161-2
 

Nobody Wins When The Final Score Is 161-2
Ron Dicker
The Huffington Post Posted: 01/11/15 03:05 PM ET Updated: 01/11/15 03:59 PM ET
Lopsided doesn't begin to describe this.

Arroyo Valley High School defeated Bloomington High 161-2 in a Southern California girls basketball game Monday. But Bloomington's coach said Arroyo Valley's coach lost at sportsmanship.

“People shouldn’t feel sorry for my team," Bloomington coach Dale Chung told the San Bernardino Sun. "They should feel sorry for his team, which isn’t learning the game the right way.”


Arroyo Valley coach Michael Anderson said he kept out his starters for the entire second half and told players not to shoot until late in the shot clock, the Sun reported. “I didn’t expect them (Bloomington) to be that bad," he said. "I’m not trying to embarrass anybody."

The extreme blowout caught the attention of school administrators. Arroyo Valley athletic director Matt Howell, who did not attend the game, told the Press Enterprise, "I have had a conversation with my coach about it and that kind of thing. It's not going to happen again."

High school basketball has produced some notable routs in recent memory. In 2012, an Indianapolis game ended in a 107-2 score. In 2009, a Texas high school coach was fired after his team won, 100-0.

I don't see a problem with this, especially if the winning coach was playing his bench players. Why should those players who rarely ever see the court be told not to try to score or play defense in a game where they are getting a lot of playing time. The losing coach should stop whining like a baby and coach his team to play better. Now if the winning coach has his starters in and is full court pressing for the entire game, someone might want to have a talk with him.

I did not realize that several states use a shot clock.

Sounds like a good argument not to have a shot clock in HS. Let the team pass the ball around for 3 minutes if they want.

Assuming the winning coach emptied his bench, didn't full court press in the second half, and had most of the half scoring come from backups, I don't think there's a problem.

A HS game in CA has 32 minutes of playing time. There is a 30 second shot clock and no 10 second count in the backcourt for girls games.
There is also a running clock mercy rule if the lead is 40+ points in the 4th quarter.

To score 161 a team would need to score an average of 5 points each minute.
Does anyone think they weren't playing full-court defense?

My guess would be that they averaged closer to 6 or 7 pts per minute in the first half with starters (and full court press), and 3 or 4 points per minute in the second half with backups and no backcourt press. If they were pressing into the second half then I would have to agree with the losing coach that sportsmanship was not demonstrated.

The score was 161-2. let me REPEAT that 161-2. there is no reason EVER to win a game by 159 points…they should have stopped at 100..:roll eyes:

when one team is that bad it is not competition. none of the players on the winning team are going to get better at basketball or learn anything about Xs and 0s from that mess. including bench players. so take the time to teach a life lesson--lesson being that it isn't necessary to utterly destroy someone else just because you can…

i understand your point--but it was 161-2...

Perhaps the winning coach had his players continue to score to avoid the possibility of OT!

Good for him.

How's this for a life lesson, if you are so bad at basketball that you are going to get beat 161-2, then maybe you should find something else to do with your time because you cannot play basketball. Or would you rather have them grow up thinking they can be anything they want including a professional basketball player, instead of realizing not everyone has the ability to be a rocket scientist.

Not saying this is the case.

If the coach played his bench kids (when it was clear to see the game was out of reach - which was probably well before half time), if they stopped pressing, and theycan still win by 100 or 150 or whatever. I don't think the coach of the winning team can be faulted.

I don't see a team playing keep away (with or without a shot clock) or not letting your bench kids run the floor to score, take layups or defend properly fair or equitable either. THey are bad so, so you have to be bad isn't right. You can work on your quarter court zone or whatever. If you bench kids get a chance to play and score its on the other coach to have 5 kids better then your worst 5.

At the point where everyone possible is in the game, you've backed your defense up to quarter court and given them the opportunity to execute 5 on 5: thats it they've met their obligation to sportsmanship. Holding the ball or letting the other team shoot should be more embarassing to kids on the floor then being beaten or scored on. . . . I would think.

In the case in the OP it sounds like the game was well on its way to out of hand well before half time so the starters IMO should have been out way before then. No mention of whether pressing happened to what extent but to get that many possessions even against a bad team you can assume they pressed most of the game. So I'm not defending the coach just talking about the situation as a generality.

http://www.dailybulletin.com/sports/...-to-be-learned

Link above brings a little more clarity and probably a lot less sympathy for the winning coach.

