This is maybe only marginally an officiating question, but you all are so knowledgeable and generous with your opinions...

What is to prevent a coach on the short end of such a massacre to take a forfeit, assuming that the official score for a forfeit will likely be something more akin to 10-0? This would perhaps dampen the enthusiasm of the next team trying to "get to 200" against an inferior team.

What is the procedure for a coach to do this (eg., just walk off the court)?

Do state HS athletic governing bodies punish teams for taking (voluntary) forfeits?

When I was a sophomore, we had, in our conference, one of the state powerhouses in our class. We had them on their court on senior night, and our coach prepared and asked us if we would be willing to walk out if they ran the score up on us.

Sure enough, start of the 4th quarter, they're by 60-70 points, and their starters come out of the huddle to start the quarter. We walked out. Coach was suspended by the state for two games, IIRC; but I don't think he cared.

Generally, a forfeit is scored at 2-0. I can just hear the conversation between an AD and a coach after a walk-off.

AD: "What's the matter with you? So you were getting clobbered. They're a much better team and that was to be expected!"

Coach: "Yeah, but the final score goes down as 2-0. We beat the spread!"

MAny years ago- when I played in HS - we had a team beat us by 70 some points...we had to play them again a couple weeks later. We worked on the UNC 4-corner offense for two weeks. They beat us by 5 (32-27) the next time, but their coach got tossed for yelling insults at our coach for being "afraid to play basketball". Idiot...

If the team that forfeits is behind, the score at the time of the forfeit stands. If the team that forfeits is winning, then the score becomes 2-0 in favor of the other team.

Thanks for clarifying that, Bob. Is that known as the "Tim Donaghy rule"? :D

Hands Down ...
 

My nomination for post o' the week. Mark Padgett has outdone himself with this post. Priceless.

No. It's known as rule 5-4-1. If you and a certain other poster would spend half as much time in the rules and case books as you do searching for and posting assinine pictures and irrelevant comments, you'd know that. And, without the bottom 80% of your comments, the remaining 20% would seem funny.

Sounds like Bob needs a Welmer nap ;)

My game tonight was 78-19. The winning team could've scored 120 if they wanted to.

Walking off
 

In North Carolina, a school gets a pretty stiff fine if they remove their team from the field or court before the completion of a game. A coaching friend of mine found that out the hard way 20+ years ago....his team was trailing at the end of three quarters by about 60 when his opponent sent the starters in at the beginning of the 4th period. He pulled his team off the court and went straight to the dressing room. Found out about the fine the next morning when the principal chewed him out. The fine was taken out of his coaching supplement.

Good Examples
 

While basking in the warmth of the heat of the discussion at hand, I can sometimes overlook the efforts of the many, many good coaches of the student-athletes involved in this character building process called high school sports. Here's just two examples of box scores of area "blow-out" games from last night:

2 2 5 15 — 24
20 13 6 10 — 49

2 0 0 10 — 12
11 16 7 4 — 38

And I'm sure you're morning papers reveals similar reports.
Sure, box scores don't tell the whole story. And admittedly, these victorious coaches won't get any interviews on ESPN or sanctions by their schools, but I am grateful for the times when I'm in the same gym as they are.
It's fun being a part of educational athletics when all parties involved approach it with the same sporting perspective, isn't it?!

If I understand my state's rules correctly (MI), if a coach pulls the team off the floor in protest, the coach has to appear before the state association to explain why they don't deserve additional sanctions.

I don't really have a problem with it. If you don't want to take a beat down like that, you have to get better, period. That's how I'd feel if I was the losing coach; we gotta get better. There's not much shame in getting run over by a high powered machine like that. It feels worse to lose a close game.

If you're a zone D team, you play zone D. If you're a M2M team, you play M2M. And if you're a pressing team, then you press! What you never ever do is ask your kids to ease up, or lower your standards for hustle and execution on the defensive side. You can do things on the offensive end- run shot clock down, make 5-6 passes before any shot, play kids out of position, etc. But no coach I ever been around would ask for or tollerate less than best effort on defense.

Regardless of score, the same 5 who started the game always start the 2nd half. Thats standard practice, though certainly not written in stone. Those 5 have earned their starting positions. If they don't start the 2nd half, the effect is that coach is punishing them for being too good. I want to keep my starters motivated, and I reward them for being the best players by starting them. In this Texas example, the starters apparently had to finish the game because the entire benches on both squads were ejected for leaving the bench after a hard foul, 1 minute into the 2nd half.

I haven't heard Lee HS complain in the media about it. Apparently they get it. If you want to be competetive, you have to play well. If you don't play well, you better get better.

I disagree. There are a lot of things you can do.

If you're a M2M team, you change to zone, so they can learn a new part of the game...and vice versa. If you're a pressing team, you fall back and play half court. It does you no good to tune your press on a team that can't challenge it. You put your team into a situation that will challenge them...at least more than doing what they're best at.

You match your guards up on their post players, you match your post players up on their guards. Make your guards learn to play against bigger opponents and make your post players learn how to defend on the perimeter. That will do them a lot more good for their personal skill development than letting them dominate a weaker opponent in their strongest positions.