It started when Hoo Crew President Graham Tucker whispered his plan to several students in the first row of the section reserved for the student fan group. The chant started with about half a dozen students, but within a few seconds it was reverberating around the facility.
"Stand up! Stand up!"
The locals and alumni hesitated at first, but as the chant echoed throughout the excuse for xan arena they call University Hall, the crowd reluctantly removed their butts from their seats and rose up to their feet.
I couldn't believe my eyes. The entire section of pampered alumni adjacent to the Hoo Crew section stood up after staying in their seats for the entire game. Some of them even started clapping and cheering as point guard Sean Singletary dished the ball to teammate J.R. Reynolds on the baseline. Reynolds took one dribble before sinking a 10-foot jump shot that gave the Cavaliers a 75-73 lead. The crowd remained on its feat as Justin Gray missed a last-second, 30-foot heave to secure a Virginia victory.
It was a great 10 seconds. Now if only we could do something about the other 39:50. ...
During the Virginia men's basketball game Saturday against Wake Forest I was an official member of the Hoo Crew. I wore the official t-shirt and even had an official membership card. The card didn't belong to me, though; I was only filling in for a friend who couldn't make the game. Because of the Hoo Crew's mandatory attendance policy, she had to find somebody to fill in for her or risk losing her membership.
Apparently, the reserved lower bowl seating isn't enough to entice Virginia students to join the club. This attendance policy alone shows the sorry state of affairs concerning student support of the basketball program. The Hoo Crew is supposed to help jump-start our apathetic fan base but, as I learned Saturday, the group is squandering what could be a golden opportunity.
I arrived early enough to get courtside seats in the exclusive Hoo Crew section, and found myself surrounded by a handful of passionate and energetic fans. Among this group was Tucker, who succeeded in starting chants throughout the section, and in some cases throughout the arena, on several occasions. The highlight of the afternoon came late in the first half when, after the referees made several controversial calls, Tucker and Co. started a "Take their whistles!" chant. As a Wake Forest player stood on the foul line to take a pair of free throws, the words could be heard loud and clear for about 15 seconds.
Other than that and Tucker's shining moment at the end, the Hoo Crew failed to have much of an impact on the game. There were plenty of enthusiastic fans in the section, but other than those ugly t-shirts, I didn't see much of anything that distinguished the Hoo Crew era from the days prior to its establishment.
Up until this season, a handful of courtside seats were reserved for the student fan group in charge of monitoring the line of students waiting to get into the arena. As late as 2003, Virginia fans would camp out for days when teams like Duke and North Carolina came to town, and this group, also called the Hoo Crew, provided some order to the process. There were only about a dozen members in the organization, but they took it upon themselves to be the unofficial cheerleaders of the student section.
Now the new Hoo Crew has over 200 members and the potential to create the intimidating atmosphere that U-Hall has lacked for years. But Tucker and the rest of the Hoo Crew executive board have failed to utilize this new medium to its full capacity. They could easily spend a few minutes each week doing research on upcoming opponents and sending out an e-mail to all other Hoo Crew members with potential chants and taunts, but instead, Tucker and a handful of others just make up cheers on the spot and hope the rest of the student section catches on.
Anybody can do that. Why have an official student group, where members have to pay $20 to join, when Tucker and a couple of other students are just going to make up stuff on the spot? What is that money going to anyway?
The opportunities were endless when Wake Forest came to town. The Demon Deacons are in last place in the ACC. The team seems to be lost without point guard Chris Paul. Justin Gray has underachieved like a bandit this season. There has been talk of coach Skip Prosser losing his job. And that's just off the top of my head -- I'm sure there's so much more that someone on the Hoo Crew executive board could dig up for some legitimate organized taunting.
The Demon Deacons came in as the ACC's top rebounding team, but Virginia out-rebounded them by a double-digit margin. Nonetheless, there was not a peep from the Hoo Crew section about Wake's failure to get any sort of rebound. Another golden opportunity wasted.
How hard is it to get some guys to do some research and send out an e-mail before each game? I mean, what other responsibilities do these officers have? The group could even practice some chants before the game, since members have to show up at the arena a half hour before the start of the game. It's not that difficult.
What the Hoo Crew needs to avoid is the kind of debacle that went down during the Northwestern game in November, when several Hoo Crew members showed how uncreative and classless they could be when they downloaded a picture of a Northwestern player's girlfriend and focused their taunting on her. Not only is that poor form, it's just weak.
Even at the Wake game there was at least one Hoo Crew member who was intent on embarrassing his fellow students by calling several Wake Forest players "gay" and saying that they "like men" as well as some other more graphic descriptions. That is beyond childish -- it's downright offensive. The most frustrating part was that none of the Hoo Crew officers, who were only a couple feet in front of me and most likely within earshot, did anything about it.
There were some less egregious fan etiquette violations, including one fan trying to have a conversation on his cell phone while the game was going on (you really can't wait until a timeout?) and another yelling insults at Wake center Eric Williams while a Virginia player was at the foul line (anything less than absolute silence is unacceptable when your own player is at the line). Hoo Crew fans should know better, and the executive board should do their best to educate their members about how to be an effective fan. They should also make clear that any anti-gay chants, no matter what the intention, is unacceptable.
The truth about the Hoo Crew is its establishment was a desperate measure to save face. It is an administration-driven group created primarily to avoid the embarrassment of a half-full student section in the massive new John Paul Jones arena, set to open in the fall. So far, the group hasn't done nearly enough to help ensure a smooth transition across the street. But with a few games left this season, I haven't completely lost hope. The students currently running the organization still have a chance to get their act together and make the Hoo Crew a truly effective mechanism in aiding the Cavaliers to victory.
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