He is bald, has a boomining voice and is a former boxer. Give him a Tootsie Pop and people would mistake him for Kojak.
“What the hell are you doing!?” he screamed at a player. “What the hell are you doing?” The player walked up the sideline looking at him, arms out and palms up as if to say, “What did I do wrong?”
Bamford was watching from a courtside seat behind the endline, not far from the home team’s basket. He holds the all-time career record for three-point field goals at Ithaca College. Hoops is his game and it must bother him that the Minutemen haven’t been to the postseason in the 10 years he’s been the athletic director.
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UMass was leading by six points with under four minutes left when I left to warm up the car and used an app to see the lead get whittled from seven points with 54 seconds left to an 86-all tie after the Falcons’ Javontae Campbell sank three consecutive free throws with five seconds left.
Bowling Green won in overtime, 101-100. It was an excruciating loss for the school’s loyal fans — the only kind the team has left — and they shuffled out of the Mullins Center like expressionless pod people.
Their only takeaway was seeing one of the greatest performances ever at the Mullins Center, albeit by an opponent. The 6-2, 175-pound Campbell was born and raised in Muskogee, Oklahoma, the town made famous by Merle Haggard’s Okie from Muskogee, though there was no Okie in him on the hardwood.
He was a man amongst boys, moving past defenders like pylons and playing all 45 minutes. “Astonishing” said UMass play-by-play voice Jay Burnham of Campbell’s 47-point effort.
The only person who wasn’t impressed was Frank Martin who’d challenged his team to step in and stop him. “The guy went for a 50-spot. No one asked for the matchup. We’re getting exposed with our inability to defend anybody that can drive the basketball.
The next day I watched the replay, and as the seconds ticked toward another loss Burnham said to sidekick Frank Sullivan: “A four-point advantage with 11 seconds to go… From the UMass side they feel like they’ve seen it the last however many years. You had it. You’re in control…”
And you blew it.
UMass lost again Tuesday, by three points at Ohio. At this writing they’re 9-7 and 0-4 in the MAC. The good news is that the next three games are against Ball State (3:30 p.m. today at home), Western Michigan and Northern Illinois who are a combined 1-9.
Martin said he hopes his team finally gets the message. “Somebody’s gotta say, ‘I’m tired of Frank yelling at me.”
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“If you want to see good basketball, do yourself a favor and watch the women’s team,” said South Deerfield’s Dan Carmody.
Coach Mike Leflar’s Minutewomen (10-3; 2-1) won their first two conference games before losing to Miami-Ohio (11-4; 3-0) in Oxford on Wednesday, 72-60, after they were unable to overcome a 30-13 second quarter drubbing.
Their other two losses were on the road against Army and Youngstown State, both by three points. Meanwhile they romped past sister school UMass-Lowell by 40 points and beat BC by nine points, and it’s always fun to beat BC in any sport.
Going into Wednesday, sophomore point guard Yahmani McKayle of Queens had 55 assists and was averaging 15.4 points. Freshman forward Megan Olbrys of Norwood was averaging 15 points and had a team-leading 81 rebounds and BC/Seton Hall transfer Allie Palmieri of Trumbull, Connecticut, was averaging 10.9 points. Sophomore Ayanna Franks of Windsor, Connecticut, was tied for 31st nationally with 40 steals and had four more on Wednesday.,
The Minutewomen host Central Michigan today at 1 p.m. as part of a doubleheader, followed by the men’s game against Akron.
Parking’s free for all women’s hoops games and ticket prices are reasonable. Next Wednesday they’ll have an early 11 a.m. tip-off against Akron in a contest billed as “the best field trip ever education day.”
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Chris Russo on NBC’s Ravens-Steelers broadcast: “Mike Tirico nailed it. He captured the excitement. He was on top of it. I don’t know if he’s Gowdy or Enberg that’s a high level but it was a big weekend for Syracuse broadcasters. Tirico and (Sean) McDonough, Thursday night with the Ole Miss game, was as good as you can get as a broadcaster, phenomenal.”
Russo wasn’t as complimentary of Sunday night’s sideline reporter Melissa Stark, who in the immediate aftermath of Aaron Rodgers’s win-or-go-home effort asked him if “this was the last hurrah.”
“She was wrong with her timing, almost like Jim Gray asking Pete Rose at the All Star Game in ’99 about his gambling. Rodgers had just had a tremendous fourth quarter and she’s trying to beat everybody to the story by asking if it’s his last game. You could tell Rodgers was annoyed. It wasn’t the time to ask that.”
Stark hinted she was being badgered by her producer in the control booth. As Rodgers walked off camera she said, “I had to ask.”
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SQUIBBERS: Kudos to former Mahar QB Scott Woodward whose Middlesex School football teams have gone 12-5 during his two years as the head coach. Middlesex was 2-14 the previous two seasons before he was hired. … Red Sox spring training tickets went on sale Thursday and prices range from $48.50 to see the Pirates up to $108 for the Yankees. Call your congressman and complain about the affordability. …Washington’s 39-year-old backup QB Josh Johnson threw for one touchdown and ran for another against the Eagles on Sunday. “Showin’ the wheels of a guy not a day over 38,” joked London Fletcher. … Lane Kiffin is getting his Ole Miss playoff bonuses covered by LSU after they agreed to cover whatever he would’ve made by staying in Oxford. … Gotta say Burt Reynolds would’ve been the perfect actor to play the part in the Baker Mayfield Story. … The Post’s Jon Heyman thinks the Mets have the best shot of landing Tarik Skubal because they have the best prospects to trade. … 2010 Super Bowl MVP Aaron Rodgers is 45/1 to do it again this year. Drake Maye and Josh Allen are both 11/1. … The Patriots are back in the playoffs and the Jets, Raiders and Titans are going home. “The toughest part of getting to the top of the ladder is getting through the crowd at the bottom,” said Bill Parcells.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet715@icloud.com.