Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful, hate me because my copy isn’t

Lauren Hogan hates me, I think. It wasn’t always like that. It happened after the women’s basketball team lost to Richmond 76-67 late last semester.

She was mad because the story “praised” Richmond’s Kate Flavin, and made Hogan look bad.

Sure, the lead paragraph did say something about Flavin scoring back-to-back layups over Hogan, which she denies like O.J. and Johnnie Cochran (rest in peace).

But still, she shouldn’t be mad at the section for mentioning that she gave up four of Flavin’s game-high 27 points.

She did.

Be mad if the section makes a true mistake, and believe me, we make enough of those to fuel a life-long temper tantrum.

For example, Hogan should be mad at the fact that in the process of writing the story, I debated between the phrases “both layups over VCU’s senior forward Lauren Hogan” and “both layups in the first half of Sunday’s game against VCU.”

Instead of picking one, I went with both, which in that case was grammatically impossible even by presidential standards.

She should also be mad at the fact that I called UC Santa Barbara’s soccer team the Guachos, considering they’d rather be called by their correct title, the Gauchos.

There are plenty of screw-ups on the CT sports pages. Instead of goofing on everybody else for April Fools’ Day, we’ll reflect on or own brain farts. Enjoy.

March 24: In talking about Chris Paul and balls, we apparently left out the right one (or the left one depending on how you look at it). I’m talking about Ls, of course, we misspelled balls in the cutline and also wrote “that” instead of “than.”

March 21: Just said f it. It was Spring Break.

March 10: Oh yeah, this just in … VCU lost the CAA championship. Don’t believe the scorebox from this issue, which said the Rams won 76-73.

March 6: A certain sports editor thought he was doing the right thing by making fixes to another writer’s story, but after about six liters of Mountain Dew the keyboard looks all fuzzy. Next thing you know, “athletic” is spelled “Atletic.”

March 3: Too. To. Tomato. Potato. It’s all the same on deadline, apparently.

Feb. 28: Said Michael Doles scored 23 points in VCU’s win over UNCW, he dropped 22. I don’t think he was all that upset though.

Feb. 24: Sentence reads, “Jeff Capel has there’s no doubt about who should get player of the year.” Sentence should read, “Jeff Capel says there’s no doubt about who should get player of the year.” They should make a version of spell check with the power to read minds like Professor X.

Feb. 21: There’s something. There’s always something.

Feb. 17: Rookie of the week was in all caps for whatever reason the week Sergio Miranda got the nod. I guess to make him feel extra special since we don’t know how to make smileys with inDesign.

Feb. 14: No truth to the rumor that people are still on their way back from Georgia trying to figure out what happened to that baseball game VCU was supposed to play at Auburn (which, by the way, is in Alabama … I think).

Feb. 10: Only one page in this issue. Not a lot of rope to hang yourself with there.

Feb. 7: Ditto.

Feb. 3: The pages were clean, but that picture of Kevin Wyne in the Spam suit has to count as a mental lapse of some sort.

Jan. 31: The one-page concept works again. Maybe I should try that more often.

Jan. 27: Where to start. Nevermind how I misspelled streak in the first paragraph or how the fourth sentence of the story was so important it need two periods. Has anybody been able to figure out what happened to the end of the main story?

Count last semester and the one before that and the list of mistakes starts to get as long as a Cleveland Browns’ GM’s. How does the saying go?

We’ll try to do better next time.