11/21/24
January 18, 2015
High school coach suspended after basketball team wins by 159 points.:
"The game just got away from me," Anderson told the San Bernardino Sun on Friday. "I didn't play any starters in the second half. I didn't expect them to be that bad. I'm not trying to embarrass anybody."
posted by grum@work to basketball at 12:20 AM - 10 comments
I agree that running up the score like that is complete dirtbaggery, but how the hell does a team score 2 points in a game? And not even at once, since they had 1 at halftime? Seems to me both coaches should be ashamed of themselves.
posted by tahoemoj at 11:54 AM on January 18, 2015
There are some schools that have a basketball team just because they want kids to play. It seems that the losing team here is one of those cases. I can understand not scoring any baskets, because if me and my friends went up against any college team, we'd be hard pressed to score any points.
The winning team should have realized that and did what rcade said, switch up positions, put the scrubs in, pass the ball to every player at least once, only take a shot when the clock gets to zero, and play a very loose zone defense. Let the opposition jack up some bad shots, grab the rebound if it lands at your feet, and keep going.
posted by grum@work at 04:15 PM on January 18, 2015
I think there's a point where standing around on the court doing nothing is as disrespectful as running up the score. They were ahead by so much at halftime I'd almost bet the losing team wouldn't be able to catch up even if the winning team just handed them the ball every time they got it and didn't defend at all. If you were on that losing team, is that how you'd want the game to be played, being treated like a bunch of preschoolers? Or would you actually want to play basketball? I don't even know how you're supposed to display sportsmanship when your winning basket is your first one.
posted by LionIndex at 06:41 PM on January 18, 2015
Telling your team to half-ass it isn't really the answer here - he had his scrubs in the entire second half (where they outscored the opposition 57-1), and the opponents still didn't score a basket.
In leagues where there is this much disparity (the game after, they won 80-19, and in the article there are a number of mentions of winning by tons of points), there should just be a mercy rule where when a team gets up by 50 points, the game is called. There's no point in playing past that point - might as well call the game and the teams can practice instead.
posted by dfleming at 09:06 PM on January 18, 2015
I think there's a point where standing around on the court doing nothing is as disrespectful as running up the score
I'm not saying do nothing. I'm saying pass the ball around to kill time on the shot clock, and then shoot. Don't press on defense. Switch up the positions of your players (so your really tall guy is your point guard, and your fast kid is the centre). You lessen the chance of scoring (by using scrubs out of position and killing the clock) and maybe not win by 159 points.
posted by grum@work at 09:57 PM on January 18, 2015
Telling a team to half-ass it would be too vague. Things like what Grum suggests are more likely to slow down the rout.
The point isn't to let the losing team catch up -- it's to avoid a mauling so massive that it gets attention and calls the winner's sportsmanship into question. If this game ended 80-15 nobody would have cared. Some coaches like to press their boot on the neck of an opponent way too long.
posted by rcade at 10:04 PM on January 18, 2015
One way to prevent this is to adopt the "running clock" rule. If a team is leading by a certain score at a certain point in the game (I do not know the exact numbers on this, and any high school association or league can make up its own rules) the clock is kept running except for time outs and free throws. It probably won't prevent blowouts, but it will keep them to a more reasonable size.
posted by Howard_T at 11:34 PM on January 18, 2015
Clearly, the coach could have had his team playing in a less aggressive manner, but at least one of these teams should have been in a different division. There is no value to either team for this game taking place.
posted by bender at 04:38 PM on January 19, 2015
They don't have the box score, but I'm curious who earned those two points for Bloomington. It was actually two free throws too, if you look at the halftime score (104-1), so at least one player on Bloomington was hustling in the low post. :)
I don't get the suspension at all. He did nothing wrong, nor did his players; like LionIndex observes, how much more insulting to be coddled like little children? From what I can tell, the Arroyo Valley coach did try to hold back, but other than taking all his players off the court and forfeiting the game you can't expect them to stand around like statues when the other team can't even score more than two points on free throws through an entire game. They scored half as many points in the second half, so... what more can they do?
The players on Bloomington are old enough to learn the lesson taught by such experiences. Sometimes life reminds you that you aren't destined to be a rock god or pop diva or rap mogul, supermodel or famous actress, sports superstar or billionaire playboy. It's important to learn, so we don't waste our best years locked in the daydream of basically winning the lottery, and instead get on with the business of just being happy with a perfectly normal and still wonderful life. People have forgotten this, I think, in the rush to be famous for 15 minutes.
So why were they even playing? That said, we all can agree these two teams should never even have been on the same court. One of the teams is clearly in the wrong division; Arroyo Valley, given their level of success against other teams, although Bloomington had lost a previous game by 91 so they were probably effectively at least two "divisions" apart.
So why were they even playing? Well, we have another version of the story here with some choice quotes:
Both Anderson and Bloomington coach Dale Chung said that they met before the game. Anderson said he told Chung he wanted to run his full offense for a half, and that Chung agreed. Anderson said the game was his final nonleague tune-up before the San Andreas League schedule began next Wednesday, and he wanted to prepare his players.Whoa whoa whoa. So unless this article or Anderson are lying, it sounds like he did ask for the very running clock that Howard_T mentioned and was refused by the refs until the 4th quarter."This was our last game before we started league, and we were going to come out playing hard," Anderson said. "I wanted to let him know there was no harm intended, and that if he had any ideas or concerns just to let me know. We were going to play a half of basketball, at least. ... And he seemed fine with that."
Anderson said he did approach the referees with about six minutes remaining in the third quarter to begin a running clock, but, in accordance with high school rules, officials did not use the running clock until the fourth quarter. He said he benched his starters at the half and instructed his players not to shoot the ball until the shot clock got inside of 7 seconds in the third and fourth quarters. (emphasis my own)
Further, it seems Bloomington coach Chung knew this was basically a scrimmage match against a hugely dominant team, that his team would be wildly overmatched, and yet he still agreed to let this scrimmage be a full-court press for the first half at least.
Now, with the media attention, he complains that the other coach lacks ethics, and he and his players are victims somehow of bullying by a dominant team?!? If those quotes are accurate, it sounds like Chung- not Anderson- was 100% responsible for this game happening as it did, or any hurt feelings among his own humiliated players.
Assume they were humiliated at all; notice in either version of the story linked so far, we don't have any quotes from actual players about what they thought, or if they were even humiliated at all. I wonder why that is; maybe it ruins the narrative because they're more made at their incompetent coach that also led them to a 91-point loss in another game, and apparently keeps signing them up for joyless games they have no hope of winning.
Related stories My ancient memory is failing me more and more these days, but I believe there are two somewhat related stories that may have even made Sportsfilter.
- There's this story from 2009 about a 7th grade girl's basketball coach who decided to teach them the full court press, to absurd success and some similar criticism.
- A story I can't find right now is of a similarly outmatched game, where the dominant team suggested after the first half to just call it a forfeit, and then they all just shot around and practiced together in a great example of friendly sportsmanship.
posted by hincandenza at 06:16 PM on January 19, 2015
How can that school make any claim to sportsmanship when it pounds an opponent into the ground like that? Stop all full- and half-court pressing, make your team pass the ball a large number of times before shooting and put players in their weakest positions.
I bet there are a lot of games we don't hear about where the winning team did take steps to avoid an epic embarrassment.