{"id":1385,"date":"2017-01-12T14:28:41","date_gmt":"2017-01-12T20:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/?p=1385"},"modified":"2017-01-12T14:29:24","modified_gmt":"2017-01-12T20:29:24","slug":"mcgill-wordsmith-chisels-champion-prose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/mcgill-wordsmith-chisels-champion-prose\/","title":{"rendered":"McGill wordsmith chisels champion prose"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harvard beat McGill in inconsequential\u00a0D-I on non-D-I action Tuesday night. Harvard’s web site reports this as\u00a0Men\u2019s Basketball Blows by McGill, 70-45<\/a>. It’s an effort\u00a0worthy of a robot. However, not all releases from university athletic departments have to be so generic.<\/p>\n

If you remember back in the offseason, Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall had an epic meltdown during a game at McGill on the Shockers’ Canadian tour. This is when I was introduced to the amazing work of Earl Zukerman. While most releases from the host school would feature a vanilla description of the proceedings with a more vanilla headline, the headline from McGill’s story was spectacular.\u00a0Wichita coach ejected as swashbuckling Shockers rally past Redmen in spicy NCAA-CIS hoops confrontation<\/a>. If everyone took pride in headline writing like\u00a0Mr. Zukerman does, reading about lopsided college basketball games would be a lot more fun.<\/p>\n

Other headlines from the foreign tours included NCAA’s Lions roar, pounce on unsuspecting Redmen hoopsters<\/a>\u00a0and NCAA’s Rattlers bitten by basketball Redmen as McGill snaps 12-game skid against USA teams<\/a>.\u00a0Occasionally, the headlines are a little too predictable. For example,\u00a0Canadian U-17 hoops squad puts Australia down under in consolation round at FIBA world championship<\/a>.\u00a0But those cases are more than compensated by efforts such as\u00a0McGill hoopsters pillage Vikes in their humble abode<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not every effort is a home run. There are the times when Zukerman tries too hard, like\u00a0The Silence of the Citadins: Daoust writes script, plays starring role as No.2 ranked Redmen hoopsters extend win streak to eight<\/a>. After that mouthful, there’s not much more to read, and one longs for the past, when a simple\u00a0Redmen rally to win thrilla at McGilla<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Gaiters game after Moose banished from premises<\/a>\u00a0would leave the reader wanting.<\/p>\n

But it’s clearly not easy producing masterful headlines night in, night out, so a little writer’s block is forgivable. Especially when you know there’s another gem around the corner like\u00a0Redmen symphony performs Ode to Joyal in Quebec City<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And Zukerman’s effort after the loss to the Crimson surely lived up to his audience’s expectations.\u00a0Harvard hoopsters master McGill in battle of Mensa men<\/a>. True, it was partly recycled from last season’s Harvard wins hotly-contested debate over McGill in men’s hoops battle between Mensa candidates<\/a>. But clearly the rosters of both teams are filled with people that have at least a 130 IQ, so that needs to be emphasized whenever the only two teams composed of geniuses battle on the hardwood.<\/p>\n

McGill may have been badly defeated on the court, but thanks to Earl Zukerman, the Redmen dominated the Crimson in the battle of post-game stories. It’s safe to say McGill is undefeated in that regard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harvard beat McGill in inconsequential\u00a0D-I on non-D-I action Tuesday night. Harvard’s web site reports this as\u00a0Men\u2019s Basketball Blows by McGill, 70-45. It’s an effort\u00a0worthy of a robot. However, not all releases from university athletic departments have to be so generic. If you remember back in the offseason, Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall had an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1385"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1396,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385\/revisions\/1396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}