Highlights:

- was up 104-1 at half time before the starters were pulled.
- Pressed and trapped full court or half court all game.
- Running clock after the first quarter.
- Bench players held the ball on offense for 23 of 30 second shot clock before shootingin the 2nd half.
- Of 15 exhibition games scheduled record is 14-1 with wins that include 98, 80 and 3 in the 70' as well.

Normally I'd agree with you, but as was pointed out later in the thread, the math doesn't add up here, especially with the mercy rule in the 4th. It's one thing to let your bench players work on offense. It's another to have them needlessly press the whole game, and surely there must have been some of that going on.

"Only eight states (California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota and Washington) allow unlimited use of a 30- or 35-second shot clock, and that breach of NFHS rules denies them a position on the Basketball Rules Committee."

http://www.athleticbusiness.com/high...asketball.html

See also: http://www.maxpreps.com/news/pewg4Mb...re-scoring.htm

Well Johnny,

I have to say I was only thinking about the lesson to the winning team--im not a rocket scientist…there are definitely some lessons to be learned for the losing side as well. i'm ok with them growing up thinking they can be anything, including a professional basketball player…in fact, id want them to dream... even if they are losing 161-2. i would, however, be sure to emphasize the need for a "fallback option"…just in case the NBA didn't work out…

we've made our points--in the word of Jrut--Peace

One more reason to never work girls basketball.

Peace

Unfortunately, we don't have that option in some states (e.g. South Carolina). :eek:

I had a team this year up 30 and pressing, legally. I was not happy, but there's nothing you can do.

Conversely, I had another game in which a team was up 30, and they threw the ball around for about two minutes. When the coach saw enough, and he wanted to get subs in, instead of calling time out, he just had the ball dumped out of bounds. That was a better day.

Did I mention I love my state's HS sports association? :D

Peace

With a 40 point mercy rule, I think it's a commonly accepted sportsmanship practice to play starters, press, whatever until the 40 point mark is reached. At that point, the press should be immediately pulled, and subs should start coming in. Even though the game is in hand, I actually think it's more merciful to keep pushing to 40, rather than dragging it out.

It's like an old dog that's suffering, sometimes it's better to just put them out of their misery...

Had a boys game last year that was not close and the schools did not like each other. Running clock in the fourth.....winning team was trying to get to a hundred with starters mostly in. Insert the officiating crew, got together at the first timeout and agreed to take our time. I know that may not be popular with some of you and that's OK. They finished with 94 points and had the ball on offense for each possession for at most ten seconds, obviously trying to embarrass the other team. On free throws they immediately shot the ball the second they received it. I just wanted to paint a picture of how obvious and unsportsmanlike it was.

I woulda been furious to see this charity thrown my way. Like other people said this is way more embarassing. I've called timeout up by alot late and told the officials it's a substitution timeout only. I don't even talk to my players.

More importantly, they should never have scheduled this game.

Yes there is, call fouls.

If it's a conference game (this time of year it likely was), they had no choice.

Not all of our CIF-SS leagues start before Christmas (ours and a few of the larger ones do) and this was a non-league conference.A fact that newspaper writers here won't mention because AremRed stated the point that I put in a newspaper response-this game never should have been scheduled?

I understand the concept of not running the score up on a team. I had the good fortune to play basketball for a H.S. that was the team to beat for the 21 years that my head coach was in charge. There were many years he had teams that he could have easily scored 100+ points in a game a couple of times a year. I played on his 17th, 18th, and 19th teams and I played on the first of his teams that finally scored 100 points in a game. We were up 56 to 20 at half time. My coach played his 2nd and 3rd stringers all of the 2nd half and did not press, and yet the 2nd and 3rd stringers hung 60 points on our opponent in the 2nd half. You can't tell the subs not to play hard. You just have to teach them to be humble in victory and gracious in defeat.

MTD, Sr.

You apparently missed the part where I said the team was pressing LEGALLY. We indeed were looking, but I'm not going to create phantom fouls to make a point.

HS basketball is not a pro basketball development league.

And the winning coach should get suspended for being extremely tone deaf.

Wouldn't happen here -- with a running clock, I would be as pokey as possible on every dead ball.

There's no life lesson here for anyone - unless you are a total a$$hole out to prove that some school shouldn't have a basketball team because they are bad.

And the running clock part is what I really don't understand. The article says that the running clock kicked in after the first quarter...no possible way a team should be scoring that many points with 3/4 of the game being running clock. Like Rich says, I am finding ways to be really slow at everything we do.

