Running Up The Score

I have hated watching similar blowouts over the years - regardless of sport.

To start with, I agree - why was the game on the schedule in the first place. I've seen schools schedule games like this in the past as extra games for the JVs or the freshman rather than the varsity.

Given that it was on the schedule, I'd suggest bringing up players from the JVs and giving them the game time. Walking the ball up the court and other stalling tactics would also be appropriate.

You can't score for the other team - but you also don't have to be running the court at full speed.

It takes a lot of work to put 100 up in a 32-minute game. The simple fact that they reached 100 exactly demonstrates IMHO that it was an objective.

The school is right to apologize. Now the coach should be replaced. While the game obviously should never again be scheduled, the damage was done. No coach should allow that kind of beating to be inflicted. I don't care if they worked on a four-corners stall or play JV kids, something should have been done.

There's no shot clock in HS basketball. There's no excuse for this.

That was my question. If no shot clock, why run it up? Even my old, alcoholic, insane HS basketball coach would have ran four corners the second half and kicked our a$$ if we took a shot.

Follow up article to the one above:

Covenant School girls hoops team seeks forfeit of 100-0 win over Dallas Academy

I'm pretty sure the Head of School at our private school would fire the coach if he did that to another school. No excuse.

First I hate games like this and try to avoid scheduling them if at all possible. If we play a team like this I go with starters but get them out as soon as possible. I dress as many players as I possibly can and will use them.

BUT (here is where I'm going to make some people mad and I am going to look at it from a football coaches perspective since that is more similar to the situation then a baseball coach)

It's not my job to stop my team. If they want to wear big boy pants then they have to play the big boys and what happens is what happens. If I get up by a comfortable margin I am going to put people in who don't get much playing time. When they go in I'm not going to handcuff them because it's not fair to tell them "you rarely get off the bench but now that you are in I'm not going to let you go full speed".

Now if my subs end up dominating then I will take them out and put younger players in. Once again it's not fair to them to put handcuffs on them either.

After this if it's still a domination then I will probably become a lot more conservative to keep the clock running.

In the case mentioned above we don't know how many players Covenant had. If they dressed 20 girls and all 20 played then honestly I don't have a problem with it.

As for baseball I would pretty much treat it the same way - use my younger players as much as possible. If it was still out of hand then I would go base to base, take two strikes etc...

I have been on the receiving end of blowouts and I wasn't too happy but it was my fault for either playing a team I shouldn't have or my guys weren't ready. When the game is over I'm not going to yell and scream at my guys (I did when I was younger but I was pretty dumb back then too) but tell them we have work to do and that is the level we are trying to reach.

Let's look at it from another perspective - why did Dallas Academy choose to play a varsity schedule? Granted we don't have all the info on them either but they should know how good they are and how competitive they will be. Why didn't they scheudle all JV games instead of varsity games?

quote:

Originally posted by 08Dad:
Given that it was on the schedule, I'd suggest bringing up players from the JVs and giving them the game time. Walking the ball up the court and other stalling tactics would also be appropriate.

You can't score for the other team - but you also don't have to be running the court at full speed.

You can also start pulling players off the court, have everyone play opposite-handed, or put in a minimum pass limit.

I once coached a 1st grade indoor s****r game where we won something like 25-3.

My co-coach and I were trying like crazy to hold our guys back once we quickly got to 8-1 and were embarrassed every time we scored. We played 2/3 of the game 7 on 5 and put our best players on defense and in goal.

However, there is only so much you can do if you happen to overmatch a team.

I do think that 100-0 makes it sound like the coaches weren't trying to hold their girls back.

The coach is trying to forfeit the game to keep his/her job. Coach wasn't too concerned during the game. It takes a lot of effort to win 100-0. I am sure they pressed and fast broke to get there. We scored a 100 points a few times in HS and it was a lot of work.

No excuses allowed.

From the follow-up article, it is the head of school and the AD that are trying to forfeit. Coach is nowhere in the article. The article also says

"In a TAPPS district game on Jan. 13, a far superior Covenant team kept the pressure on winless Dallas Academy until midway though the fourth quarter when it scored its 100th point. The score was 59-0 at halftime and 88-0 after three quarters."

As has been stated above, it takes a full court press or other similar tactics to score 100 in a HS game. The "kept the pressure on" sure sounds like a full court press.

