Another One Bites The Dust

Just weeks after the biggest scandal to hit the PC athletic department in years, now we have another problem to deal with. The Greedy Peterson Era came to a shocking and abrupt end today, as Keno Davis announced his dismissal from the team for violating an unspecified team rule (check out the Projo article here). Considering we’ve already lost 4 players in the last month, I’d say kicking our best player off the team had to be the result of a pretty serious incident. Personally, I can’t wait to find out what the hell he did. Did he beat the piss out of someone too? Is it possible we had 3 sociopaths on this team? Or was he just doing coke on the side? Seriously, this should be a great story.

I don’t even know who to blame for this. I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s great to see the athletic department holding the players accountable, as they should. But really, this begs the question of what the hell is going on with this team. Are we recruiting assholes or is there a culture in the locker room that encourages players to be idiots and/or criminals? If it’s an isolated incident, fine, the kid was a jackass. That’s not what we’re dealing with here. We had at least 2 players who decided it was a good idea to beat the hell out of a kid at random, which is troubling enough. Now, our leading scorer is off the team after doing God knows what. Either we’re just taking thugs that no one else wants (I know, Greedy was Welsh’s recruit, but Lacy and Still were Keno’s) or the players have the idea ingrained in their heads that they can do whatever the hell they want AFTER they get to Providence. I said previously that tough times like this will show what a coach is really made of. Keno, you’re not off to a good start.

As for the basketball side of this, which really doesn’t seem so important anymore, the team is effectively going to be no better next year now. Greedy Peterson was not a good defender, a fairly awful teammate, and don’t get me started about his basketball IQ, but the simple fact is he put up averages of 20 and 10 last year.  At the very least, he was capable of putting the team on his back to at least keep things competitive last season. We don’t have that option next year, and the team will be worse off in the short term. Whether or not this will end up being addition by subtraction in the long run through the loss of a notorious ballhog who routinely made awful decisions on the court remains to be seen, but you can rest assured that season ticket sales are going to plummet next year. It should be interesting to see how this plays out. Hopefully Vincent Council doesn’t decide to bail, because he’s just about all we’ve got right now.

-SM

EDIT: Turns out Greedy spoke to Slam Magazine saying he’s looking at going pro in Europe in an attempt to follow in Brandon Jennings’ footsteps (see article here). The question that remains to be answered here is what came first, the decision to go pro or the dismissal from the team. If he hired an agent, that would certainly constitute a rules violation, but we don’t know at this stage if perhaps he was dismissed for another reason first and then decided to go pro because he had no other options.

EDIT #2: From the Scout forums, apparently the ABC affiliate in Providence is reporting that Greedy got drunk/high with a recruit. Also something of a “sexual nature” was involved. Cue the Jesus Shuttlesworth jokes.

EDIT #3: Another update from Kevin McNamara here. Giplaye and Coleman “not comfortable”? Yikes. 15 year old kids involved? Double yikes. I don’t like the sound of this AT ALL. This may end up being as bad or maybe worse than Yerkingate.