A big surprise from the basketball team today, as last year's starting point guard, Anthony Crater, has been dismissed from the team for the dreaded "violation of team rules." We don't know for sure which team rule it was, but with some knowledge of USF athletic policy and astute reading of the box scores, you may be able to make a good guess. In a related story, Crater was suspended for six games after becoming eligible during the 2009-10 season for another "violation of team rules."
Stan Heath's statement (from Adam Adkins' blog entry, linked above) reads:
"I am disappointed for Anthony. He is a good young man, who made a number of positive contributions to our program, but he made some mistakes and was unable to meet our team’s standard. I am hopeful he will learn from this experience and achieve great things in the future."
When Ken answered other blogs' questions about the Bulls before Big East games this year, he wrote ad nauseum about the poor point guard play and how it disrupted the USF offense. (We even made him the lower end of the "Chuckycrater" scale of historical USF point guard play.) But Crater did play a big role in knocking off Villanova at the Big East tournament, and the Bulls were kind of in the game the next night against Cincinnati before he went down with a separated shoulder. You never know when the light bulb might go off for a player, and now with Crater leaving, we'll be left to guess whether or not that really happened at Madison Square Garden.
Best of luck to Anthony and our hopes for a complete recovery.