Dateline: Thursday, January 26, 2006

Drexel loses to Old Dominion by seven after blowing a halftime lead and giving up a run late in the ball game to the Monarchs that they never recovered from. The AP covered this story with less than great enthusiasm. In fact, their article ran all of seven sentences. Over about 200 words, you would imagine that very little could go unnoticed, but you would be wrong.

Let's look at that run a little more closely. The AP writes that a free throw by Dominick Mejia tied the game at 52. In the next sentence, well, let's let you read it for yourself.

Isaiah Hunter capped a 10-0 run for Old Dominion, putting them up 63-52 with 3:27 to play.

I was no math major but even a group of 5th and 6th graders could point the error in that statement.

Maybe the editors had one bad night. It is not like this game was covered nationally and there were probably few that even read about it on Yahoo's site other than the people who will read this article and link over. So, let's just mark that one down as bad luck.

Dateline: February 1, 2006

Apparently former Tennessee coach Don DeVoe has joined the selection committee for the NIT. This should be good for the NIT. He has a lot of former experience and replaces Gene Keady, the former Purdue head man.

The AP did a nice job of covering that on ESPN with this article in their typical sparse style of writing.

Most interesting thing about the article? DeVoe's resume.

DeVoe won more than 500 career games at five Division I schools -- Virginia Tech, Wyoming, Tennessee, Florida and Navy. He coached two years at Wyoming in the 1976-77 and 1977-78 seasons, compiling a 29-25 record.

He also served as an assistant coach at Army in the 1960s and won the 1973 NIT title with Virginia Tech in 1971.

But he was best known for his stint at Tennessee, where he led the Volunteers to seven NCAA tournament appearances in 11 seasons.

Did you catch that?

He apparently won the 1973 NIT in 1971. Someone get in touch with this man and get the plans for his time machine.

There can be no forgiving this one. Looking on the NIT's official website, DeVoe won the 1973 NIT in, amazingly enough, 1973. It looks like the editors may even have been a bit overzealous in their editing on this one. The official press release from the NCAA mentions that DeVoe began his coaching career at Virginia Tech in 1971. Perhaps an editor, in their great wisdom, chose to remove that little detail, leaving us the wondrous time anomaly.

Great work once again AP. I look forward to your crack reporting on future basketball happenings. But next time, let's wake up the editors and get them more coffee and math tutoring.