Patsos Keeps Bringin' The Crazy

Last week, Loyola MD head coach Jimmy Patsos decided the best way to beat Davidson was to double team Stephen Curry for the entire game--a move that was insulting to his own players and led to a predictably embarrassing loss. The Wildcats started an 18-0 run at the 15 minute mark of the first half and never looked back. Patsos didn't help himself with post-game comments like this one:

"We had to play against an NBA player tonight," Patsos explained. "Anybody else ever hold him scoreless? I'm a history major. They're going to remember that we held him scoreless or we lost by 30?"

(History major to history major, Jimmy, I'm gonna go with neither.)

On PTI, Kornheiser and Wilbon justifiably wondered (as Davidson coach Bob McKillop had in his post-game remarks) if Patsos had been more interested in shutting out Curry than winning the game. Which prompted Patsos to send them a lengthy email explaining himself. In it there is this gem of a paragraph:

As an American I wish we had leaders like McKillop and Curry, who could have gotten the CIA and FBI to talk so we could have prevented the 9-11 tragedy, or saw that Fannie Mae was creating a mortgage crisis coming which could cripple a country. The Davidson basketball family united the way I wish Wall Street would have instead of letting so many Americans retirement be lost. I wish his staff could have advised the administration who got us into a war in Iraq which cost us countless lives, and disabilities, countless money and has gone on longer than WWII. I know these are extreme examples to show that the Davidson basketball family adjusted, made smart choices and unselfish choices for the good of the team.

Is it at all surprising this man is a Gary Williams disciple?

Even better, the Davidson fiasco came less than a week after Patsos went to bizarre lengths to avoid ejection from a game against Cornell:

"I didn't want to get tossed out. I had my hands up in the surrender position," he said.

Patsos said video of the scene shows Loyola athletic director Joe Boylan in the stands, placing his hands on his head in astonishment. Seconds later, Patsos climbed about two rows into the seats to sit behind Boylan and ask for some advice.

"I didn't want to hurt the school or the program, but at that point I really didn't know what to do," Patsos said.

But no, his Davidson strategery was not some "self-serving promotional plan." How'd the PTI guys ever get that idea?