Hlas: Monday, the world poked back at McCaffery

Sometimes, people just find themselves in bizarre situations.

This Adam Woodbury/eye-poking saga isn't tragic or criminal. But it is bizarre, and bizarre sells, so who am I to let it go without trying to milk it a little more before returning to actual basketball?

Now, I'm going on the record to say I very strongly doubt Woodbury intentionally poked the eyes of either Nigel Hayes and Frank Kaminsky of Wisconsin (on Jan. 20) or Melo Trimble of Maryland (Sunday). Many Americans disagree based on film clips they've seen. Everyone sees things through different eyes, if you will.

But given the quickness of college basketball players, perhaps the hardest way to poke an opponent's eyes is to try to do so. That isn't true in professional wrestling, of course, where the eye-poke is a revered art form.

Woodbury sure sounded sincere about his intentions during his postgame remarks after his Iowa team whomped Maryland. If he were fibbing about not deliberately poking Trimble or those Badgers, he could give acting classes in the university's Theatre Arts department.

Yet, it's a fact the eye-pokes have happened three times. Three times won't win you much compassion or understanding from those who don't fly the Hawkeye flag.

Hey, were you an Iowa fan and saw a montage of a Wisconsin or Illinois or Iowa State player's eye-pokes on ESPN's SportsCenter, you probably wouldn't be inclined to cut any slack to the player or his coach.

What led to ESPN giving this incident some time on its Sunday night SportsCenter, however, wasn't Sunday's poke. Rather, it was the reaction of Hawkeyes Coach Fran McCaffery at his postgame press conference. He got upset by questions about Woodbury, urged the gathered media to ask an intelligent question, and replied 'Because I said so,” when asked what wasn't intelligent about the previous one.

A coach acting catty is catnip for SportsCenter. McCaffery got strong criticism Monday from ESPN's 'Pardon The Interruption” co-hosts, Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser.

Shortly after his Sunday press conference, McCaffery was on the phone with ESPNews' Chris Hassel and spoke calmly and rationally in answering the same basic questions about his starting center.

That didn't make the SportsCenter editions I saw. It wasn't provocative. It was the way the coach probably should have answered queries from local media a little earlier.

Had McCaffery not come off as surly as he did in that brief period of an otherwise-civil press conference, the Maryland-Iowa highlights would have been all about the fabulous game the Hawkeyes played. Oh by the way, they shot 64.3 percent from the field, the best by any team in a Big Ten game this season.

As someone who has an honorary degree in psychology from Starfleet Academy, I see it like this: McCaffery came to the press conference already churned up, knowing the dust storm over Woodbury's eye-pokes that had just settled was about to flare up again and become an unwanted distraction. Plus, it puts negative attention on one of his players, and McCaffery hates that.

So the coach was frustrated and angry. At least his responses were real, which we say we crave until they get too real. And truth be told, a lot of questions at coaches' press conferences are lame.

But if everyone behaved poorly in front of cameras and microphones every time they were frustrated and angry, life would be one endless episode of 'Celebrity Apprentice” and Donald Trump would be our king.

If that or a poke in the eye are ever your only two options, take the blurry vision.