Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark Padgett
Worked a 6th grade boys "competitive" rec game last night. Home team finished the game with 40 points and exactly 40 team fouls - 22 in the first half and 18 in the second! Only two of those were intentional. Their coach kept telling them to keep their hands off their opponents but they just didn't listen. Four of them fouled out, one in the first half! They lost the game 58-40. I heard one of the parents say that three of the boys on that team (two of whom fouled out) never played basketball before this season and this was their third game. With all the free throws, the game took over an hour and 45 minutes. We cut half time down to three minutes. No one complained about it.
Oh yeah - after the game the home HC came over to us and thanked us for calling a good game. Go figure.
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BTDT as a coach. I was the 7th and 8th grade coach at a painfully small private school a few years back. They fired the head coach of the team just before the season and the high school coach asked me to take the middle school program over. To my delight, I found a team of 9 players on the 8th grade squad, 3 of whom had never played before. The 7th grade team was a mix of 7th and 6th graders, the majority of whom had never played. Swell.
The season started out well, and we were a few games in when one of the larger schools in the league had a game at our gym. Our AD was informed (via phone - no idea why this conversation happened) by the assignor just before the game that there had been some "incidents" with the other team that season, and he had assigned his "top" guys to the game with instructions to call the game "very tight".
I was then treated to a game that had 81 fouls called. 40 on us, 41 on the opposing team (including 3 Ts). Their coach was long gone by halftime. My team shot 50 foul shots. I was begging my kids to just.not.touch.anyone.
By OT, I just wanted the game to end. I believe it took 2 hours and 15 minutes for that game. It wouldn't have been quite as long, but the opposing HC wouldn't leave initially after the 2nd T. He finally went upstairs to the locker room, and was eventually ejected from the building when they caught him coaching from the balcony.