Friday, November 12, 2010

I Immediately Regret This Decision

Villanova freshman JayVaughn Pinkston has been charged with two counts of simple assault and harassment after a fight at a frat party last weekend. Pinkston will be still practice with the team, but he will be sitting out of games for now, while the school reviews the case. This is terrible news for both JayVaughn and the school, and hopefully it's just an isolated incident of immaturity, and he learns from his mistake. Anyway, let's take a look at the reports "Fire Joe Morgan style" to try to make sense of the situation.

"As a result of the fight, which broke out about 3:30 a.m..."
There's his first mistake. Everybody knows nothing good happens at 3:30 in the morning.


"Pinkston was charged by Upper Merion Township Police Thursday for his part in a fracas at the Sigma Phi Epsilon House."
Well, James Naismith was a former "SigEp", so I'll give Pinkston the benefit of the doubt and assume he was there to brush up on his basketball history. Plus how bad can a "fracas" be?

""[He] started bleeding a lot. It turned into a whole brawl. . . . Someone hit [the second frat brother] and he went unconscious."
Okay, apparently a fracas is pretty bad, but surely there was a good reason why Pinkston became so angry.

"Pinkston was locked inside a room with a female..."
Still searching for a reason to be angry...

Pinkston "
had to break down the door to escape."
Now he sounds like an action movie star. Though I'm still not sure why he was in such a rush to get out of there.

"...he was locked inside of the house's laundry room..."
Okay, say no more. Frat house... dirty laundry... Being locked in with that smell is enough to drive any man to violence.

"Pinkston and his friends were waiting for a ride outside the house."
Good idea JayVaughn. It was a stupid college frat boy prank. Just forget it and get out of there.

""[The first frat brother] was taunting him [about the laundry room], said it was disrespectful and then Jayvaughn turned around and punched [him] in the face," the witness said... The co-ed said that Pinkston was provoked by the jealous fraternity brother."
Come on, this frat boy kind of had it coming. However, because Pinkston is a big college basketball star, an incident like this is going to draw national news attention. If Pinkston was a regular student, maybe a fight like this is dismissed as drunk college kids acting stupid, and both parties forget about it. Fair or not, student-athletes like Pinkston live under a microscope, and they have to realize that their actions have consequences.

"Police said a man was taken to Bryn Mawr Hospital, and that an assault report had been filed."
Then there's also the fact that JayVaughn is 6-foot-7 and a former boxer. If he hits someone, they're going down.

"I think I came here with some toughness," says Pinkston"
You can say that again.

""Before I played basketball," he says, "I used to box." For a period of four years, between the ages of seven and 11, Pinkston dabbled in competitive boxing in junior Golden Gloves tournaments. Even at that point in his life, he was gifted with a dose of size and power. In particular, he recalls his first match just before he turned eight years of age. "I knocked a kid out," he recalls."

Yeah... apparently that frat brother missed this Nova Notebook article last month.


"I'll watch (boxing) once in a blue," he says, "but not much more than that."
Local weather reports indicate the moon was Villanova blue that night.

"Jay Wright added,JayVaughn is very aware of the seriousness of this matter and how it could impact the team. He understands there is a great lesson to be learned here.”"
Let's hope he learned his lesson and can get back on the court as soon as possible. After all, JayVaughn is still just an 18 year-old kid, and we've all made our share of mistakes as teenagers.

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