I’m conflicted. On the one hand, being beaten horribly, without even scoring a single point, is pretty unpleasant. On the other hand, going easy on someone is kind of patronizing. Since this is, after all, high school, and obviously not a very important match, maybe we should ask the players how they feel.
According to this link, the coach did have it players back off quite a bit:
*In his e-mail, Grimes described the situation his team faced:
“We started the game off with a full-court press. After 3 minutes into play, we had already reached a 25-0 lead. Like any rational thinking coach would do, I immediately stopped the full-court press, dropped into a 2-3 zone defense, and started subbing in my 3 bench players. This strategy continued for the rest of the game and allowed the Dallas Academy players to get the ball up the court for a chance to score. The second half started with a score of 59-0. Seeing that we would win by too wide of a margin, running down the clock was the only logical course of action left. Contrary to the articles, there were only a total of four 3 point baskets made; three is the first quarter, and only 1 in the 3rd quarter. I continued to sub in bench players, play zone defense, and run the clock for the rest of the game.” *
All those that say you should always play to the top or your ability, I’m sure you were great fun to watch when you played basketball against your 4 year old.
If you are in a running race and WAY ahead, are you going to push as absolutely hard as you can? If you do, you’re crazy. Not because it is insulting to the other runners, but because you risk injury TO YOURSELF to do so. If you are playing football and are way ahead (up 49-0 with 2 minutes left) you don’t try to deliver a concussion inducing shot to your opponent, particularly in a high school game.
I coach soccer and if my team gets up by 4 goals, I tell all my players to start using their off leg to score or that they have to make 3 passes before they can shoot. I don’t tell them to stop trying, to not score or to just let the other team score, but at the same time I don’t want to run it up, either.
I remember that story and thinking it was totally inappropriate for the other team to help her around the bases. Her run shouldn’t have counted. It was completely fraudulent. It disrespected the game. If you aren’t going to follow the rules, what’s the point? What are we going to do next, have somebody up on a ladder catching basketballs from lousy players and dropping them through the hoop? Making runners stop to let a paraplegic crawl across the finish line first? Let’s just skip the games altogether and give everybody a trophy. No one should ever have to earn anything because competition is so mean.
When I was playing cricket as a kid, we usually made an agreement with the opposition such that anyone on either side reaching a century would be retired. You can bet your sweet bippy that we all strived for a century.
I have no problem with a team playing hard to score as high as possible.
I also have no problem with a team playing hard only up to a certain point level, be it 10-0, 50-0, 100-0, or more, but the question then becomes what should the point spread be fixed at. Note that I use the word “fixed”, for when a team limits itself to a certain point spread, then the game is most certainly fixed, albeit fixed out of kindness.
That’s why I am a proponent of playing by the rules. Either you play by the rules, or you fix the game, and I don’t like games that are fixed. If there is a problem with one side or the other being out-played, then the rules should be modified accordingly prior to the game, so that once on the court, both teams can put forward their best games.
It appears that the winning team capped its efforts at 100. At what lower number should the winning team have capped itself? Should the winning team have permitted the losing team to score against it? Should the winning team have kept itself to within a certain number of points at any given time, and if so, how many points?
Have we forgotten our history? It was not that long ago that America under Truman sought total victory over Germany and Japan—at least until we were assured a win. After that, it was only sporting to let them keep killing a few odd soldiers of ours, here and there. Sink the occasional ship. Dammit, just because it’s war doesn’t mean feelings can’t get hurt!
She hadn’t earned it at all. Running the bases is part of the game. If you can’t run, you aren’t fulfilling the requirements. She was handed a homerun she didn’t earn.
I agree, but I was answering Bosstone’s question. It’s true, though, that you can’t determine whether somebody’s being a good sport or not just by looking at the spread. If Covenant won 40-0, would that have really been less embarrassing for Dallas?
According to http://www.flightbasketball.com/100-0-Texas-Game-Response-From-Coach.html
The winning team was the one with only 8 players. They backed off the press 3 minutes in when they were up 25-0. For the remainder they played a 2-3 zone (which is one of the softest defenses in basketball). They took a total of 4 three pointers the entire game, three in the first half and one in the 3rd quarter. He did everything he could reasonably do to back off the score, any more would have been insulting to both teams. What should he have done? Intentionally turned the ball over? Have his players foul out intentionally, hoping that by putting the sad sacks from Dallas Academy on the line that they’d be able to finally score?
Perhaps sending that email to the local paper wasn’t smart, but I don’t blame him. The reporter (as they usually do in my experience) got the story wrong, and neither the coach nor his team had anything to apologize for. Apologizing when you’ve done nothing wrong is as bad as refusing to apologize when you have. Maybe even worse.
I think both teams were fielding 8 players.
That coach’s version sounds more realistic to me. Sure the other team was playing starters for the whole game, but it was mathematically impossible for them NOT to have at least two starters on the court at all times.
