South Carolina Sportswriter Kvetches About SI for Kids Reporter
Corrections and Clarifications: An earlier version of this story misstated the post-game news conference in which the SI for Kids reporter asked a question. The text of this story has been revised to address that.
Coach Frank Martin’s South Carolina squad has steamrolled through the NCAA Tournament. Martin, who at Kansas State had the outward appearance of an inveterate screamer, has had a coming out party of sorts on a national level, and drew acclaim Friday night for his gracious answer to a question from an SI for Kids reporter.
" Love @FrankMartin_SC response to question from @SIKids reporter. pic.twitter.com/0Oj9NnzGmX — GoGamecocks.com (@gogamecocks) March 25, 2017 "
Charleston Post and Courier reporter David Caraviello was unhappy with a question following the Wisconsin-Florida thriller later Friday night:
SI for KIds reporter is cute and all, but not a fan of an off-topic question at 1 am when beat writers are trying to pull gamers together.
— David Caraviello (@dcaraviello) March 25, 2017
When you have limited time to ask questions and you're on top of deadline, that stuff gets in the way.
— David Caraviello (@dcaraviello) March 25, 2017
No question.
— David Caraviello (@dcaraviello) March 25, 2017
After Florida defeated Wisconsin, the SI for Kids reporter asked Florida star KeVaughn Allen about his mother, who was not able to make to many of her son’s games this season but was in attendance at MSG:
SI Kids asked KeVaughn Allen about his mom during UF's postgame.
— Ralph D. Russo (@ralphDrussoAP) March 25, 2017
Again, not ideal, but this job is still better than digging ditches. https://t.co/0JUzw0QI6q
The earlier SI for Kids question about South Carolina’s defense certainly was relevant. It might not have been specific to one sequence, but the Gamecocks had just held Baylor to 50 points. In fact, on Thursday Caraviello wrote a story about South Carolina’s defense.
Finally, it’s presumable that Caraviello would have drawn more traffic to his newspaper’s website by embedding the 45-second video exchange between Martin and the kid reporter than with a game story.
Here are quotes Caraviello used in a story last night:
"“It’s a good feeling,” said senior guard Duane Notice. “ We continue to make history, and I think once we got a taste of it, we kind of got addicted and wanted to continue doing it.” “Our confidence is going out the ceiling man,” said Thornwell, averaging 25.6 points in USC’s three tournament victories. “Just because everyone says we’re not supposed to win. And then when we win, it’s like, we can actually win this thing. Why not? Why not us? We just keep proving everybody wrong.” “We’re not done yet,” said forward Chris Silva. “We don’t want to be just here, we’re hungry. We want to keep winning.”"
These quotes could probably have been taken from players of any team that ever made the Elite 8. In all likelihood, that’s not Caraviello’s fault — players and coaches can be walking books of banalities — and we should be sympathetic of the job he has to do, but let’s just say the SI for Kids reporter wasn’t impeding the revelation of any state secrets.