So, a high school basketball team beats another team by the score of 100 to 0. It was 59 to 0 after the first half. The winning team was hitting three pointers in the 4th quarter. The coach has been fired for letting the game get out of hand.
The coach, defending himself, stated the following:
“My values and my beliefs would not allow me to run up the score on any opponent, and it will not allow me to apologize for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity.”
So, according to the coach, they didn’t run up the score. What an ass.
Blame the school with 20 pupils total, that sent a basketball team with people who couldn’t even dribble a ball (I believe some had never even played a basketball game before), to a competitive match. It’s a shitty situation to put a coach in, because that’s going to look bad for them even if he does everything possible to not run up the score.
Not that I’m convinced about the whole not running up the score thing. I’d be pretty pissed if people started toying with me after kicking my ass.
I’m of two minds about this - first, it does kinda suck to be beaten so lopsidedly. But on the other hand, I don’t think anyone should be telling the dominating team not to play their best, or to handicap themselves for whatever reason.
Maybe it just shows that one or both of the teams need to play in a different league.
In the end though, this is just yet another trivial local incident that got blown way out of proportion to become national news.
Yes, I know the story. It’s still a school with 20 students (inevitably leading to a pretty shitty sports team, even if they’re geniuses). I don’t think learning disabilities are a big disadvantage in basketball compared to never having played it before, anyway.
Like the winning team victimized them somehow by scoring more points.
I do usually come down against running up the score. But I don’t think anything wrong happened here, and if it did, it’s hard to judge outside the context of seeing the game. In a matchup that was this lopsided from the outset, I can’t just look at the score and say the winning team ran up the score.
The coach may have managed the game wrong, but the school responded to a PR problem by blaming the team and I’m glad at least that he stood behind his players instead of doing what the administration did, which was kicking the problem down the chain of command.
The coach is an ass. While you get fault the players, and even him, for wanting to play well and win, running up the score with kids make shim a dick. After the first half he should have had his scrubs in and told the team to let the other guys shoot, hoping they’d score. Letting the other team shoot is legitimate, especially when the odds of them making a basket is so low. I played b-ball tonight and I let my guy shoot anything outside of 12 feet. I gave him the shot, because he was a sucky shooter. He went one for like ten.
The clip on MSNBC shows some players from the losing team and while they do not appear to be future hall of fame players they certainly can dribble and shoot.
Wait–what’s “running up a score”? I’ve never heard the term before.
My feeling is that one plays to win. If the Dallas Academy team felt they were outclassed, I wouldn’t fault them at all if they threw in the towel and forfeit, but as long as they don’t, the winning team owes the losing team the dignity of treating the losing team as equals by playing their best until the losing team concedes or until the game is over.
Frantically padding the statistics sheet after it becomes obvious that one team is hopelessly outclassed. If you’re not from these parts (the US/Canada), think “any good football team v. San Marino”.
So what should the winning team have done: missed their shots on purpose? Hold the ball and run out the shot clock on every possession without attempting to get any points? Shoot at the wrong basket to give the other team a better chance? Should they have deliberately played poorly and made stupid decisions with the ball in order to keep from scoring too many points even though it might hurt them in the next game? What’s the proposal here? The Dallas team never had a prayer of winning in the first place.
There’s absolutely no way you can play a team that has no business being out there with you and have it look good. You either play normally and win by a lot or you screw around which would be seen as mocking the other team. Blame the athletic directors of both schools, not the coach or players.
The “frantically padding the statistics sheet” assumes facts not in evidence. Covenant scored significantly fewer points in the second half than in the first, for one thing. I don’t know for sure how long the game was, but if they scored 41 points in a 24-minute half, that’s not at all a fantastic result and would not indicate they did what you’re saying.
What the flying fuck? To those who are actually defending the school/firing and saying how bad and evil the coach and team were for “running up the score”, what the fuck were they supposed to do? Sit on their thumbs and let the other team take free shots? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You don’t “let” the other team have free opportunities in competitive sports by purposely sabotaging your own play and playing worse than your absolute best. Total bullshit.
I totally agree with this statement. If I were on a sucky team and the other team starting giving “gifts” to me I would be much more insulted than if they continued to play as they normally would. It would be a tremendous lack of respect. And it is definitely the responsibility of whoever was scheduling the games to see that there aren’t horrendous mismatches like this, not the coaches or players.
That being said, probably the right thing to do in the situation would be for the coaches and officials to meet at halftime and declare a forfeit.