It also sounds like he did call off the dogs as much as possible, but some hypersensitive parents still got upset over a single attempted trey in the 3rd quarter. It also sounds like the allegation that the winning team played a full court press throught the game is bullshit.
Yes, for a personal best time, unless there would not be enough recovery time before the next race.
Apparently, there is some dispute about that:
I personally have no problem with a team continuing to play as would be appropriate to the circumstances, and I wouldn’t expect a team to allow the other team to score.
I have a big problem with a team pressing (both literally and figuratively) to achieve a blowout score of 100-0. The reason you do that is because it is a remarkable statement, not because it reflects the natural course of the kids playing the game as dictated by the circumstances. I do have a problem with that.
There’s no god-damned shot clock in high school basketball, incidentally.
Anybody who doesn’t think 100-0 obviously reflects running up the score is nuts. 100 points in 32 minutes is fucking hard to do unless you’re pressing and shooting quickly. Even when both teams are running and gunning, 80 points is a lot. 100 when the other team is awful means, without question, the winning team was pushing hard the whole way.
I’m failing to see the outrage here. One team was markedly better, and the other team sucked. The winning coach’s job is to make sure his team wins, not spare the feelings of the losing team.
Only in our touchy-feely ultrasensitive culture do we feel the need to punish winners and coddle losers. And I’m a freakin’ liberal left-wingnut.
This is bullshit. 41 points in a half of girls’ basketball means you aren’t “running down the clock.” If his team was in a 2-3, and given that the other team didn’t score at all, I’m guessing the losing team was walking the ball up the court and chucking it around the perimeter a lot. That’s a lot of wasted time. In the remainder of the sixteen minutes of that half, the winning team scored 41. Even if they were just “unlucky” because they just happened to shoot 100%, that means that even a charitable assessment has them putting up the ball pretty quickly on each possession.
“Run the clock,” my ass. The coach is a liar.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with running up a score. I enjoy watching teams run up scores.
He was fired because his wouldn’t go along with the apology and publicly dissented.
Addressing his interpretation of sportsmanship could probably have been addressed privately. It’s the emailing his rebuke of his employers apology to the newspapers that got him canned.
I don’t think he should have been fired for the score. If the administration dosen’t want it to happen, then they should propose a mercy rule, or give the coaches better guidelines for lopsided situations.
I do think he deserves to be fired for emailing the newspapers.
Out of curiousity, is that true at all levels of competition? Would you enjoy watching a little league team run up the score on an opponent, if they could?
Also, what is it about that that you enjoy?
It’s a bit mind boggling to me that they didn’t score a single point. Did the other team manage to steal the ball every time without fouling the other team? Did they not get any freethrow shots or just miss them all?
Even in a non-competitive high school girls’ game? Really?
What is the point of running up the score? To whose benefit is it? It’s clear that there’s a clear loser in the equation; what does the winning team gain by keeping its foot on the gas and running a layup line all the way to 100?
If you like competition, well, that ain’t it. If you like seeing high school athletes getting some exercise and enjoying themselves, no, that ain’t it, either. So, what? The higher the number the better, because in other circumstances that higher number would be more impressive?
It doesn’t make any sense. These girls aren’t professionals. They obviously had no chance to win. Beating them 100-0 humiliated them in a way that 65-0 wouldn’t have. What’s the advantage that outweighs that humiliation?
I just bet you’re a holy tiger at baseball, Dio. :dubious:
Personally I wholly approve of what happened in that game. The batter had smacked the ball over the fence in the approved manner, and was unable to complete the inane technicality you Yanks insist on of touring the bases in her own good time with the opposition helpless to intervene. No doubt the rulemakers thought it would add excitement to the game if there was always the possibility of the batter suffering an aneurism or popping an ACL while completing the formality of a four-base amble, but in a sensible bat-and-ball game the score would be good once the ball was where the opponents couldn’t further influence the play.
Now this is, I submit, a whole 'nother ball game from tossing up a soft pitch at someone who’d never hit one in her life and then conniving to fumble it repeatedly while she ran all the bases and acting like she’d done something wonderful (which, with a slight gender alteration, was the text of a piece of glurge my sister sent me that should have been called “How They Let The Retard Win” but wasn’t), and it’s also a slightly different ball game from soft-pedalling against outclassed opposition. As though my opinion matters two hoots in the basketball story, I’d say it’s just as hard to be on the receiving end of patronising play that’s obviously aimed at avoiding scoring as it is to be handed a 100-point hosing. When I was a frail little flower playing inter-school rugby, we handed out our hidings with as little apology as we expected mercy when we were on the receiving end, and everyone managed not to be too butthurt at the end of it. Had the opposition resorted to dropping scoring passes or gratuitously giving us the ball, I think we’d have felt the rubbing-in a lot more keenly than anything the scoreline showed.