Unless it’s a quarterback, when a pouting backup football player refuses to enter a game — which happens more than you probably think — sometimes we never see it or even learn of it, at least while it is relevant (if it ever is at all). When a substitute basketball player does that — even in a road game — everybody notices right away or finds out quickly. And it tends to matter more.
Why is that?
Simple. A football team has so many moving parts we don’t see them all. It’s about 10 times as big as a basketball squad. So, on the hardwood, all the little dramas are more evident, and have more potential impact. And the fewer the elements, the more tenuous the chemistry.
“Yeah, a lot of it doesn’t get seen in football. In basketball one guy is a bigger piece of the pie,” says Miah Ostrowski, a captain and point guard in basketball and starting receiver in football at the University of Hawaii. “A football team has 120 guys. A basketball player is one-tenth of the pie.”
So, you can’t hide it when forward Trevor Wiseman decides to remain seated when his presence is requested on the court by coach Gib Arnold, which happened at San Jose State last week.
Not that Arnold would want to try to sweep the incident away quietly. Sure, he’d like to have Wiseman available to play Thursday in UH’s biggest WAC game of the season, at home against Nevada, even though the former starter’s minutes have diminished with the emergence of Joston Thomas. But there’s no room for insubordination from anyone; when it’s allowed, it tends to spread.
The best thing now that can happen for the team and Wiseman’s college hoops career is UH beating the Wolf Pack without him. Then the sophomore will either do what he needs to do to try to rejoin the Rainbows or start looking for a school where he can play more — probably one at a lower level.
“To me, he’s a good guy, a good friend, a brother,” Ostrowski says. “Guys come in (to a program) with high profiles and they want to contribute and everyone is competitive by nature. The team will miss him but Coach made a decision. No one’s thinking about it, we’re really focused on Nevada.”
Arnold wasn’t commenting on Wiseman after practice Tuesday, probably didn’t even know where he was. But he likes where the rest of his team is — even if it’s rolling around on the court wrestling in anger for a few seconds, which three of the players did toward the end of the session. It finished with some harsh words to be smoothed over, but everyone came out of it physically unscathed.
“Our last two practices are as good as any all year,” Arnold says. “Guys are going at it, guys are going after each other. You can tell something big is coming up. The temperament and tempo in practice is increasing. I like that they’re battling. It’s a competitive group.”
The really sad part of this story is that until the San Jose State incident Wiseman always seemed like the kind of player born for this kind of hardscrabble environment. A blue-collar boards crasher full of floor-burn scars, willing to do whatever necessary to win a game — even if it’s as low-profile as scrap in practice or play just a minute in a game to keep a starter out of foul trouble.
“Sometimes things like this make a team better,” says Ostrowski, optimistically.
Maybe. But I don’t think so in this case. With the WAC’s best team coming to town, it’s just bad timing.
