[Colonel Kangaroo]

I've been as hard as any here on this guy, but with all the articles here and in the papers that put this guy in a bad light, it seems only fair that his side of the story gets its own article.

[Perdogg]

Related

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2171824/posts

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2170140/posts

[Badeye]

I think you did the right thing in offering the ‘other side’.

Now that we’ve met the moral imperative....

How does one score 31 points while ‘running down the clock’ anyway?

Just askin....

[allmost]

In fact, during my first year at Covenant four years ago, we experienced one of our worst seasons - a losing record of only 2 wins and 19 losses that sunk to an 82-6 low in a game that forever changed us

I wonder if the other coach got fired...

[RobRoy]

If this letter is at all true, the guy chose dignity and honoring his girls over keeping his job.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

There seems to a difference in accounts. The other stories said he pressed almost the whole game, Grimes says he pulled back into a zone after the initial flurry put the game out a reach. He also says he ran the clock down. If he really pulled into a zone, there also needs to be a little cooperation from the losing side. They have to pass the ball around the perimeter before they attempt to attack. If the losing team id going to dribble into the teeth of the zone or force passes deep, the winning side has to steal the ball.

I wish there we could see a tape of the game to see what happened for ourselves.

[proud American in Canada]

An interestsing article—thank you for posting it.

[pogo101]

Interesting to get the other side! Still, I find it a little tough to believe that a score of ONE HUNDRED to zero wasn’t at least partly the result of a run-up score.

Most of the reason for the score, though, must be that the other team was simply woefully uprepared.

[pnh102]

This coach should be hired to run the GOP. The party would be well served by having someone with a "take no prisoners" and "destroy the competition at all costs" attitude running things.

And yes, I stand by his 100-0 blowout of the opposing team.

[Pure Country]

There is NOTHING worse for a poor team than for the opposing team to not give their best effort. I coached a girls team that was far superior to the opponent. The opposing coach knew that they were going to get wiped off the court...she asked me to NOT go easy on her kids,that that was very degrading. I felt bad, but we played her team hard and the points that her girls put on the boards were hard earned. Every point they earned was earned the hard way and they acted like they won the Olympics when they scored.

If you play down to the other team, then you are a socialist. Everyone feels good about themselves. On the flipside, I have never heard of a scholastic bowl team playing down to their opponent...why in sports? My two cents worth.

[Fred Hayek]

Maybe the next coach should limit the team’s performance such that they do no better than a tie game as not to hurt the other teams feeeeeelings.

I would find this kind of action appropriate for a public school mired in political correctness, ditto for a private school yoked with the same nonsense. A Christian school? Now that raises some questions.

[Nonstatist]

When the lead hits 30 points, you put your 5 worst players in and you leave them there. By the fourth quarter, you tell them to stop playing defense.

There can be nothing good out of shutting out the opposing team. Absolutely nothing.

[70th Division]

As pointed out this morning on our local Radio show, there was no bad talk by the loosing coach. He was accepting of the fact that they lost big time. There is no wass to really speculate unless someone has the tape. but I know from experience that when you put in the second string they will try as hard to score as the first team woud have. So that is the way it is.

[norton]

I'm not a sports fan, particularly not a basketball fan (the whole foul and free throw thing irritates me), but it seems that the last thing you'd want is a coach that teaches kids that they should quit doing what they do well so that they can avoid winning really big.

The coach states that they stopped driving for domination somewhere around 25 to zip; if the other team was having such a bad night, how much more should you do? (I assume it is illegal to actually take a shot for the other team?)

Basketball is a timed event, you can go into overtime but not call the game at the bottom of the seventh for lack of competition.

Life is a timed event as well, and I'd teach my kid not to do unnecessary harm. When appropriate, I'd advise him or her that winning streaks don't go on forever. I'd never suggest that they should simply quit winning because someone else had to lose.

[TexGuy]

Reminds me of the Monty Python soccer match between a professional soccer team and the group of one-legged pirates.

[JamesP81]

It was inappropriate to fire him. Period. His team won the contest fair and square. The results of the game do not reflect badly on him; they reflect on the other team’s need to adjust its strategy and tactics.

[GeronL]

Competition builds character, and teaches us to value selflessness, hard work, and perseverance yup. thats what liberals hate

[GeronL]

So the media was making something of nothing and got the man fired. What a shock that the liberal media would do that.

[HamiltonJay]

Sorry, no excuses, this score was run up because of this guys need to see 3 digits on the scoreboard. He can spin all he wants. You can get through a 1/2 of High School basketball without putting 60 points on a scoreboard, let alone another 40+ on top of it, if you have proven you completely outclass the other team.

This display was shameful. A coach is meant to teach, what lesson did he teach his players or his opponents that night? Not a damn thing.

HS basketball has a 20 minute half, assuming they payed with a 45 second shot clock, and never ever missed a single shot attempt, and that the opponents spent not one second actually handling the ball, the maximum score per half would be 52 points if all 2 point shots were taken, and the 45 seconds was wound down. His second half performance fell 11 points below that... don’t give me you have nothing to be ashamed of.

I however do not just blame this coach, I blame the parents of these kids for not calling him for it during the game, I would pull my kid from a game like this and dress down the coach publicly. There was absolutely no honor in this.

[grateful]

If he, in fact, changed tactics to benefit the other team and not run up the score, then I commend him.

When I was in high school, our basketball team was in the same league with Morningside. Lisa Leslie was their star player. They routinely routed teams, including ours, and we were a fairly good team. She had a 100 point game against one of the lesser teams one year. It was definitely a case of running up the score and made the local papers, but I don’t think the coach was fired.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

A high school game is 32 minutes. Grimes said the he called off the press after 3 minutes with a 25-0 lead. That leaves 29 minutes to score 75 points. Other accounts say the scoring stopped at four minutes left when 100 was reached. So 75 points in 25 minutes. That means a point every 20 seconds. Discounting free throws and 3 pointers, that's roughly a basket every 40 seconds. Assuming it took Dallas Academy 10 seconds to bring up the ball before contacting the zone, and presumably quickly having the ball stolen, it would then take roughly nearly 30 seconds for Covenant to put a shot up. The math doesn't suggest a trap at midcourt or a backcourt press. Maybe Grimes has received a little undue heat. And if he was in a zone, the Dallas academy girls needed to cooperate by passing the ball around before they attacked the zone.

We really need to see a video. I think the real story would soon be obvious one way or the other.