Red Right 88

Brandon Davies should have gone to OSU

On Tuesday, BYU dismissed starting forward Brandon Davies from the team for the rest of the season for a violation of the school’s honor code. Davies reportedly had sex with his girlfriend.

Davies, who started 26 of 29 games for the third-ranked Cougars, averaged 11.1 points and a team-leading 6.2 rebounds. The team felt his loss right away, losing Wednesday night to New Mexico.

The dismissal greatly reduces BYU’s chances of being this year’s Butler in the upcoming NCAA tournament, as Kurt Kragthorpe explains in The Salt Lake Tribune:

This team could not lose afford to lose anybody from the playing rotation, and Davies is one of BYU’s best athletes. The Cougars were not especially deep to begin with, basically using six players for extended minutes and piecing things together from there. … The Honor Code is part of what distinguishes BYU as a private, church-owned school. … There’s obviously no double standard in play for prominent athletes.

No double standard for prominent athletes? What’s that about?

Davies should have gone to Ohio State. Then he would have just been suspended for a game next season against IUPUI.

Clearly BYU needs to get its priorities straightened out.

The only thing we can’t figure out is how Jim McMahon made it through four years at BYU without violating the honor code?

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Tribe general manager Chris Antonetti reportedly has doubts that center fielder Grady Sizemore will be ready to start the season on the opening day roster.

We’re cool with that. The Indians are not going to contend this season, so we’d rather see Sizemore get healthy and play in the last 140+ games of the season than rush to be ready for the opener and then miss a bigger chunk of the season if he’s not fully healthy.

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Andy Carroll, the £35 million pound man, is reportedly set to make his Liverpool debut on Sunday against Manchester United.

Time to start earning your money, son.

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Showing how great minds think alike, Terry Pluto echoes something we touched on briefly yesterday, that the NFL Combine is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to drafting players. Pluto writes that:

When it comes to the NFL draft, let’s hope the Browns do exactly what they did a year ago in the first round — they took the best pure football player, according to their ratings.

They didn’t lose focus with all the smoke from the NFL combine about how Joe Haden’s 40-yard times (about 4.5) showed he couldn’t be a big-time NFL cornerback. In fact, some scouts wondered if Haden could be better suited for safety.

Browns General Manager Tom Heckert did something very surprising for the NFL. He watched game tapes of Haden, over and over. He relied on reports from his scouts, who personally observed Haden in game conditions. They checked his character. They determined he was a guy who could really play, basing that judgment on how he played in games.

Until he shows us otherwise, we’re confident the Browns are in good hands with Heckert and team president Mike Holmgren running the draft board.

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Staying on the NFL Draft, would the Browns consider selecting Oregon linebacker Casey Matthews?

That would be fine with us – as long as the Browns feel Matthews is a solid pick.

We’d hate for them to pick him, though, solely because they didn’t draft his brother, Clay III, in 2009. That wouldn’t make any sense, but we’re getting the feeling that people seem to be leaning toward that way of thinking.

Hopefully general manager Tom Heckert isn’t one of those people.