All that senior Derrick Roland wanted to do at Texas A&M University was play basketball. After following his highly touted HS teammate Donald Sloan from Seagoville HS in Dallas, Texas to play for the Aggies, success came slow for Roland. After averaging only 4.5 ppg through his first 3 seasons, Derrick suddenly became a key cog in the Aggies back-court alongside his friend and former HS mate Sloan during last season. He averaged a career high 10.5 ppg as a 2nd or 3rd option behind Sloan(17.8 ppg) and talented big man Bryan Davis(9.6 ppg, 8.1 rebs), and was to be heavily relied upon as the Aggies became once again one of the more surprising teams in the Big 12 Conference last season.
But halfway through the Aggies 12th game of the season , in a road contest against the University of Washington, Roland unfortunately suffered one of the most gruesome injuries of all-time in any sport when he broke his right leg so severely coming down on a lay-up attempt, that teammates and opposing players couldn’t even stand to look at his mangled extremity. If you haven’t eaten anything yet and don’t remember the gruesome injury, you can check out the horrific footage here. As play stopped and with his longtime friend Sloan at his side, Roland was carried off of the court, seemingly with his basketball career at an end. While in a hospital in the Seattle area, the hard luck story even touched Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who chartered a private plane for Roland’s family to be at his bedside during recovery.
Fast forward to Summer of 2010, and after some intense rehab which began with Derrick learning to walk again, he is back nearly to 100% and in great basketball shape as he had planned to play once again for the Aggies next season as the NCAA brass was all but surely to grant Roland a medical red-shirt year for what he went through. The only problem is that the NCAA inexplicably has denied Roland’s request for a redshirt year because of injury, because he played in 1 more game than the 30% of a team’s games played allowed by NCAA rules to be eligible.
Check out Roland’s classy statement on the NCAA’s decision to deny his request:
“I appreciate all that Coach (Mark) Turgeon and Texas A&M have done for me,” Roland said in a statement. “Not only with this appeal, but for my career and for helping me to grow into the man I am today. I would have loved to come back for even half of a season, but it did not work out. At least I went out with my brothers — (Bryan Davis and Donald Sloan). We gave it everything we had. I will be okay.”
I’m sorry, but in my opinion their decision just looks bad. In an era where the college ranks are constantly marred by recruiting scandals, academic ineligibility concerns, and one-and-done players, this would have been one of the feel good stories heading into the ’10-’11 season. Instead, the NCAA has chosen to take a hard stance on a kid who showed amazing courage and tenacity coming back from a horrific injury. I get it, rules are rules, but there are exceptions to every one of those rules, and Derrick Roland should have been one of those exceptions.
Shame on you NCAA. Maybe they should take a harder stance on how some of the top programs in college basketball like Kentucky, Texas, and Connecticut keep getting commitments from Top 10 recruits despite those players not making the cut in the classroom and getting their friends to take exams for them.
Source: Yahoo Sports
Allen Moll has been a lifelong NBA and NCAA College Basketball fan who watches and studies games religiously, and coaches youth basketball in his native Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. Allen also provides content to Bleacherreport.com, Upperdeckblog.com, in addition to being a tenured NBA and NCAA columnist for TheHoopDoctors.com.
