Today’s Washington Post Sports section leads with a piece on George Washington’s college basketball win yesterday:
George Washington’s season was already touched with magic before yesterday’s finale against Charlotte tipped off. The final 45 minutes of the regular season took things squarely into the realm of the fairy tale.
For some odd reason the word “magic” is missing from the A section coverage of GWU’s basketball program, which is featured as part of Mark Schlabach’s excellent ongoing series, The Player Chase:
When George Washington University signed recruit Omar Williams in 2001, Coach Karl Hobbs called him one of the top 20 high school basketball players in the country. In the four years he has played for the Colonials, Williams has lived up to that potential, starting almost 100 games and helping a mediocre program become the sixth-ranked team in the country.
But Williams was accepted at George Washington after failing to graduate in five years from his original high school and receiving no grades at three prep schools in the next two years, including one that burned down after he was there five days. The National Collegiate Athletic Association certified his transcript without any verification, making him academically qualified for a basketball scholarship.
Magic, indeed.