Speculation Tuesday Has Something Pretty Obvious to Speculate About

Goooood afternoon and welcome to the snowbound AU Hoops blog Speculation Tuesday. When will it stop? Will it ever stop? Oh God, what if it never stops? These are all questions weighing heavily on other people's minds, but not mine. I'm all about it coming down for a week straight, at least until it knocks out my power, in which case, I will be happy to have it end. Luckily, I don't have to speculate too much on any of these questions because we know the answers to all or most of these questions. One more uppercut to the collective face of the District of Columbia in terms of a snowpocalypse, snowmageddon, snowgasm, snoverit, whatever, and then smooooth sailing into Thursday's game against the Bucknell Bacon-covered Bison Burgers. So what will I speculate about today? Well, join me after the jump and see!


Well obviously I'm going to speculate about Nick Hendra. What else was I going to speculate about this week, the color of JJ's favorite tie or how cold his toesy-woesies will be when he goes barefoot for charity this Thursday? NO! Of course not, that would be ridiculous.

As has been beaten to death in the comments, Athletics isn't going to comment further on Nick Hendra's suspension. Fine, I get it. And I've been told that I'm not entitled to know why, and I agree, I'm not entitled to that information. It's also been implied that I'm wrong to even ask, which, well, I think is just silly.

The fact of the matter is, I don't really care very much what Nick did. Here is what I do care about:

1. That whatever it was, he did it and now isn't playing, which hurts the team
and
2. When is he coming back from his indefinite suspension?

Number one is a given. Now, number two is the real question. I see two possible ways this went down. The first way is that this is a really serious infraction, like illegal activity serious that just hasn't come to light. The second way is that this is a straw that broke the camel's back that JJ is using as a teaching moment. Either Nick was late to practice one too many times or missed curfew, etc. and JJ, in a possible moment of caprice, decided "You know what? I expect more out of my juniors. Benched."

Obviously the longer he's out, the more this points to the former of these two possibilities being the actual case. JJ may have proclivities toward bench banishment, but he's not going to let it go on too long for something not very serious with someone as important to the team as Hendra.

Here are some potential offenses (as partially suggested to me by an anonymous source highly placed within the AU administration) and the duration of suspension that they would carry. I apologize that I could not draw anything further out of my source, they were already incurring great risk to their professional career by speaking with me.

1-2 game suspension:
- Suggesting that the Pep Band get an auto-tuner
- Ogling the dance team during important timeout instead of paying attention to set play
- Saying Papa John's is better than Domino's in earshot of AU athletics marketing staff
- Thinking Worcester, MA isn't all that bad
- Parking car against flow of traffic












3-4 game suspension
- Putting sneezing powder in Jeff Jones's "coughing towel" (PATENT PENDING!)
- Thinking Worcester, MA isn't all that bad and telling other people
- Getting caught reading AUHoops.com
- Completing large print job using company other than Ameritel
- Choosing piano concerto over practice

5-8 game suspension (rest of the season)
- Suggesting that Michelle Kirk is a better point guard than Jeff Jones ever was
- Signing the Free Mike Bersch! petition
- Attending Pi Kappa Alpha party at Guapo's and paying for a drink
- Using a service other than Scenic America to host DC sightseeing tour
- Switching Riley's warm-ups with Danny Munoz's

I trust that the true reason behind this suspension is somewhere within these possibilities I put out. The world may never know, but depending on the length of the suspension, we'll be able to narrow it down to 5 choices.

Be sure to leave your own speculative reasons for the suspension in the comments. But keep it satirical, like I said, I really don't care to know what it was, I just want Nick to come back.

Pro deo et patria and GO EAGLES!