EDITORIAL – Athletics drops ball in honoring Pitt players

If there’s one thing we’ve learned at Pitt, it’s to respect our elders — something that the… If there’s one thing we’ve learned at Pitt, it’s to respect our elders — something that the athletics department didn’t do during Saturday’s men’s basketball game against UConn.

The department held a ceremony that was supposed to honor its veterans: Pitt’s departing senior players, Mark McCarroll and Chevon Troutman. The ceremony featured taped interviews on the Jumbotron, framed jerseys and both players’ families. But in a stunningly bad decision, it was held after the game, which Pitt lost by nine points.

Not only was this bad timing, but it also meant that, of the 12,508 people in the sellout crowd, less than a quarter stayed to watch McCarroll and Troutman receive their honors.

The athletics department owes them an apology. Their memories of senior day shouldn’t be of thousands of backs turning on them or being honored in an emptying arena. It was a pitiful ceremony after a heartbreaking loss, in the midst of a sub-par season — hardly a good note to leave on.

Being honored after losing a game is a bit like going to the graduation ceremony after you’ve failed all your finals, and this ceremony was the ultimate instance of adding insult to injury.

Moreover, by having it at the end of the game, the department missed out on a chance to infuse the players and the Pete with Panther pride. Imagine what having this ceremony at halftime or before the game would have done for team morale. Simply rearranging the schedule of events could have converted the loss to a win, but we’ll never know now. It should be noted that the women’s team had a similar ceremony, but wisely chose to do it before its game against Rutgers.

There are still two more games left in the regular season, but they’re away games. The only way both Troutman and McCarroll will see the Pete’s court again is if Pitt makes the National Invitational Tournament, since in the NIT we’d get a home game. But they’re more likely to make the NCAA tourney, which would only give them away games and no chance for athletics to honor them.

So, from The Pitt News, we just want to express our thanks to Troutman and McCarroll. This hasn’t exactly been Pitt’s best season ever, but they deserve better than what they got. Troutman has been a tremendous player and a big man on campus at Pitt in the best sense of the title. McCarroll, we won’t forget those 26 points against Syracuse last year or your revival of the Jaron Brown headband.

We may not have a ceremony or frames or a Jumbotron, but we can still say thank you and wish the team the best of luck in tonight’s game at Boston College.