The Charles Barkley-LaVar Ball beef added a new chapter Friday night prior to UCLA's first round NCAA Men's Tournament game against Kent State.
Barkley, working as a studio analyst for CBS and TNT during the tournament, used a UCLA-Kent State preview segment as an opportunity to take shots at LaVar, whose son, Lonzo, stars for UCLA. During a commercial break, he slid a Kent State jersey over his dress shirt and tie.
"I have some animosity toward the UCLA program at this particular moment," Barkley said with a wry smile.
When asked by his colleagues to explain further, he remained vague.
"I got bitter anger and animosity toward certain people affiliated -- not the players."
Barkley gradually, at the prompting of Kenny Smith and the others, expanded on his beef with LaVar Ball.
"The one who can't play, who averages two whole points a game," Barkley said. "He exploded to average two points a game."
That, of course, is a reference to LaVar's college career, when he averaged 2.2 points in one season at Washington State before transferring to a Division II school.
"The camera gon' keep following him around -- let me rephrase, he gon' be following the camera around," Barkley said. "I need them to lose so we quit showing him. So go Golden Flashes."
The ploy didn't work as UCLA defeated Kent State 97-80, but Barkley said he would continue to wear the jersey of Bruins' opponents as long as they remain in the tournament. Whatever his skills are as an analyst, there's no denying Barkley is an entertainer.
Previously, Barkley called Ball's comments about his son being better than Stephen Curry "stupidity."
Ball fired back.
"If Charles thought like me, maybe he'd win a championship," he told Fox Sports' Colin Cowherd. "Oh yeah, it hurt because he's saying sometimes when stuff comes out of people's mouth is just stupid. Guess what? You talking, too."
Barkley later challenged Ball to a one-on-one game. Ball has said he'd beat Michael Jordan one-on-one. Here's hoping we get at least one of those matchups in the near future.
Playing in the mud
Henrik Stenson has been known to get down and dirty in hazards in his PGA Tour career. And while what he did on Friday at Bay Hill didn't rise to the level of stripping down to his underwear at Doral in 2009, the British Open champion still put on a show.
Stenson's second shot to the par-4 11th at Bay Hill wound up in a water hazard short and left of the green.
Stenson's ball wasn't totally submerged, so the Swede tried to hit it out of the water and save a stroke. Unfortunately, the first effort didn't hang on to dry land and wound up on a mound of mud before going totally into the water.
From there, Stenson needed two more whacks to extricate his ball from the hazard. He then pitched from the rough to 3 feet with his sixth shot before walking up -- shoeless, mind you -- to the green to finish off the triple-bogey 7 by blading a wedge into the hole.
Needless to say, Stenson missed the cut Friday.
Sports on 03/19/2017