Shameful
 

Johnny, I don't know who you are but I certainly hope you're being sarcastic. There is no place for an outcome like this in interscholastic athletics...and according to the article, this isn't the first time this coach has run up the score.

An update
http://www.dailybulletin.com/sports/...ter-161-2-loss

My commentary on this is in the lower part of the article-below the advertisement.

I was going to make this point. How do you score 5 points per minute if you're "waiting until late in the shot clock to shoot"????

Sometimes there is only so much you can do and one team is just so much worse. Sucks for everyone involved but that's life. Maybe these teams shouldn't play each other.

I do not like the things that officials would be telling teams to do so the game would not be forfeited. That is not our role. I do not care how they play the game as long as teams are not doing unsporting things and playing defense properly is not unsporting behavior.

Peace

That was my point exactly decee-
This game should never have been scheduled in the first place.Either AD had the opportunity to stop this by saying no to the contract.Still doesn't excuse 161-2.

JRut- I completely agree with you.

Is it clear this is not a conference game? I did not clearly see anything mentioned either way.

Peace

Two thoughts as I read this article...

1) No way do I believe the Coach who said refs threatened a forfeit if his teams didn't play defense in a blow-out. Not buying that for a second.

2) Love the Coach who says a 159 point blow-out is out of line, but was OK with his 103 point blow-out earlier this season. Yeah...159 is totally ridiculous, but 103 is just a normal game.:rolleyes:

This is clearly not a conference game JRut- the league of the winning team starts Tomorrow night.

I wasn't sure. Around here we play conference games in general in early December.

Peace

Johnny d is making a great point. The unsporting aspect of playing this game would be playing your starters regular minutes or pressing even with your backups. That didn't happen. The point is it shouldn't be unsporting to play the game of basketball (offense and defense) no matter the time or score. Holding or passing around the ball until the game is over is not basketball. Don't want to lose by 159? Don't schedule the game in the first place or don't play the game.

Perception is reality.

Perception of this coach, by many, and perhaps by many that matter, will not be positive.

Likewise, the perception of people who *defend* that coach will likely be similar amongst the same people.

Update-coach of the winning team was suspended for 2 games and will return Monday night.

Would you walk off the court?
 

If you were doing this game. Would you tell the opposing coach not to press? They could do what they want in the first quarter but after?
Could you possibly call Technical if the team kept it up in the second half?


I know the losing coach is complaining as he should, but another side of me is going, "Come on. Do you and your players know anything about basketball?"
I'd consider just walking off the court and calling the game. I'd want no part of it. I know California rules say to run the clock in the 4th with the (40 point lead I believe) but I'd just have it running after the first quarter if it was clear what was going on.


http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/story...ames-161-2-win

It's not our job to coach the team. If he wants to be an ass, that's on him.

I'd call every possible foul on the pressing team and hope he gets the message. Beyond that, I'm just going to do my job.

Why would you ever make up rules? Or invent authority that you wouldn't otherwise have?

The losing team here obviously cannot play through the same level of contact as the winning team: I'd call the game accordingly.

No I wouldn't tell the coach not to press. It's not my job to tell the coach how to coach his team...just like you wouldn't want the coach to tell you how to call a game.

I also wouldn't walk off the court or call the game. Walking off the court here is pretty unprofessional IMO. You signed up and agreed to work a game...whether it be 161-2 or a barn burner of a game. Work the game, manage it as appropriate, and if you feel compelled to do so, afterward, write a report to the appropriate authorities and let them deal with it. You also have no authority whatsoever to call the game.

Why the heck do officials care? All we have to do is adjudicate the game. This is not our problem.

We care because we're human beings with an understanding of fairness and doing "what's right." The details may differ between us, which is why we don't get to inser those feelings into the game.

It depends in what capacity or viewpoint one is in when discussing this...as an official...in the game...the only thing I'll care about is managing the game appropriately. I don't care if the coach is pressing, has his starters in, etc.

But as just an outside observer, removed from being an official, the lopsided nature of this game brings topics that are easy to discuss...both for the winning team and losing time.

My statement was in the capacity as a game official. Why do any of us care enough to feel we can interject our personal morals and standards.

In blowouts, I always think of the movie Hooziers - five passes before anybody takes a shot. Although I've been tempted to mention that to a coach, now and then, I've always restrained my personal thoughts, and just done my job.