I’ll say this much in defense of Yates basketball coach Greg Wise: I don’t think it’s any less humiliating for the opponent that you’ve thoroughly dominated if you tell your team to just stop playing like they care about the game. I don’t think it’s any better for your own kids, either. As long as his statement about having 15 kids on the team that all play means that the last five or six guys on the bench played the bulk of the second-half minutes, then I don’t think he committed an unforgivable sin. Of course, his justifications today sound an awful lot like that girls’ team coach from a year ago, and that didn’t end well from his perspective. So maybe he could have found a way to dial it back without any further loss of dignity for those involved.
I am wondering, though, what the “correct” action for the coach of the dominant team is supposed to be here. In baseball, where there often is a mercy rule even at the college level, all that’s really expected is that you stop being aggressive on the basepaths. In football, you run the ball and play the prevent defense. I would have advised coach Wise to cut it out with the backcourt press already. Yes, I know, you want your scrubs to get some real game experience, but it should have been clear early on that it was going to be One Of Those Games, and you could have gotten them that action before halftime, then played a non-press defense in the second half. You can’t tell them not to shoot the ball – no threes, obviously – and while you can have them back off a bit on defense in the front court, you don’t want to cross the line into playing apathetically, which as I said I’d consider to be the bigger show of disrespect. So we’ve got 1) Play the scrubs; 2) No three point shots; 3) Call off the press. Anything else he could or should have done?
Here’s one coach’s perspective:
Yates’ victory was a hot topic of conversation Wednesday at Strake Jesuit High School where the Crusaders accepted the “Honoring the Game” award from the Positive Coaching Alliance.
PCA’s lead trainer Harry Colon spoke with athletes, coaches and parents at Strake Jesuit about stressing sportsmanship through athletics.
“Strake Jesuit won this award because the players and coaches here honor the game,” Colon said. “They stress the importance of sportsmanship, respecting each other, the game and their opponents in all sports.”
Colon, a former football player at Washington High School and a current coach at Reagan, said he would stress to the Lee players that there are more games to be played.
“All you can do is make this a teachable situation,” he said. “Those kids need to learn from this and strive to get better.
Yates is a very good team, and they are going to score a lot of points and win a lot of games. As long as they are respectful to their opponents, they can win with a lot of grace.”
Yeah, but what specifically they have to do to be respectful is the point of contention. Play as hard as they can all they way through, or ease up in some not-fully-defined fashion? I’m pretty sure there is no consensus on this, which is why there’s so much discussion of it. Sam Khan and Jenny Dial have more.
It is very simple
1)call off the full court press
2)when Yates has the ball on offense run their motion offense (assuming they have one) for 15 seconds each trip
that would limit scoring and by doing so you are improving your teams offense (rather than relying on turnovers) for future games and you are not telling your team to quit. It really is not hard to do