If this were football, that is like running the two minute drill and passing up 49-0.

Yes, coach should be fired for his lack of judgement.

I'll disagree with Coach2709 - I do think it is the job of a coach to manage the game to avoid such blowouts. There are all sorts of things you can do, and some of them are even fun for the team.

For instance, on one team my son was on, if they were blowing out a very weak opponent, the coach told them to "go Dominican." Which meant they had to swing at ever pitch.

The boys loved it.

In football, have the games my son's team played were blowouts. In the second half, with a 6 TD lead, not only were all the JV's in the game, but the play calling was ball control.

So I do think coaches can and should do things to change the game "handcuffs" if you will, in blowouts.

Assuming they play 8 minute quarters I find it hard to believe you could score 100 points.Had to full court press the whole game to do that. That never would have happened years ago. You just did not do that stuff. but today seems like civility and just plain common sense have taken a vacation

First of all the person putting those girls in a situation where they would be embarrassed like that should have to answer to someone. Secondly the coach of the other team should have realized that this was a terrible situation and held the ball , done whatever he could do try and not humiliate them.

We used to have a team in our conference that a LL team would have run ruled. And I am serious about that. We beat them 30 - 0 in two innings. We played everyone , we pitched anyone and we did everything we could do to hold down the score. I went to the opposing coach after our second time up and said "Hey , lets call the game after you hit. This is not a good situation for anyone." He agreed. If he had no agreed I was going to suggest we walk from the game. Sometimes its no longer a game. Its no longer about competition. Its about getting the heck out of there and not being a part of something that no one wants to be a part of.

quote:

Originally posted by Will:
Had to full court press the whole game to do that.

I think that's everyone's feeling.

They played zone or man press for most of the game and killed them on the in-bound. That way they didn't have to run that much and could get to 100 easily.

I actually had a team kind of do this to me in a D league last year. I had a bunch of kids who wouldn't listen to me when I said we had to get disciplined during practice. We won our first 3 games on pure athleticism, which made them even harder to handle.

Then we played a team that played man press on us and they beat us something like 40-8. We turned over like 75% of our in-bounds.

We did slightly better the next time we played them, but the kids have to be disciplined and you have to have 3 good dribblers (or people who won't pick up their dribble and will push back with their butts under pressure).

quote:

Originally posted by Coach May:
First of all the person putting those girls in a situation where they would be embarrassed like that should have to answer to someone.

We do have problems a bit like this in 5th grade when we go to A, B, C, and D teams rather than balanced teams.

Invariably, an A team gets put in a C league and a C team gets put in an A league.

It can make for a VERY long season if your league organizer doesn't believe in making mid-season adjustments.

quote:

Originally posted by Will:
Had to full court press the whole game to do that.

Probably not. It's only 3+ points a minute. But it would take running the court on offense rather than setting up and making at least four passes. Then they would have only scored 50 or 60.

Whenever I hear tv announcers talking about a college player having score 100 points in a high school game I think, "Big deal! He/she loaded up on the Little Sisters of the Poor." I remember when Cheryl Miller (USC, Team USA) scored 105. She did it against a school that was awful. She was fed the ball and fed the ball until she broke the CIF girl's record.

Some coaches don't get it. My son's freshman coach would press full court until they were up by forty. He thought he was making a name for himself. He just didn't understand what the name was. And that's from the parents of his own team. Imagine what the opposing parents thought.

Quoted straight from the article and in the DMN today..."a far superior Covenant team kept the pressure on winless Dallas Academy until midway though the fourth quarter when it scored its 100th point. The score was 59-0 at halftime and 88-0 after three quarters. Dallas Academy is renowned for its work with student who have learning problems such as short attention spans and concentration."

They pressed for 3 1/2 quarters...until they hit 100 and then put on the brakes. That Covenant coach knew what he was doing at the time and now regrets it. Too little too late. Hope they fire him.

I guess the coach couldn't figure out when it was 20-0 and the losing team didn't have any decent scoring chances, that the game might be over.

quote:

I guess the coach couldn't figure out when it was 20-0 and the losing team didn't have any decent scoring chances, that the game might be over.

