Bobby Hurley having fun with the techs

This season, I am far more upset about the flurry of #hottakes that come every time UB coach Bobby Hurley does anything but sit in the corner with a dunce cap on than I ever was last year at the Bulls losing some close games late after (but perhaps not as a result of) Hurley Techs.

In the last eight days, we've seen (against Ball State) both coaches get T'd, but 95% of tweets commenting on made no mention of Whitford's screaming act that earned four straight calls against Buffalo in the next two minutes. We've seen a member of Akron's press row, who has routinely called the coach a "baby," a "circus," and an "embarrassment," throw a Twitter hissy fit postgame while conveniently not mentioning that he was actively calling for Hurley's dismissal from press row.

And now we've seen a tech called in the first 55 seconds. As I said in the immediate recap piece, there's really only one thing that should rationally merit that, and Bull Durham put it best. You can imagine the reactions on Twitter from that one.

Full disclosure: Last year we published a piece on the technicals that we quickly realized was a poor attempt at humour and retracted. I do not speak for everyone at Bull Run but I hope that in the last twelve months we've put a better foot forward and shown what we can offer. Over the course of this season, it's become apparent that the so-called "antics" don't hurt the team.

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Anyway, I wasn't going to make a huge deal out of that tech, because there's a particularly outstan-ing reason far above and beyon- the two early points the Rockets nette- from the foul that playe- a much larger role in the ultimate -efeat.

Hurley, though, is showing a levity in the situation that I certainly wouldn't be able to muster personally. I think many who have already made their mind up about the coach will see as more "entitled whining," but this is a master stroke. For one, the coach knows it wasn't really a call justified by anything he did *within that game*, and knows the team had a great chance to win despite that.

For two, Hurley has 6,000 more Twitter followers than the MAC themselves, and I believe more followers than any other MAC-affiliated account. As long as he stays away from direct criticism, he's got the advantage of publicity here.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>If u watched my game last night here r some more things you can or can&#39;t do in 55 seconds- plug in ur cell phone, make sure ur pen works.</p>&mdash; Bobby Hurley (@BobbyHurley11) <a href="https://twitter.com/BobbyHurley11/status/565547667657605121">February 11, 2015</a></blockquote>

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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>If your driving a car in 55 mph zone &amp; following the law in 55 seconds you wont make it a mile.</p>&mdash; Bobby Hurley (@BobbyHurley11) <a href="https://twitter.com/BobbyHurley11/status/565548304566857729">February 11, 2015</a></blockquote>

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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>I&#39;d be happy to hear from everyone on their ideas about things that happen in 55 seconds.</p>&mdash; Bobby Hurley (@BobbyHurley11) <a href="https://twitter.com/BobbyHurley11/status/565548662764212224">February 11, 2015</a></blockquote>

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Tim and I put our heads together and came up with a few. You can probably guess which are the engineer's and which are the liberal arts guy's:

• If I'm wordy and need to cut down the characters, I sometimes take longer than 55 seconds to compose a tweet
• A laser beam can only make it 1/3 of the way to Mars in 55s
• I can't even get ESPN3 to load and start playing the game in 55s
• The world's fastest computer can do one quintillion operations (10^18) in 55s