Gambling has made ends of games miserable for college basketball benchwarmers

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Carson Barrett tore his meniscus earlier this year. The injury required surgery, but this is the last run for the Purdue senior. Though he’s never seen a whole lot of playing time in his career, he wanted to at least have a shot at getting on the court this season. So Barrett delayed the repair work, gladly taking the exchange of some pretty painful nights with a throbbing knee in favor of even a few minutes of hooping.

This season he’s played a grand total of 21 minutes and scored six points. Three of them came in the NCAA Tournament. With 37 seconds left in a game long decided, Barrett drained a baseline 3 against Grambling State, putting himself in the box score of Purdue’s first-round victory. As the ball swished through the net, the bench erupted, Barrett’s teammates knowing full well what he’d sacrificed and endured. His bucket would be the last for the Boilermakers as Purdue cruised to a 78-50 win. Back in the locker room, Barrett picked up his phone and scrolled through the congratulatory texts from friends and started to search through his DMs on social media.

He stumbled on this:

You sure are a son of a b—.
Hope you enjoy selling cars for the rest of your life.

Followed by:

I hope you f-ing die.

And then the kicker:

Kill yourself for taking that 3 you f-ing worthless loser. Slit your f-ing throat you f-ing f– that was completely uncalled for. I hope you f-ing kill yourself.

The Boilermakers were 27-point favorites against Grambling. Barrett’s bucket meant they won by 28. “I had no idea what the line was,” Barrett said. “I’m just out there, making memories with my friends.”

Purdue senior — and former walk-on — Carson Barrett nails a 3 to cap off the Boilermakers’ 78-50 victory over Grambling State!

(Purdue also covered -26.5 with that bucket) 🏀 #MarchMadness pic.twitter.com/mUu62wpRkp

— The Comeback (@thecomeback) March 23, 2024

NCAA president Charlie Baker last week asked for a ban on prop bets involving college athletes, saying the national body wanted to protect both athletes and the integrity of the game.

But prop (or proposition) bets — which typically are on an individual’s performance, such as how many 3s one player makes — are really only the tip of the iceberg.

As more and more states legalize sports betting (38 plus the District of Columbia), the walls that long separated college athletics from gambling continue to tumble down. The NCAA now hosts events in Las Vegas (the 2028 Final Four will be held there) and just last week housed two teams in casinos in Detroit. Athletes and departmental staff members still cannot bet on any sport in which the NCAA sponsors a championship, but plenty of people are betting on them.

It’s upped the scrutiny on teams — Temple last month was investigated for betting irregularities involving its team — and the vitriol directed at players. That vitriol, of course, can be directly delivered thanks to social media. The NCAA has tried to hit that head-on, partnering with a group called Signify, to monitor and, when necessary, even shut down, online threats.

But conversations with basketball players, from starters to scrubs, throughout this NCAA Tournament reveal that plenty are getting through. “Oh, yeah, it happens all the time,’’ Purdue center Zach Edey said. “Like after every game, probably.’’

Starters such as Edey are most frequently targeted for the prop bets that caught Baker’s ire. People have suggested, not necessarily politely, that Edey send a Venmo for the money he cost them because of his failure to reach whatever threshold Vegas had set for his individual numbers.

In North Carolina’s second-round game against Michigan State, Armando Bacot thought he played pretty well; he had 18 points and seven rebounds. Yet when he picked up his phone postgame, he found more than 100 messages from people furious that he didn’t have eight boards. Upon receiving an UberEats order one day, Bacot was less pleasantly informed by his delivery guy that Bacot had “f-ed up his parlay.’’

Accustomed to people finding fault with whatever they do, the starters are at least philosophical about the prop-bet reaction.

“It’s definitely a little out of hand,’’ Bacot said. “But at the same time, too, I get the point of it. Like if you bet a lot of money on something and you’re, like, one pick away and somebody messes it up, I understand the part of fans being mad.”

Added Edey: “People have been hating on me since my sophomore year. What do I care if Billy who put 30 bucks on the game is mad at me?”

The NCAA does, at least, seem to be making headway on eliminating prop bets on college players. Colorado, Arizona, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Oregon already had rules in place prohibiting them and Illinois, Connecticut and Iowa don’t allow them for in-state teams. Gambling regulators in Ohio, Vermont and Maryland also have removed them this year.

But there is no undoing the more standard bets based on the spread and the over/under. Once verboten, talking about the Vegas line is now commonplace on broadcasts, and the spread regularly appears next to the schedule on most websites. No doubt starters are subject to gamblers angry on misses with those bets as well, but the cruel twist is that some of the people who feel the heat the most are the ones who have absolutely no impact on the real import of a game — the winning and losing.

“It’s scary, those end-of-games,’’ said UConn’s Andrew Hurley, a walk-on for the Huskies who joined the team largely to be with his dad, Dan. Hurley has learned, for example, that turnovers can make people mad — and not for the same reason they might fire up his dad.

“I’m in the locker room after we’ve broken it down and I’m like, ‘Oh man, I really hope nobody is jumping on me for something I did out there,’” he said.

More often than not they are. Marquette’s Jonah Lucas heard from angry bettors after going 0 of 1 against Georgetown and committing a foul that affected the over/under; his teammate, Casey O’Malley, got a nasty DM from a 30-year-old, after a turnover affected the over/under in another game (O’Malley couldn’t recall which). Alex Nunnally, a walk-on for NC State, recalled a game against William & Mary when the Wolfpack gave up a pretty big run, Nunnally adding to the problem because he opted not to take a shot that would have affected the spread.

“I definitely got some pretty interesting messages over that,” he said.

UNC’s Seth Trimble usually logs regular minutes, but last year played sparingly against Syracuse due to illness. Hubert Davis inserted Trimble with 10 seconds to play, largely to get a defensive stop. He yanked down a rebound, got fouled but missed both free throws. As the second one clanked off the rim, the entire Syracuse crowd erupted. “I’m like, ‘What are they doing? They lost. What are they cheering out loud for?”’ Trimble said. The missed free throws meant Carolina didn’t cover.

Like everyone else in similar situations, Trimble found his DMs full afterward. “I’m talking, I’m scrolling for like 10 seconds,” Trimble said. “There’s DMs, DMs, DMs. Some harsh words.”

Sitting in the locker room alongside Chase Martin and Sam King, Purdue’s other deep bench players, Barrett shrugged as he shared the DMs that he screenshotted.

“I guess it just sort of comes with being an athlete, even at my level,’’ he said. “It’s kind of sad that I’m just out there having fun and my phone blows up with people angry about it. But what are you going to do?”

— Brendan Marks, CJ Moore and Kyle Tucker contributed reporting.

(Photo: George Rose / Getty)