1st Semester Grades: Alex Hornat & Kyle Bailey

Grade: B

At first glance this grade might seem gratuitous considering the two have combined for 4 minutes played and 1 assist so far this season. But when considering walk-on’s we have to look beyond the numbers to measure their true value to the team. This grade is based on:

1) They bring heart. Knowing they will never appear on the floor, the walk-on needs to find other ways to influence a game. Look no further than the recent Kentucky game at Madison Square Garden. As Kemba’s desperation 3 falls short at the buzzer and is grabbed by Kentucky, who are the first players to spring off the bench and plead for a goaltending call? And if it wasn’t for them chasing down rebounds during warm-up’s, how would Jerome get all his jumpers in?

2) They got their names on jerseys. The beautiful thing about the blog at this phase is that with fewer readers than Tiger has mistresses, if I make a mistake no one notices. But in the one game they appeared in I thought both Bailey and Hornat had their names on the back. Will Rachel Uchitel please e-mail 77-74.com and let us know whether this is true; otherwise I’ll have to go with…

3) They got included in the team photo. For the rest of their lives, these kids will have their face next to future NBA’ers, immortalized on refrigerator magnets, posters, and whatever kind of promo gear the school decides to hand out. Twenty years from now they can pull out this photo and laugh about how lucky they were to play with some of these guys. Perhaps Stewie could do the voiceover: “NBA, NBA, playing overseas in Italy, NBA, incarcerated, NBA, playing overseas in Turkey”. Seriously though, it’s pretty cool and don’t think I haven’t tried to photoshop my face into that photo. And it’s possible because…

4) They are white. Normally this topic is way off-limits, but after reading Mike DiMauro’s article in The Day, apparently it’s fair game. His contention is that the decline in attendance at UConn men’s and women’s games isn’t due to the slumping economy but rather to a lack of contributing white players. So if you follow like I do then the implications are two fold: 1) that Calhoun and Auriemma have started to recruit more African-American players than in the past (which there is nothing wrong with), and 2) that Connecticut residents are racist (which will make a lot of people Elin levels of pissed off). DiMauro pretty much called the entire state of Connecticut bandwagon fans whose loyalty depends not on the success of the team but the number of white kids on the roster. So since we are all latent racist according to Freud DiMauro, I have to give out crazy extra points to my light skinned brothers.