HERTZEL COLUMN - Atmosphere markedly different in Coliseum

By Bob Hertzel

MORGANTOWN — You’d of thought a gang of master criminals had hit the Coliseum box office and made off with the take from the crowd of 15,593 fans who jammed their way in for Monday night’s West Virginia-Villanova basketball game judging by the police presence.

There were university police and state police everywhere you turned. Everyone but Joe Friday and Lenny Briscoe, it seemed, had gathered to make sure that gang of master criminals who come to the basketball games disguised as college students didn’t get out of hand.

This was the first night after the knee jerk reaction – the emphasis on the word jerk after the student’s unruly performance for last Friday’s Pitt game — and there were changes in the air.

To begin with, the students were not going to be allowed to shout “Suck eggs” when a visiting player was introduced.

Drastic stuff, this reform that is supposed to bring the WVU student section into the 21st century of political correctness.

One thing was for certain. The students weren’t scared off by entering the armed camp. They came in droves, just as they should, and they were geared up, just like they should be.

They just … they just were like all the other student bodies you see.

It wasn’t that they were restrained. Not at all. They hooted and they hollered and if they had an extra quarter, they didn’t fling it at an opposing coach, just as they didn’t holler obscenities at them or insults that had the TV networks wondering how they could mute the crowd and yet capture its spirit.

Early in the day, Bob Huggins had ventured out to discuss matters with the students, and while he absolutely refused to divulge what he said, it can safely be assumed he asked them to understand and to follow the directives that were issued.

“When people are really good to you, and the students have been good to us, you want to help thme but you keep it in house. That’s the way I am. I take care of people who are good to me,” Huggins said.

In return, the students had a little bit of a surprise presented them by the players, half the WVU squad coming out for final warm-ups from the club section and through the stands where the students sit, taking high fives and pats on the back as they danced down the aisle.

“We just wanted to show them it wasn’t us and we were with them,” guard Joe Mazzulla said of the decision to come down through the stands.

The first change that was noticeable came when the Villanova team was introduced. Normally there are three people out on the court with signs, including the YMCA man himself, Ryan J. Boyd, coercing the students to chant “Who cares?” “So What?” “Go Home.” “Big Deal.” and “Suck Eggs.”

However, in our new politically correct era of student fan behavior, there is to be no heckling.

Instead, the students just turned their backs on the court when Villanova was introduced.

There were other nuances. In the Pitt game, the National Anthem was denigrated by derogatory Pitt cheers while being sung, so this time a veteran who is also a student, Steve Ernst, showed up on the video board asking for “respect for the anthem and everything it stands for.”

Respect there was, although there was still a lot of hooting and hollering and one gigantic “O” at the proper moment, as if to say you aren’t going to take away all of my political incorrectness.”

As the night went on, the students got loud, to be sure. They cheered when they should have cheered, booed when they should have booed.

It was almost like going to a game when Jerry West was playing … or at least as we picture it today.

So far as could be told, there were no coins being fired out of the stands, no objectionable curse words.

Your old Aunt Tilly would have felt right at home.

But there was one problem.

The West Virginia players lacked intensity and while they absolutely refuse to believe the lack of student involvement had anything to do with that, can you really be sure? They certainly couldn’t come up with a reason why they would play such a big home game and be flat.

“That stuff had nothing to do with us,” said Da’Sean Butler. “None of us were mad at the students. People were blowing it all out of proportion.”

The truth is, what was missing was a certain intimidation factor, something that probably should be missing, but the politically incorrect needling of Khalid El Amin, who was short and had the students chanting “Gary Coleman” or the offering of tissues to Notre Dame’s Troy Murphy, inferring he was a crybaby.

Villanova came in and played proud and tall and strong and while the crowd was loud and faithful, it did lack the intimidating value that it had in the past … a fair tradeoff for not having athletes feel they are in danger and having children hearing things that they should not hear, but it was markedly different.

E-mail Bob Hertzel at bhertzel@hotmail.com.

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