Ball 5

Author: Justin Golenbock

I think, if I were allowed to write features on players, I'd interview Epiphanny Prince, the New York prep star that set a national record with 113 points in one game, just barely managing to eclipse her team's margin of victory (137-32). I found it very amusing how many people were offended by this. Comedy, as I have just learned in my first class on the topic, may derive from "a sense of superiority coupled with the absence of [lasting] pain" - Pavlos Sfyroeras. We can probably take for granted that the girls of Brandeis High School were not inflicted with any lasting psychological trauma, and so we can comfortably and unrepentantly enjoy the inestimable sense of superiority a triple-digit effort evinces (Ummm…vocab…).

Ironically, I happen to be writing about Epiphanny on Valentine's Day. Wait, you say, that's not irony. That's not even coincidence. It's just irrelevant. I say, wrong. Because, first of all, a straw man never wins an argument, and secondably, I was inspired to write this feature on Ms. Prince by an interview I read with Celtics point guard Delonte West. Now, Delonte was not actually asked by the Associated Press about Epiphanny's exorbitant scoring output (they picked some guy named Lebron James for that). But - and here's the connection - he was asked about his ideal Valentine's Day date, and what type of booze he'd use to class it up a bit. "The red Moet," he said, "we ain't popping no Kristal, it tastes like urination."

Now these may seem like two totally different topics (don't worry about it), but here's my point: Delonte's Celtics are 20-31, having dropped 6 of their last 7. Epiphanny's Lady Blazers, ranked second in the nation, are undefeated. When you're 20-31, even if you're a 22-year-old millionaire in the running for the NBA's Most Improved Player Award, you get interviewed by ESPN.com's Page 2 about Valentine's Day. When you score 113 points in a game, even if you're a 17-year-old on scholarship to Rutgers, you get your name in thousands of front page Associated Press articles across the country, the type of national exposure that could help her sooner rather than later make a living playing basketball in the WNBA.

So as far as sportsmanship and fair play and all that nonsense is concerned, my dad's friend has a story he likes to tell about his greatest memory from playing college basketball: giving up 60 to the high school aged "Pistol" Pete Maravich. It's almost certainly a lie (his other greatest memory is having never gone to college), but the point remains that the extraordinary individual effort required to screw up two-column box scores across the country deserves to be celebrated for what it is: entertaining. And funny. Provided the girls of Brandeis can laugh with us, of course.