Elbows and weed: Disturbing trends in college basketball

February 9, 11:40 AMCollege Sports ExaminerJacob Osterhout

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Dumes showing off those sharp elbows.

Part of what makes college basketball so special for fans is the learning curves of young players.

These are not professionals, rather young adults still growing up and learning how to handle themselves in pressure situations. If you watch an entire season of college basketball you can see an underclassman literally grow up right before your eyes, which can be an awesome experience, like watching Jeff Teague blossom into an POY-caliber player.

Of course, the downside of watching young hoopsters mature is that they sometimes make mistakes and those mistakes can be mind-numbingly stupid mistakes.

During the second half of this season, these mistakes seem to have fallen within two categories - smoking weed (off-court) and throwing elbows (on-court).

First, let's examine the recent off-court incidents.

Terrance Joyner's transition from high school to college wasn't exactly smooth. The six-foot-two point guard from Southern California initially signed a letter of intent to play for Arkansas, but the NCAA clearinghouse denied his admission due to academics. Joyner eventually wound up at New Mexico State, where he was cleared to play at the start of the second semester in December.

With fourteen games under his belt, the freshman point guard was finally getting into a rhythm when he made a mistake that probably cost him his season. While boarding a team flight at El Paso International Airport, security discovered 1.5 marijuana cigarettes in Joyner's checked luggage. Subsequently, Joyner was arrested and suspended from the team.

Getting caught with weed mid-season is bad, but getting busted at the airport in front of your teammates is worse.

Joyner's run in with the law comes on the heels of the suspension of North Carolina sophomore guard Will Graves. While North Carolina has not released an official reason for why Graves was suspended, other than failing to "maintain the standards we expect of a Carolina basketball player," it's generally assumed that he test positive for marijuana during an in-house drug test.

Here's a sophomore guard with an immense amount of talent who had the opportunity to play a key role on a very good North Carolina basketball team and now he'll have to wait until next year because he couldn't lay off the dope until after the season finished.

Then, there are the on-court incidents of misbehavior, which involve throwing elbows.

Most recently, Indiana suspended leading scorer Devan Dumes for swinging elbows in a game against Michigan State. Clearly frustrated with his team's play in its 75-47 loss to the Spartans, Dumes began wildly throwing elbows almost every time down the court until he was kicked out of the game.                                                                                                       

The junior college transfer has since apologized for his actions, saying "I apologize to everyone involved for doing something that is uncharacteristic of how I play the game." But Coach Tom Crean has not indicated when he will let Dumes play again.

And Dumes wasn't the first Big Ten player to get disciplined for unnecessary roughness.

In a 72-54 loss to Ohio Sate in late January, Michigan freshman guard Zack Novak kicked off the trend with a right elbow in the direction of Buckeye guard P.J. Hill. Novak was immediately assessed a flagrant foul and ejected from the game. Michigan would later suspend him for another game, which the Big Ten agreed was appropriate punishment. (Teammate Manny Harris also threw an elbow in the Wolverines' game against Purdue, which got him ejected.)

After the game, Novak seemed disappointed with his own behavior. "You just got to learn from that -- you can't do that," he said. "It probably looked pretty bad. It wasn't my intention to hurt anybody. It was just sad to see."

So here we have the downside of young adults under a lot of pressure on a big stage. While they have the opportunity to rise to the occasion, they also have the ability to make mistakes and then have those mistakes highlighted by every college basketball site in America. One small slip up, one moment of lost control, can land you in the headlines.

The good part is that there's room to grow. Hopefully, lessons are learned so that mistakes won't be repeated. Apologies will be heartfelt and not just PR stunts and, in the end, these players will have another opportunity to redeem themselves.

Like this article? Hate it more than your mother-in-law? Then check out:

• Is it time for Coach K to bring back Paulus?
• The mysterious suspension of North Carolina guard Will Graves
• The top five college basketball players you've never heard of