Jimmy Dykes is Killing Me

Here's the list:

1. Mike Patrick
2. Dick Vitale
3. Jimmy Dykes

He is killing me. I can't take him anymore. It's like ESPN did some thorough research on exactly how to get under my skin, ran that data through exhaustive simulations, drew some conclusions, ramped them up another ten notches and the result was Jimmy Dykes.

Where the hell did this guy come from? He wasn't around last year, was he? If he was, I wasn't aware (trust me, I'd remember) and if he was doing lower-profile games, and The World Wide leader actually promoted him, then they have a monkey and a dog calling the Big Sky championship game right now.

It's like Dykes went to just enough coaching clinics to be annoying as all hell. He beats these obscure coaching tidbits into the ground, like a defender getting his hands "ball level" or how the shooter squared up off his inside foot. Its not that he's wrong, necessarily, its that these are often (read: always) the most trivial part about the series of events that just transpired. I really think he pops in "Jim Boehim Teaches YOU the 2-3 Zone" before a broadcast, writes down the first three of four things Jim says and then forces those three of four things into every godamn possible situation, regardless of its relevancy.

Jimmy loves nothing more than how fast or slow a team is playing. He is obsessed with teams that take most of their shots with less than 15 seconds on the shot clock, and he advises every team he comes across to do just that. He is obsessed with how slow a team is playing; nothing is more crucial than the pace of the game.

Perhaps the only thing that compares with his love of shots with less than 15 seconds on the shot clock is his love affair with terrible analogies. He has such beauties on his resume as "Do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around young man!" when a VT player performed a spinning dunk. Along those same lines, he will force ESPN to run at least one graphic will a terrible pun on it combined with a nickname I know he gave himself. Something like "Jimmy D's Alchemy" or "Jimmy D's Airport." (Don't ask.)

Perhaps his greatest moment was when he combined his affinity for teams going to fast with his special adoration for god-awful analogies when VMI (I think it was VMI, could be wrong) started to take too many quick shots and saw its chance at Cinderella-status slipping away. "Right now, VMI's pumpkin carriage is going a little too fast!" Maybe the worst part is that he draws Brad Nessler into this gimmick but Nessler is even worse than Jimmy D at this.

Oddly enough, from what I can tell, he positively loves NC State. Probably because he loves "character" guy who have "committed" to a program which are code words for "sucks" and "5-11 in conference." Also, he has a man-crush on Egin Atsur that makes Dickie V's obsession with Duke look cute.

But analogies and man crushes aside, his coach-speak just makes my skin crawl. I can't take it. I can't decide whether he really knows what he is talking about and is just terrible at deciding what the most important aspect of every play is or if he just doesn't know what the hell is going on and is doing a horrendous job at covering that up. Maybe, somehow, both.

But maybe the most damning thing about him was he backed up Billy Packer's stance on the Gerald Henderson "foul" today. That, I am pretty damn sure, is indefensible.

I really need to live-blog the next game he does. If he is calling NC State's game tomorrow, consider it done.

(Update: Turns out, NC St. plays this evening, when I am unavailable. Shame, really, since there's no way SC St. beats Virginia. Maybe Jimmy will announce BYU vs. Gonzaga in the first round. Something tells me he would like that matchup.)