THE BN IKI-\l> BEACON
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16,2001
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The Answer’ to saving the NBA - AlleiUyerson
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running. He stopped her
would become a member; Of
country team. She accepted and
to run for Behrend. After theCr
season was over, she then joined the outdoor
track and field team. She has also been a
member of this team since her sophomore
year. This year she is extremely"
be a team member on BehrendY
track and field team, ; -
This active student cameto i
Wattsburg, Pennsylvania/ She .
Seneca High School where sheparticip».
on the track and field team. Rubay was a
member during her fiejshme& sopbomo%
and junior years ind'cbftmdtwfin'the
hurdling and long jump competitions. Rubay
is a math major here with a minor in statistics.
She is currently applying to gtiduate school
for bio-statistics and hopes to pursue this
field. \ 1 ;
The indoor track and field team practices
six days a week. Generally, the team’s
Mite
editor
Michael Jordan left
basketball three years
ago, almost no one
could have
expected the
immediate effect
that his departure
would have on the
NBA. Ratings are
down, interest is
lowering and
respect for the
image of the game
is almost
nonexistent. All this
after basketball
analysts tried to
argue that Jordan’s
departure would be a
good thing for the
NBA. Their theory
hasn’t materialized.
We were told that fans were tired of
watching Michael’s Bulls win
championship after championship
with no real competition. The
analysts would say that the early
season predictions that the Bulls
would end up on top with Jordan
leading the charge wasn’t intriguing
enough for fans to tune in night after
night.
Yet the fans did tune in. In fact,
after the Bulls won the 1998 NBA
Championship and the league locked
out, NBC and Turner Sports wouldn’t
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Michael s
Bulls would
be returning for their
fourth NBA Championship.
When Jordan announced his
retirement, needless to say, these
stations didn’t give the Bulls much
airtime.
And ironically enough, the same
networks that waited for Jordan’s
announcement before they would
release their schedule were the
networks with basketball analysts that
said that Jordan was bad for the NBA.
Why would these networks care
whether or not Jordan was returning if
his Bulls’ dominance was bad for
ratings?
What these networks didn’t realize
is that competitive games can’t
compete with a legend. Fans would
rather see what else Jordan had up his
sleeves (if uniforms had them) instead
of who won the nail-biter between the
Heat and Mavericks. The networks
just thought that with Jordan gone,
there would be more competitive
games with the outcome
unpredictable.
Three years later...
Whew! Jordan is gone, the Bulls
are worse than Golden State, and the
basketball analysts have more to
analyze and talk about than they have
in over ten years, right? Sort of.
Jordan is gone and the Bulls do suck,
however basketball analysts aren’t
exactly having a ball like they
anticipated. Analysis consists of
which teammates are bickering, which
players are releasing rap albums filled
with bigoted lyrics and which team
(stress the singular) will win 60 games
SPORTS
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this year.
Well, is it even important for the
NBA to have a slue of teams above
the 60-win mark? You wouldn’t think
so. But look at history. The more
they found
games a particular team has won, the
more interest there has been for that
sport, be it basketball, baseball or even
golf (Tiger).
In baseball, the Yankees won 114
games in 1998 when baseball was at
its peak in popularity since the strike
in 1994. Granted, you could credit
baseball’s popularity boom to the
Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa
homerun race, but then why did
baseball’s ratings continue to boom
when the postseason hit? It’s because
fans realized they were watching
greatness in what is possibly the
greatest baseball team of all time.
More relevant to the NBA would be
the Bulls’ run at 70 wins in 1996. The
more the Bulls won, the more the
people watched. It’s obvious that the
bigger the separation that there is
between the league’s elite and the
league’s not so elite, the better it is for
the sport. This season, no team has a
shot at even coming close to 70 wins.
60 could even be considered a
surprise.
But it’s not so much the lack of a
dominant team that has put the NBA
in a slump. It’s the lack of a superstar;
a model player that when fans think of
the NBA in the year 2001, they
associate it with the name of one
player. The 1960 s belonged to Wilt
Chamberlain. The 70s centered
around Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the
80s and 90s were stamped by
Michael’s excellency.
Last season made it pretty apparent
that Shaquille O'Neal was the new
poster boy for the NBA. This year,
Kobe Btyant has vowed to change
that. Yeah, partly with his play, but
more so with his mouth. He
Indoor track & field continues to improve
by Jamie Salapek
staff writer
One month into the Indoor Track and Field
season, the Behrend track team is dashing past
the competition. On February 9, the team
competed in the Baldwin-Wallace
Invitational, and came out ahead of the pack.
The Behrend track team proved to have a
strong roster, with several athletes walking
away as place takers. Lindsay Schulte came
out of the meet taking three places. Schulte
placed fourth in the 300-meter dash with a
time 0f44.36 and third in the triple jump with
a mark of 33-01.5. The women’s 4x200-meter
relay team of Michelle Gutting, Heather Efaw,
Kathy Perry and Lindsay Schulte ranked third
with a time of 1:58.34.
