Every Mountaineer fan was disappointed after Sunday’s loss to Syracuse that eliminated West Virginia University’s men’s basketball team from the NCAA tournament.
But no amount of disappointment excuses or justifies sending death threats to the players.
Taz Sherman reported via Twitter that threats had been made against him and his family, “most of ‘em from West Virginia.” Emmitt Matthews Jr. retweeted a post aimed at him and added, “There is a difference between criticism and telling me to kill myself … you don’t know the half.” The original post Matthews retweeted has since been removed, and it seems the user’s account has been deleted, too, so we can only guess what vitriol the anonymous internet troll spewed at the WVU junior. But we can guess that it is inexcusable.
These young men (emphasis on young: 18 to 23 years old) shoulder a lot of responsibility when they put on those blue and gold jerseys. They take on the weight of a successful athletics program, a 60-plus-year legacy of top-notch talent and all the hopes and dreams of every fan. They practice hard and they perform to the best of their abilities. But sometimes, the team’s best is just not enough.
One bad day on the court does not warrant any kind of threat — especially not a death threat.
This season had its ups and downs, from the highs of half-court buzzer-beating victories to the closest and most-heartbreaking of losses to unexpected delays and cancelations due to COVID. And as upset as we sometimes are, merely as fans watching the game, the disappointment is so much worse for the players. Which is why our Mountaineers need our support more than ever after a tough loss — not insults, not threats. We can armchair coach all we want, but until we take the players’ places on the court, we will never know what it is to play the game in that moment, with all its split-second decisions and factors we can’t see from the stands or our couches.
The WVU men’s basketball team’s postseason is over. Period. As fans, it’s OK to be upset about it. But taking the frustration out on individual players is cruel, unnecessary and jeopardizes the program’s future.
We have a lot of exceptional players — many of whom will hopefully return next year — not to mention an entire country of talented young men from which to recruit. But no athlete will want to play for a school whose fans threaten players after a loss. No one will want to come to a state where they don’t feel safe.
As for current WVU athletes, having hateful words hurled at them for having a bad game won’t make them play better — and it won’t encourage them to stay and improve, either.
If Morgantown — and West Virginia as a whole — is not welcoming to WVU’s athletes and forgiving of their mistakes, then we start a destructive cycle: Upset fans attack players on social media; players leave and new athletes are reluctant to fill the vacancies because of hostile fans; the team doesn’t perform well because of lost talent; upset fans post mean things about players … and it all begins again. So it would be best for everyone — athletes and fans alike — for the cycle to never begin at all. Stop threatening our student athletes.
