Drafts and Accountability - Friday Cardinal Couple

Mitchell to Denver, No Wait, Utah

In the NBA Draft last night, Donovan Mitchell was officially picked up in the 13th pick by the Denver Nuggets, but with a trade arrangement in place to send him off to Utah, who was trading up with Denver in order to get Mitchell.

I don't follow the NBA much at all, and certainly not their draft process and prospects, but congratulations to Donovan in heading out to Salt Lake City.  Perhaps he can get some pointers on living life in a city that is less than 3% African American from Darrell Griffith.  The great #35 on the men's team played 11 years for the Jazz.  The demographics of the city have become more diverse over the past 20 years particularly, with a huge influx of Hispanic and Latino population, though the portion of African Americans still hovers around 2 1/2%.

Baseball to Louisville, No Thanks to the Men in Black

Dan McDonnell is a better man than I.  Let's get that out of the way first.  In UofL Baseball's loss to TCU in the elimination side of the bracket of the College World Series, McDonnell demurred on the officiating of the game.  The Cards lost the game 4-3 and will be heading home from Omaha.

Let's face it, the officiating was a stinker.

I will be the first to excuse officiating for missing calls in live action.  Plays happen fast, angles and perspectives play a role in perception of what happened, and humans aren't perfect.  I have absolutely no tolerance for not getting it right when there are good camera angles of the play in review, however.  There are times where the available camera angles also don't adequately capture the action to be able to affirmatively overturn a ruling on the field.  In at least one game-changing case last night, however, that wasn't the case.  In the throw at the plate, the replay clearly showed Colby Fitch putting the tag on the runner's knee before the runner's hand touched the plate, and the officials upheld the out called on the field.  Inexcusable.

Maybe I'm just a bit of an anti-authoritarian in general, but I'm a firm believer that there needs to be some degree of visible accountability for officiating in sports...particularly at the college level.  The officials are the only people on the field of play during play action that get paid.  Visible accountability should be part of that deal.  We expect these rhetorically-amateur athletes to answer questions about their play, win or lose, but the professionals get to walk off the field with no after action report, and no real accountability for their mistakes.  Pitiful.

OK, that rant out of the way...

Huge congratulations to the Baseball team for the amazing season they had.  They outperformed every expectation that anyone had for what was expected to be a rebuilding year for the program.  Dan McDonnell is a class act of a coach, and his team exudes greatness, both as players, and as people.

With so many graduating or going to the pros...one would expect a bit of a rebuilding job for 2018 for Dan and his staff. Funny...the same was said about the team last year after Burdi, Funkhouser, Kidston, Ray and Rosenbaum went to  the pros.

Great season, and I can't wait to see this team play again next year, and some of the players in the pro ranks.

-- JMcA