DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — It’s a scene inside the Lemerand Center on an unfairly cold Wednesday night in early January.
A junior college men’s basketball game is happening in a 1,000-seat gym. Everyone is here for that, including two players who were never supposed to be. But play has been paused. Security is defusing an altercation between the Daytona State College and Santa Fe College women’s hoops teams, who faced off earlier and are now pointing and yelling at each other across the bleachers. One of the Santa Fe players holds back a teammate by yanking on her shirt.
Some of this owes to Daytona State’s baseball squad raising the temperature by sitting behind the visitors bench and trolling them ruthlessly. And now, here come the Santa Fe women, who have been relocated to a section right next to them. The baseball dudes knowingly simmer down. “We don’t want no trouble, guys,” one of them concedes.
But if there’s a trigger to all of it, it’s a tie-up during the first half. A missed shot, some wrestling for the rebound, some choice words and Daytona State’s Ryan Bewley shoving a guy who got in the face of his brother, Matt. That’s when the mercury really jumped. And it brings us to the pertinent question.
What in the world are Matt and Ryan Bewley doing…
