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In the first quarter, A3 dunks on B5, complete facial. A3 catches B5 off guard again and dunks on him again, complete humiliation. In the third quarter, A3 drives baselin and B5 again tries to jump and block A3's shot... Another dunk.
Do you call travelling or 3 seconds on A3 to keep B5 from being humiliated again?
At the lower levels, middle school or earlier, I think a 25+ point lead can be determined to be insurmountable by the first few minutes of the second half: the opponents body language, physical/talent discrepancy that would void any tactical adjustments, etc. A coach/league with good sportsmanship should call off the full court press when it is evident.
At the High School levels, my teams have been part of 25 point 2nd half comebacks as well as letting 20+ point leads dwindle (fortunately we did not let them all the way back and won the close games down the stretch), and I've seen games with dramatic lead changes/momentum shifts. I saw a game last year where Team A was losing by 20+ in the first half trying to guard Team B man to man, came out in a sagging zone and won by 5 or 6. At this level, if your team's success if based primarily on full court pressure, I would stay with it unless a team is clearly overmatched with absolutely no hope of going on a run.
I had a team that was horribly overmatched that particular year. When other teams would pull off the press, I would tell the opposing coaches (that i was familiar with) to keep pressing. My guys could not ever duplicate anything close to that type of pressure and athleticism in practice, so it was the best place for them to practice against.
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