The men’s track team had an impressive
list of strong performances for Behrend. Keith
Cerroni was a place winner in four events.
Cerroni placed third in the 55-meter dash,
clocking in at 6.82, and second in the 300-
meter dash at 38.34. Dave Ober was a close
third in the 300-meter dash with 38.66. Jay
Davids took third in the high jump with the
height of 6'-2”. Kris Ivie captured two sixth
places in the long and triple jump, as Tim
Linden edged Ivie to take fifth place in the
triple jump. The Behrend men placed third
in the 4x200-meter relay, with the team of
Keith Cerroni, Greg Cooper, Garrett Amdt,
and Dave Ober, marking a time of 1:40.84.
Cerroni, Cooper, Amdt and Davids also placed
third in the 4x400-meter, with a time of
3:41.94.
MEN’S BASKETBALL
continued from page IB
develop a good work ethic and a real positive
attitude towards the team and team play, which
will help us in the following years. This was
the first time many of these players have
played together. They are coming from
different programs, and we wanted to develop
that foundation through hard work. The work
ethic would then carry over into games. I think
we’ve worked hard every day, but they didn’t
realize at first how difficult it is to compete at
this level. We got over the hump there in mid-
January and started to really come together
as a team.” All that hard work the team has
gone through will be needed once Behrend
runs into the other three competitive AMCC
teams.
The second round of the playoffs will get
more interesting for Behrend. If the Lions
run into Pitt-Bradford for the first game on
February 23, then the young Behrend squad
will have their hands full. The Lions lost by
only 4 points to Bradford back on January 10,
but then lost to them by 16 points the second
time around. The Panthers, by far the most
improved team as the season wore on, will be
“jokingly” threatened to ship his
play (with mouth) elsewhere and
has taken over Shaq’s spot as the
go-to guy in LA. Meanwhile, the
Lakers have fallen to fourth in the
Western Conference.
But while Shaq and Kobe battle
for their spotlight in LA, there may
some movement over in the east that
brings hope to a dying league. This
past week, Allen Iverson changed hi
focus from being the star on the
NBA’s best team, to being a leader it
a movement that the NBA must take.
For too long we’ve tried to convince
fans to look past the controversial
aspects of athletes. We’ve tried to
bury the talent of tattooed and
dreadlocked athletes before they coi
breathe life into sports that needed ii
If the NBA were smart and if
basketball analysts would shut their
mouths for a couple of seconds,
maybe we could embrace Iverson as
the new poster boy for the NBA.
Something needs to be done and it
shouldn’t involve making greatness
out of athletes that aren’t. It should
begin by looking at the talent that is
out there, and instead of making
another Michael Jordan, start
embracing players like Iverson that
are winning games for their team, not
for themselves.
The league is faced with having to
match the excitement of its greatest
player ever winning championships
for arguably die greatest team ever.
We had the privilege of witnessing
greatness in the sport of basketball.
Unfortunately, there is no player, or
team to spark a light at the end of the
tunnel. A tunnel that began with
Jordan’s departure and will end when
a player finally begins to act like a
role model and takes on the reigns of
the NBA with a stronger sense of its
history, rather than a dark vision for its
future.
Coach Rich Hoffman commented, “we had
several strong performances. Keith Cerroni
ran very well in the 55-meter and 300-meter,
which was also a significant factor on our two
sprint relays. Dave Ober ran very well in the
300-meter and 4x200 relay. Greg Cooper had
a great 4x400-meter leg where he ran with
some fire and determination. Our 4x400 relay
cut almost 10 seconds from 3 weeks ago and
all of those guys cut about 2-3 seconds off
their splits.”
Behrend standout Lindsay Schulte
continues to impress with another outstanding
300-meter performance, with a long jump in
the triple jump to top off the meet.
Hoffman continued, “Kathy Perry, Heather
Efaw, Norine Scida and Tina Rubay all had
nice races, cutting their times significantly.”
Dennis Halaszynski improved 17 seconds in
the 5000-meter race from 3 weeks ago, and
Pat Chapman continues his determined racing
that had been a pleasant surprise thus far.
The Behrend Indoor Track and Field team
has been edging the competition from meet
to meet. “We have a core of good people who
love track and field and want to get better.
Our conditioning is getting better and
beginning to payoff. 1 think overall we have
decent balance, but our depth is limited,”
stated Coach Hoffman.
In any sport, practice makes perfect. As
the Behrend team improves their abilities, we
will look to them for more success in the
future. The team will next compete against
Mount Union on February 23.
riding high from their season ending winning
streak (currently at 13 games). The Lions’
postseason inexperience may very well come
into play when facing Bradford, or even La
Roche and Frostburg, whom the Lions have
proven they can beat. However, many of the
players have not experienced post-season play,
which could be the leading factor into how
much success the team will earn this year.
PHOTO BY BECKY WEINDORF
Steve Merrill looks for a teammate to
pass the ball to.