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What Comes Next for X?

As you can probably imagine, the fallout for the brawl between Xavier and UC is only beginning to take shape. Things don't look good for Yancy Gates at all, who will probably be ending his up and down career as a Bearcat on this most onerous of notes. There's a lot of stuff whirling about the internet right now, but most of it is speculative at best. I'll try to put some shape to exactly what we know first, then add my own speculation at the end.

Both coaches seemed appropriately upset about the whole thing. Coach Mack's postgame presser (with Tu and Cheek) can be found here. Coach Cronin's comments - slightly disjointed though they are - can be found here. Both coaches said they regretted not calling a timeout right before things jumped off. Here's video of the fracas:




The only recent incident that might set a precedent for this (that I'm aware of) was the on-court brawl between New Mexico and Wyoming in 2007. Film of that fight can be found here, if you're curious. That fight stayed more or less contained to the players on the court when it happened though. There was also a fight in a women's game in February of this year that ended with the game being suspended. Both of those fights resulted in mostly one-game suspensions, with one of the female players getting two games. One of the male players was given an indefinite suspension by his coach.

Obviously, it's not good. Here are my guesses as to what happens next: I'm thinking Yancy Gates is probably done for a while. You can't sucker punch a guy in the head and then punch a walk-on and get away with just a one-game suspension. Cheik Mbodj is probably also going to be in trouble for trying to stomp Kenny while he was down. More pertinently to the fan base here at Banners, I think Dez Wells is probably going to get the worst of it for X. If I had to guess, I'd think Dez will get multiple games and a couple other Xavier players will get single-game suspensions. If there's anything for X fans to take comfort from, it's that multi-game suspensions are apparently not often given out, even when fighting is involved.

It's tough to see exactly who did what to whom on the currently available footage; the whole thing will eventually be determined by what the NCAA, the conferences, and the administrations of the programs feel is appropriate. We'll keep you posted as things develop.

Update: wcpo.com has more video of the fight now posted on their site. Dez Wells and Mark Lyons both come off looking a little worse in this one, and Yancy Gates can clearly be seen throwing the ball off Tu's head and punching Landen Amos as Amos was trying to make peace. With Wells and Lyons both being aggressive and throwing punches, this video will likely be a factor that could increase the severity of their punishments.