Devastating news for a lot of reasons. I would like to think that most of us (all of us?) recognize this is bigger than basketball. People’s lives have been ruined regardless of the truth, and I’m sure that isn’t lost on a vast majority of us.
But we are all here for one reason, and while we know our favorite players aren’t superheroes that we can count on to be bastion of good, this is a tough pill to swallow. The holidays can be a rough time for a lot of us, for a myriad of reasons, myself included. And while we limp to the finish line of this cursed season (bah humbug), this is literally painful to me and I’m sure I’m not alone. No matter what else was going on, it was always nice to have that little bit of light in the back of my mind knowing that our next game was x days away. Hell, I had the Purdue game circled on my calendar weeks ago. It’s ok for us to feel like crap about this from a basketball perspective. It doesn’t mean we are discounting any potential victim’s suffering or elevating ours over theirs. It’s not a contest. Others suffering more than us doesn’t completely invalidate our own. Anyone that’s on this board probably puts an unhealthy amount of energy into this team, and this was the year it was supposed to pay dividends. Just a week ago I thought to myself how a TSJ injury might be the worst thing that could happen. Well… it’s humbling to see how wrong I can be.
Whether TSJ is a victim or someone else is, I ultimately hope justice is served, regardless of how it affects my team. But man, we were watching something special, and it sucks how that’s in serious jeopardy. I wouldn’t want the university or DIA to look the other way on this for the sake of wins. I just wish it wasn’t something that happened or potentially happened.
I hope the team is able to come back from this and it can still be a special season, however unlikely that may be. This sucks for us, and it’s ok to admit it. And it should go without saying, but I hope whoever the victim(s) might be in this situation, I hope they are given a path towards healing whatever that looks like.