With the NCAA Tournament well under way, it’s easy to forget the other postseason college basketball happening. But those other tournaments can definitely matter to the participating schools, especially when there’s a rivalry involved, and the LSU Tigers – University of Louisiana at Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns game Wednesday night showed that. Ragin’ Cajuns coach Bob Marlin had plenty of complaints in the lead-up to this, including about LSU hosting despite the Cajuns’ better RPI (63 to 94) and record (27-6 entering the game to LSU’s 17-14):
Our RPI is much better, our record is much better, we feel like our gym’s better, there are a lot of things that say we should be a higher seed than we were. We’ve got the second-best record in the entire tournament out of 32 teams, but it is what it is. … There’s a lot of the old-school guys on that committee that just think LSU’s better than we are. They haven’t seen our facilities or looked at the finer print about our team. … But we’re excited to play a short trip, and I think LSU will be excited to play. Sometimes, a team that tied for ninth in their league isn’t interested in playing. But they haven’t been very good for a couple of years, so the NIT is a big step for them.
And that led to things getting really heated late in the game, when LSU coach Will Wade called a timeout up nine points with 12 seconds left, and shouted “Enjoy that!” at Marlin, who then had to be held back by assistants:
Will Wade timeout. Yells at Bob Marlin. Oh boy. pic.twitter.com/KuufTDR9fv
— Cody Worsham (@CodyWorsham) March 15, 2018
And Wade went off on Marlin in the post-game press conference as well:
Here are some key parts of that, from Cody Worsham of Tiger Rag:
“I take exception when people take shots at your program,” Wade said, referring to Marlin’s press conference earlier in the week, in which he made disparaging comments toward LSU’s program. “Our guys take exception to that. To be honest, before Sunday, ULL wasn’t even a thought in my mind. I had no idea what they were. After the last couple of days, it’s been something else. Never seen anything like that.”
…“They take shots at our gym,” Wade said. “By the way, we have an arena, not a gym. They take shots at our arena and stuff like that. That’s just not right. We aren’t scared of anybody. Point blank. Period.”
Oh, and Wade played Marlin’s Monday press conference on loop all week during practice, and there were other players who said Marlin took shots at them:
Tremont Waters, who had 9 points and 7 assists in 24 foul-plagued minutes, got wind that Marlin had called him “an overrated midget” in the build-up to the game.
“He said I was an overrated midget,” Waters said. He added that he wasn’t sure if that was an on the record comment or not. “That’s what I heard. But I have nothing to say back to them. I’m cool. I’m human. I know words can’t really hurt me. For him to call me that…have fun driving back to wherever you came from.”
And Wade stayed salty the next day:
"The only thing I wish is I wish I had another timeout. I'd have called it."
– Will Wade, the morning after handing ULL an L. https://t.co/4oxhW7dNF0
— Cody Worsham (@CodyWorsham) March 15, 2018
And a company even made a t-shirt out of this:
🚨 NEW 🏀 SHIRT 🏟️ ALERT! 🚨
A heated coach and a RANT for the ages. https://t.co/fdFmLBZirg pic.twitter.com/NF7otdKSOO
— BreakingT (@BreakingT) March 15, 2018
LSU moves on to the second round to play Utah, who beat UC Davis 69-59 Wednesday night. And that win included Utes’ coach Larry Krystkowiak getting ejected after two technical fouls, and then throwing a chair on the way out. So Wade may be coming up against another heated coach. We’ll see how that plays out.