Exactly...sounds like that coach is the one with the learning problems.

quote:

Originally posted by Rob Kremer:
I'll disagree with Coach2709 - I do think it is the job of a coach to manage the game to avoid such blowouts. There are all sorts of things you can do, and some of them are even fun for the team.

For instance, on one team my son was on, if they were blowing out a very weak opponent, the coach told them to "go Dominican." Which meant they had to swing at ever pitch.

The boys loved it.

In football, have the games my son's team played were blowouts. In the second half, with a 6 TD lead, not only were all the JV's in the game, but the play calling was ball control.

So I do think coaches can and should do things to change the game "handcuffs" if you will, in blowouts.

Rob I'm not defending this guy nor am I supporting what he did. I'm just saying that games like this is a great chance to get your guys who don't play and young kids a chance to play.

That's how I would handle it and that is how I have handled it in the past but I'm going to make sure I won't beat a team 100 - 0 either.

I'm still saying the losing team should shoulder some of the blame for this. They should know how good they are and how competitive they are. If they can't compete at the varsity level then they need to play JV ball.

They could of turned the scoreboard off.

Not in high school. Turning off the scoreboard is for little kids.

quote:

Originally posted by fanofgame:
They could of turned the scoreboard off.

That reminds me of something I used to do. At my last school I kept the scoreboard for both boys and girls basketball teams. Whenever there was a blowout and it was obviously out of hand I just kept the clock running. Ball goes out of bounds, refs slowly get the ball and then put it back in play - clock never stopped.

Nobody said a word or complained at all.

Coach2709 - my kind of time keeper...

Wow. "a far superior Covenant team kept the pressure on winless Dallas Academy until midway though the fourth quarter when it scored its 100th point."

"kept the pressure on"

"kept the pressure on"

I'm usually one to say, "Let 'em play", but that was cruel.

When my son's HS baseball team was beating a team 10-0...in the first inning...I think our coaches handled it well. All of our starters were removed from the game after 2 at-bats (I think that was only 1 inning or so). Our players who were not pitchers but had said they would like to try were allowed to pitch that day, giving the other team a chance to get some hits. (LOL, I remember one of our players saying pitching was harder than it looks, even against a weak team.) Our non-starters who were eager to get varsity batting experience were told to go up there and hit (no walks), but once they got on base they were limited by our coaches in how they could advance - no stealing, and could advance only one base on a play, including outfield hits. The other team ended up scoring a few runs off of our substitute "pitchers", and while the game ended in the 10-run rule after 5 innings, it wasn't embarrassing and both teams actually had some fun - I don't remember the score, but maybe something like 16 to 5.

100 to zero. Incredible!

Julie

quote:

Originally posted by fanofgame:
They could of turned the scoreboard off.

That's something that I request in s****r games if we're killing someone (usually when we go up 7 or 8 goals).

That way it's more about playing and less about the score.

quote:

Originally posted by coach2709:
That reminds me of something I used to do. At my last school I kept the scoreboard for both boys and girls basketball teams. Whenever there was a blowout and it was obviously out of hand I just kept the clock running. Ball goes out of bounds, refs slowly get the ball and then put it back in play - clock never stopped.

That's awesome.

They just interviewed the girls on the losing side of this story. Funny thing is we're the only ones outraged. They don't care. They said they just play for fun, know the other team is far better, and the saw the standard they are striving for. Dallas Mavs owner Mark Cuban is setting up something special for them at a future game. Makes one wonder who the real losers were here......

quote:

Originally posted by Tx-Husker:
They just interviewed the girls on the losing side of this story. Funny thing is we're the only ones outraged. They don't care. They said they just play for fun, know the other team is far better, and the saw the standard they are striving for. Dallas Mavs owner Mark Cuban is setting up something special for them at a future game. Makes one wonder who the real losers were here......

I don't feel sorry for the girls who lost as much as the girls who won.

Their coach is a tool.

I hope they know that (they probably do).

My son's team has been on both sides of this equation.

In Cooperstown as an 11-year-old team, we played a California team that went to the finals. They were incredible. But as soon as they'd scored enough runs for the mercy rule to kick in, every boy started hitting from the other side of the plate and no one advanced more than a single base. Classy team, classy coaches. We were rooting for them all the way.

