While Mr. Brennan may have tried to smooth over our seniors' still-salted wounds during announcements this morning by suggesting that they may have - um - "loosened the lid" for the faculty yesterday afternoon and allowed their teachers to "feel good about themselves", what he was probably doing was helping to ensure that it was their own self-esteem that was, in fact, still intact.
What may have inadvertently made the whole embarrassing scenario a whole lot worse is that The Network was there for the very first time with live, sideline-to-sideline coverage - our own 'utilityman', Max Zweiner, was all over the gym bringing coverage to the people - that wasn't merely broadcast to the Hendricken community....
....it was sent out live to the whole freakin' planet.
Fans can still watch the entire contest (if it can actually be referred to as such) in the bottom Ustream viewer at the top of the site.
After the seniors took an early 2-0 lead, it was all downhill from there. The seniors' seeming youthful overconfidence, complete and utter lack of execution, awful shot selection (The Network's own Zach Johnson tossed up some bricks that lent new meaning to the word 'crash'), inability to hit layups, and what appeared to be their collective decision to quit shortly after the second half had begun all added up to new depths in their class's performance, in what is now a very long line of dismal performances.
It's not surprising; it's really just sad.
Mr. Monahan chimed in following the game, pointing to the "rough" nature of the seniors' play in what is supposed to be a goodwill game - indeed, Coach Pantaleo chipped a tooth - something that required the second of the two Bash Brothers, Coach Haddeland, to execute a discreet takedown of varsity sharpshooter Chris O'Brien. It was, in fact, Coach Monahan that most directly contributed to the massacre, as he managed to hit on 39 of 41 shots from the field (including 27 from beyond the NBA arc) for an actual total of 105 points - however, once again, in the name of the whole self-esteem movement, the final tallies were scaled.
The one 'feel-good' moment for the seniors came here:
Kinda like performing karate on whipped cream.
Throughout the course of the game, The Network's own Max Zweiner caught up with some of the participants to get some insights. Zach Johnson, who was doing double duty as both an alleged player and as a Network correspondent, did his best to make excuses:
Mr. Lourenco felt that "both teams played hard":
Mr. Monahan took things way too seriously:
Mr. Curtis was painfully honest:
And, of course, Coach Gomes had nothing but nice things to say about everyone, which continues to be a fault on which he's working:
So, once again, it appears that a current graduating class will have to depend on those who follow in their footsteps to break the death-grip of dominance that the faculty - which now appears to be living rent-free in the heads of all Hendricken athletes - has on this game. There's no doubt that one day that they, too, hope to see the trophy on a much more up-close-and-personal sense than merely pictures such as this one -
Good luck with that.
