Jon Miller
HawkeyeNation.com Publisher

Iowa basketball player Anthony Tucker plead guilty to public intoxication Monday stemming from a December 20^th incident in Iowa City.

It’s the second time Tucker has plead guilty to such a charge in his 18 months on the Iowa campus.  Last December, Tucker was found passed out behind a downtown bar.

Anthony Tucker is 20 years old and the legal drinking age in Iowa is 21, so he was breaking the law, for a second time.  To assume these are the only two times he has consumed alcohol would be naïve.

I understand that college aged kids drink.  I understand that under aged college students drink.  I did it; many of you did it, too.  This isn’t a commentary on under aged drinking on college campuses, although I will strongly encourage my daughters to refrain from consuming alcohol at any age, as absolutely nothing that’s healthy can come from it.

What I am going to talk about is leadership, something Anthony Tucker is seriously lacking.

Let’s go back to last year’s transgression.

Iowa was 7-2 at the time Tucker was suspended.  Tucker played two of those games whilst suffering from the effects of mononucleosis, and he scored a combined three points in those games in reduced minutes, so lets focus on the other seven games that he played at full strength before his suspension.

-He led the team in scoring in four of those seven games
-He averaged 16.4 points per game during those seven games, and 13.1 in all nine games, which led the team in both instances
-He hit seven trey’s in one win and six in another, with a five trey night and two four-trey nights, in those nine games.

Tucker was a key piece of last year’s puzzle and he was on his way to All Frosh Honors in the Big Ten, which might have been good enough for some national attention, too.

What he also did was create more space for players like Matt Gatens, Jake Kelly, Jeff Peterson and Cyrus Tate.  Perhaps he was not creating that space just yet, but he would have as the season wore on, because teams would not have been able to leave him unguarded on the perimeter.

That’s what team basketball is about; players compliment one another, they help one another and they make each other better.

In Tucker’s short time at Iowa, he has not done that.  What he has done, and it pains me to write this, what he has done is been incredibly selfish, putting himself before his teammates.

Those are not the actions of a man, but of an immature child.

A man steps up and does things he may not want to do, for the betterment of his family and or friends.  A man gets up and goes to his job at 6am, like it or not, so the paycheck can pay the bills.  A man sacrifices his free time to spend extra minutes with his wife and family.

So many people refer to college athletes as kids.  I am of the opinion that they are not kids, though they all too often act like children.  They are young men and young women.

Tucker doesn’t have a wife and kids, and he isn’t working a job like many of you reading this.

But he is a part of something bigger than himself, which is a Big Ten basketball team.  He has responsibilities, and also opportunities to provide leadership.

Instead, he has an Iowa City attorney (Randy Larson)  playing legalese and wordsmith with Tucker’s latest transgressions.

Such as:  Larson, who represents Tucker, said he advised Tucker not to plead guilty to public intoxication charges but the Iowa player chose to move forward instead.  “Anthony did not want to delay the outcome of his charge by contesting them, even though as his counsel I advised him that there are aspects of the case that certainly might have allowed us to be able to successfully contest it.”

Which is lawyer code for ‘we could have beaten the rap, because there were flaws in how the arrest went down.’

Here are some more excerpts:

Larson countered (the police report) and said two witnesses said Tucker did not appear intoxicated in the cab.

and

Anthony does not believe he acted or looked intoxicated, and at no time was he uncooperative or belligerent.

What you will not find in Larson’s statement in the article linked above is him or Tucker saying that Anthony was NOT intoxicated.  You see things like ‘witnesses said they didn’t think he was intoxicated’ or ‘Anthony does not believe he acted or looked intoxicated’ which lead me to believe that Larson takes issue with police asking Tucker to take a breathalyzer test, to which Tucker refused.  The likely thought being that there was question in Larson’s mind as to whether or not Tucker should have been asked to take the breathalyzer in the first place, which are likely the ‘aspects of the case’ that Larson refered to above.

I can’t say that for certain, but since we don’t see anywhere in Larson’s comments (which were not just thrown out there, trust me) that Tucker had been drinking, rather, that witnesses and Tucker himself didn’t believe Tucker acted intoxicated, we have legal wrangling that avoids the issue at hand; Tucker plead guilty to public intoxication.