Then last summer (now u14), we ended up playing a team that the coach told us offhandedly that he had just pulled together, and none of the boys had played travel ball before. It was painful... even worse, this was a league with mandatory doubleheaders and no mercy rule. Sometime during the 2nd inning, when we were already up by 10, the coach (my husband) got our guys together and said that for every walk the team got, everyone would have to run another lap after the game.

I'll never forget the look my son gave him, after he was hit by a pitch his next at-bat...

LHPMom

I was once at a HS game where my sons HS was playing another in the area but a lower divison. My son didn't play HS basketball but we went to a lot of games for fun and to support the school. there was a menataly challenged boy on the opposing team. Once it was a blow out,both coaches had must of made an agreement. The last three minutes of the game this kid came in. The crown went wild as everyone didn't really guard him and let him try and make shots. After about ten attempts he finally made a three pointer. The crowd went nuts, players for both teams were clapping and high fiving him. One of the best moments I have seen in my experience in sports. maybe turning the clock off is for little kids, but there is a thing called sportsman ship and you do not rub it in someones face when your beating them that bad. No excuse for that. We are supposed to be teaching our kids about things besides blowing people away in a game.Maybe the other team didn't mind but there were young kids at that game.
Always remeber that we do not just effect the immediate people around us but there are always outsiders that can be affected by what we do.

Everyone's possibly been on loopsided games in youth sports...as a coach in LL years ago with my son's 12U team, the game got out of control quickly, before I notice the scoreboard it was 29-0. The boys just smashed the ball and the other team, although had many good players, just couldn't make the plays. After 2 innings, I asked the umpire and coach of the other team to turn off the score board, then proceesed to practice bunting for the rest of the game...final score...29-0. We couldn't lay down a bunt to save our lives...Blue Skies!

Had this happen to me in a youth baseball tournament once. Dude was stealing up 12-13 runs late in the game. I simply put my LHP who threw near 70 (was 11-U tournament) who was lucky to be able to hit the mitt, let alone the strike zone. A couple of batters later...the stealing stopped.

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From today's AP follow up report...

quote:

At a shootaround Thursday, several Dallas Academy players (the losing team) said they were frustrated during the game but felt it was a learning opportunity. They also said they are excited about some of the attention they are receiving from the loss, including an invitation from Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to see an NBA game from his suite.

"Even if you are losing, you might as well keep playing," said Shelby Hyatt, a freshman on the team. "Keep trying, and it's going to be OK."

Positive lessons found in the face of huge adversity...Gotta love that attitude...

44
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You're right 44...I do see a bit of adversity in that face!

Additional details from Yahoo this morning:

http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=903780

Supporting what has been speculated above:

"A parent who attended the game told The Associated Press that Covenant continued to make 3-pointers -- even in the fourth quarter. She praised the Covenant players but said spectators and an assistant coach were cheering wildly as their team edged closer to 100 points.

"I think the bad judgment was in the full-court press and the 3-point shots," said Renee Peloza, whose daughter plays for Dallas Academy. "At some point, they should have backed off.""

What the heck has happened to common sense. You are coaching a team and you are blowing the other team out(in this case it is beyond blowing them out) You back off. As they say what goes around comes around. I remember having a coach suicide squeeze against my team up 10 runs. I did not forget. We met the next year and we beat them pretty good. Oh I did not suicide squeeze but I did not hold people up at 3rd> I kept my starters in longer than I would have and yes I heard one of the assistants on their bench moaning and saying "dont you have enough" I looked at him and said I had a good memory. He moaned no more.

I agree with fanofgame. They should have quit keeping score. Would 50 to 0 be running up the score. 25 to 0? The 100 is a lot, the zero is unbelievable. Maybe they should have started shooting at the wrong basket.

Sounds like the coach is an idiot and cheering gets old at some point. They SHOULD be embarrassed.

But ZERO points? What do you do about THAT? When does it become an even bigger joke and insult by not trying at all?

Personally I would think it is more insulting to stop playing all out. The girls had the right attitude and learned from it. I also understand the losing team had players who had some disability.

The easiest way to keep your opponents at 0 points is to never let them get across the half court line. I doubt they made it across very often. Pressure on the inbounds, full court pressure and running the ball. Nothing else would work to get a 100-0 score. If you let the other team cross the half line they will get a bucket or a foul shot just by luck. But if they never get there or never get the ball inbounds, you get 0. The coach knew exactly what he was doing.