YES, records are made to be broken. But not like this. This doesn’t sound like
a broken recordBy all accounts, Nykesha Sales is a good person and an outstanding player deserving of any honor she might earn as a University of Connecticut basketball great.
Key word being earn. Not handed to her like the career school scoring record she now technically owns because of Tuesday's staged farce in which the injured Sales was allowed to limp to an uncontested layup in UConn's game against Villanova, giving her the two points she needed to pass Kerry Bascom.
That Husky coach Geno Auriemma colluded with Villanova coach Harry Perretta to trade the Sales basket for a freebie on the other end, and that Auriemma got "sign-offs" (how appropriate that the corporate-cover-your-butt jargon was used) from Bascom and Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese don't make this acceptable.
It makes it worse.
ON the surface, the former record holder says she is pleased to relinquish her spot in the record book to Sales. But deep down? I'm not a mind reader, but I know that anyone who plays competitive sports -- man or woman, pro, college or high school -- does not want something taken away unfairly.
Remember Bonnie Blair's comments before the recently-completed Winter Olympics? She said she didn't mind her speedskating records being broken, but was upset about radical new technology (the clap skate) being used to do it.
Bascom was put in an unfair spot. If she didn't go along with the plan, she'd be labeled selfish. And unless she is the most altruistic athlete (now there's an oxymoron) of all-time, I bet she's harboring at least some resentment -- not because her mark was broken, but because of the contrived fashion in which it was done.
University of Hawaii women's coach Vince Goo didn't like the whole deal.
"We tell our players to go hard from the opening tip to the final horn and that was a contradiction. I preach that and I'm sure others do," Goo said. "What happened the other night doesn't really buy into what we're trying to teach the players about competition."
FORMER UH star Lynette Liu was the Wahine career scoring leader for several years until Judy Mosely broke her mark, fair and square.
"Judy earned it. Deep down inside, it hurt a little, but I had my time," Liu said. "But it wasn't fair what they did the other night, to any of the people involved. Sales was two points shy of being the career leader before she got hurt. So what? What about all the others who have fallen three points short, or four points short?"
She added that the stunt will cost women's basketball some credibility among a segment of sports fans.
"They want to be respected like men, then they do something like this," Liu said. "If I was on the other team, I wouldn't have agreed to it. A lot of men will look down on the sport now."
Liu said her best friend from her Wahine playing days, Lisa Mann, takes the opposite view, saying the move was a positive gesture that doesn't hurt anyone and a great example of sportsmanship.
While this issue sparks nearly as many water cooler debates as Casey Martin and his golf cart, I think we can all agree that Tranghese put his foot in his mouth, big-time, with this statement in defense of approving the staged shot:
"It's a women's sport; this was a female player," he told the New York Daily News. "I am a man. I am not going to pretend to handle decisions on (men and women) exactly the same way."
I'm still trying to figure out if that's more stupid or sexist. Or both.
Auriemma is neither. This man who has done so much for women's basketball just made a mistake in judgment while trying to do a nice thing for a nice kid, and inadvertently touched off a firestorm.
As John Cougar Mellancamp once sang, "No good deed goes unpunished."
Dave Reardon is a magazine editor and freelance
writer who has covered Hawaii sports since 1977.
He can be reached via the Star-Bulletin or
by email at dreardon@hmsa.com.