If you had a past arrest for public intox, like Tucker, and you put a tattoo on your arm that reads “Adversity causes some men to break, others to break records. My mistakes do not define my character.” that came from an email from an Iowa fan to Tucker last year as a show of support as he was going through his issues with the arrest and the subsequent academic ineligibility, don’t you think you’d fight a public intox claim if you hadn’t been drinking?

I do.  Which is why I think we can safely assume Tucker had been drinking, under aged, again.

Which means he didn’t learn anything from last year’s arrest.  Which means he let down his teammates and his coach, again.

What was the cost of that last year, in addition to the cost of being ineligible to play in the second half because of grades?

Iowa lost by three in its Big Ten opener at Ohio State last year, and Tucker scored zero points and played just one minute.  His playing time was not due to the mono, rather, his decisions and impending suspension that was likely and did indeed take place.  They could have used him for 30 minutes that game, and it might have been the difference.

Tucker played just six minutes in a three-point home loss to Minnesota, a game where they led by 13 before Cyrus Tate left with an ankle injury.  They could have used Tucker there for 30 minutes, but Lickliter couldn’t play him that much in good conscience.

Without Tucker, they would lose a road game to Penn State by four points, back to back eight point road losses to Illinois and Indiana, a four point home loss to Purdue, an eight point loss at Michigan State, six point loss at Northwestern and a two point loss at home to Ohio State.

That’s nine conference losses by eight or fewer points, and seven conference losses by six or fewer points.

Would Tucker’s presence spelled victories in each of those games?  No, probably not.  But Iowa lost 10 of its last 13 games last year and most of those losses were close, tough, excruciating defeats.

The mental anguish piles up during a stretch like that, a stretch where you are so close, perhaps just one player away from going say 7-6.  So instead of a 15-17 season, you are at 19-13 even if you are one and done in the Big Ten tournament, which you can’t say for certain because the seed would have been better and the opponent would have been more favorable.

Does Iowa make the NIT field with that record last year?   Washington State made it in at 17-15.  Northwestern got in at 17-13, Georgetown was 16-14, Virginia Tech was 18-14, Bowling Green 19-13, Nebraska 18-12, etc.

I think the answer to that question is easily ‘yes’.

And if so, does Jake Kelly stay at Iowa?  Does Jeff Peterson?  Life is a lot easier to swallow when you succeed.  Perhaps making it to the NIT and not having to withstand the bitter taste of defeat over the final half of last year if they would have had Tucker could have meant those two players are still at Iowa.

If so, what does the Iowa basketball picture look like right now, and into the next two or three years?  I think we could be legitimately thinking about the NCAA tournament next year, or perhaps even sneaking in this year.

Instead, the Iowa program is going to have the worst season in its history, and the worst three year stretch in its history.

Can we place all of the blame at the feet of Anthony Tucker?  No, that would be unfair.

However, can we see how the selfish decisions on one player can have a pretty significant effect on the fortunes of an entire program?  I think we can.

I have no ill will towards Anthony Tucker and I pray that he learns to make mature choices.  His college years do not have to define him and I hope he grows up to be a responsible man that can provide for his future family and that he can be a great role model should he ever have children of his own.

Is a third chance as a member of the Iowa basketball team the right thing for Iowa to do?

I am ambivalent about this issue, which likely stems from being ambivalent about the condition of the program right now in general.

I can see the argument for trying to help a young man, and I can also see the argument for saying that sometimes tough love and dealing with the ramifications of our decisions can be the best teacher in life.  I don’t think I have ever learned a lesson that didn’t cost me pain, money or both.

So if Todd Lickliter and the University allow Anthony to remain on the team and remain in school, I won’t protest, and it seems like that is the choice they will make.

I just hope that Tucker, once and for all, learns from his mistakes and understands that there is more at stake than just his own well being.  He has teammates and people that depend on his skill and talent, in addition to caring about his life and health.

But if I were handing out advice, I’d tell Tucker to tell my lawyer to keep his mouth closed as it relates to tip-toeing around about beating charges, because that’s wholly immaterial if Tucker was indeed drinking under aged for at least the second time in 18 months.

The horses are already out of the barn there.

Were I able to tell Tucker anything right now, it would be this; what’s done is done.  Don’t forget the fallout for your decisions, because that can motivate you to never make those same mistakes again.

Move forward, choose wisely, and start acting like a man.  First, do it for yourself.  Second, do it for you teammates and coaches who badly need you to be what you have shown us all you can be.

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