Twitter is really a wonderful thing for sports fans. We’ve all been numbed by the rote answers drizzled out by players and coaches at organized press conferences, and we sometimes long for someone to say something directly from the heart now and again.
Twitter brings back the element of random honesty, allowing people to vent unfiltered thoughts without the benefit of an image consultant. Such has happened with Ralph Hill, a sophomore at the University of Dayton. The 6'6" wing was vague about what might be upsetting him, tweeting the following thoughts @RalphNoLauren50:Times like this u really gotta dig deep and pray...
idk what my future holds
Who coulda thought after everything I been thru this choice wasn’t even mine
Don’t feel sorry tho...in retrospect I’m glad for the honesty
I ain’t been that mad In awhile!!!!
There’s no context to the tweets, and you or I might have let them slide, but Doug Harris, the UD beat writer at the Dayton Daily News, thinks something is afoot.
“Dayton sophomore basketball player Ralph Hill has been active on Twitter today, posting Tweets that indicate his future as a Flyer is uncertain,” Harris wrote today.
The quote Harris was able to get from Hill’s mother, Vickie Bradley, would seem to indicate that his intuition was correct.
Now, we don’t know anything for sure. Maybe Hill is upset that he stuck around even after the coach who recruited him -- now-Georgia Tech coach Brian Gregory -- left, only to average a measly 7.5 minutes per game under Archie Miller. That might be what’s bugging him, and he might have heard some news that reiterated his limited role on the team.
Then again, he’s a college kid, so maybe it was something else entirely that upset him. After all, Hill’s last tweet before the mini-rant was this: “I just witnessed a flash mob lol”
Sometimes a flash mob is just the last straw.
Eric Angevine is the editor of Storming the Floor. He tweets @stfhoops.