Badger247 Board

Personally don't have a problem with it. It's varsity high school basketball, not a rec league at the Y. My team got blown out a couple of times throughout my four years of high school hoops and I never once thought 'Jeez I wish this time would ease up.'

The only thing I think that wouldn't be a bad idea to put in place is a mercy rule in regards to pressing. For example, up 30 you can no longer press. That's the only thing that I'd have an issue with in these blowouts is if the winning team pressed throughout.

Also, these are the final couple games before the state playoffs start, teams have to start adding wrinkles and stuff to get ready for tourney play.

+1.

These are varsity athletes, and while they aren't quite adults, they aren't little children either. I don't see any fixable problem with it, the opposing coach is probably just a dick. Not a big deal.

Furthermore, if the opposing coach is going into his bench in the second half and sitting his starters, I have absolutely no problem with running the offense/defense as is. It'd be a disservice to the reserves that bust their ass in practice, but rarely see the court, if they were asked to hold back and not try to do their best. This goes for football too.

Also, I can't picture anything more demeaning and disheartening for the losing team, than for the winning team to play keep away for half the game. I would feel like a charity-case and I would hate it.

Edit: Definitely implement the running clock at 30+ point leads. I thought this was already the rule, because that's was the rule when I played in MN.

Use the loss to motivate your team. There is always the next game and a rematch ahead.

i fall on the line that is in between proper sportstmanship and disgust for the pussification of our society. So tired of this everybody gets a ribbon mentality we are placing on our youth. Yet there has been tremendous expansion of traveling sports, which is mostly based on money. Hell my daughter in grade school gets graded in E,S,N. WTF happened to A,B,C,and F. What good are we doing not telling anyone that they are the best, or more importantly they are the worst? Tell you what kid when you grow up see how far that goes with your employer. Anyway i am starting to digress. The bottom line is that most things in our life are built on competition, i.e. winning and losing. Well with the exception of taxation where the winners are the losers and the losers are the winners.

So in closing nobody deserves to get their face rubbed in it when they are trying their hardest. At the same time as a true competitor I would be more insulted if the other team started to only dribble with their left hand or something. This similar argument is like the Northwestern game 2 years ago. We were trying to do the right thing, but they still gave up. That's on them more than anyone else. That is where they had a choice to build character for the rest of thier lives.

I'm kind of surprised by everyone's reactions, but in a completely good way. I am right along side with you guys in that if these schools are in the same conference and in the same division come playoff time there really isn't an excuse to lose by those margins. I went to a Big 8 High School (Middleton), and while the margins of victory weren't that high, the Janesville schools and Beloit would be beaten soundly quite often. But even then they would have average/above average teams every few years.

I finished High School in a small town in Northern Illinois that was very strong athletically and would face incredibly less talented teams all the time (i think this tends to happen at the smaller school divisions more often for some reason). However, the coaches and players of those teams would never complain and those kids would play, for lack of a better phrase, "balls to the walls" and could hold their heads high.

To add on to my previous post, it always seems to be the parents that bitch and moan about lopsided scores; does anyone find that a bit ironic? The parents are supposed to be the mature ones with perspective and level heads, however, I feel like the kids handle an ass-whooping significantly better.

I grew up in a wealthy suburb of Minneapolis where spoiled kids with a misplaced sense of entitlement were common. I played basketball my entire life (I graduated from high school in 2006, so this wasn't a long time ago by any stretch) yet during my high school sports career, I never once heard a player on my team or the opponent's team complain about the other team "running up the score." I don't know why, but it seems like kids, the actual athletes, understood that if they were getting their asses-kicked, it was because the players on the other team had worked harder during their careers to be better players. For some reason, this is lost on a lot of parents and it makes me sick.

I feel bad for the kids who have parents talking to coaches about playing time, bitching in the stands about a team running up the score, yelling at the refs every time their kid turns the ball over, etc. It's god damn embarrassing is what it is. I told my parents in 9th grade if they ever talked to my coaches in any sport about playing time, or talked about "what's fair" for the kids, I would choose not play in any game that they attended from there on out. I hate the whole "fair playing time" shit; after 7th-8th grade, maybe even earlier, I don't think any kid automatically deserves to play a minute of the game. Fair is that everyone is afforded an opportunity to EARN playing time...I don't want to be GIVEN anything, and neither should any athlete with a trace of competitiveness and pride.

This goes for non-athletes as well and is applicable in all facets of life. People should have to work towards goals and accomplishments; I think it is a very important and enjoyable part of life. I'll tell you right now, there is nothing more rewarding, at least in my opinion, than putting in the effort -whether it be studying for a test, working out to lose weight, or spending long hours at work to get a project done- and succeeding. Even putting in the effort and coming up short feels a hell of a lot better to me than being lazy and expecting something good to happen.

I simultaneously pity and am disgusted by the people that float through life and complain that they don't have the job, friends, lifestyle, etc. that they desire. I don't know if it's a result of children being spoiled and developing a sense of entitlement or if it's our politically correct, "everyone gets a trophy," social mindset, or if it's something completely beyond my comprehension, but our society as a whole seems to be filled with a bunch of lazy, entitled, people waiting for their hand out. I am only 23 years old and I see this as a huge problem with the American/Western culture moving forward. I can only imagine how the people who have actually lived long enough to see this trend develop feel. It must be sickening.

/Rant.

I graduated high school in 1992 and we won all of 3 games my senior year on Varsity. I blame it on the height issue as I was our center at 6'3". Anyway, I don't think anyone on our team felt sorry for ourselves because we weren't competitve most nights. I think probably some parents felt a little sorry for us and perhaps some were embarrased but mostly because we just lacked talent. (coaching was marginal as well) I think the team still looked forward to the competition but when the coaching staff decided to start playing the underclassmen to prepare for the future many on the team threw in the towl. I and few others ended up leaving the team as a result. I understood what the coaching staff was doing but they effectively quit on the Seniors and some of us followed suit. Those underclassmen were not as good as the current senior class and had not yet earned their right for playing time. Still irritates me some 20 years later.

I had an opportunity to follow my nephew's varsity career a few years ago and I will say the intensity of parents these days is off the charts. It's at a point where parents are vocally critical of other kids on the same team. Just not right. It's always the same story, their little Johnny can do no wrong.

I can understand what you are saying, although I never experienced it. I can say, honestly, that no kid was left off the Varsity/JV/whatever squad that deserved to play at my high school, at least not in basketball.

It all comes back to a sense of entitlement though. If a kid is getting playing time he doesn't deserve in the situation you described, it's because his parents felt he was entitled to it.

Can you go into detail a bit more about your experiences?

I had experienced it to in hockey. It was my 2nd year of peewees. There was talk that I would make the A team if they decided to take 2 goalies - a lot of kids and parents from kids that always made the A team were telling me this. In the end, they elected to go with 1 goalie.

I was considered a lock to make the B team. Had a good try out and all of that. When team selections came out, I didn't make it. We found out from a phone call, and if you didn't make it you went to the next set of try-outs the next night.

Everyone was absolutely shocked that I showed up the next night. Everyone and their mother was telling me how screwed I got over by politics. The kid that made it over me had a Dad who owned a company in the town and he ended up "sponsering" the team. Put his logo on the back of all the kids jerseys, etc etc.

The "C" teams went into a draft. And we found out after try outs who was on which team. No one knew the results of the draft, just which team you were on. I was friends with the kid who's Dad coached of the other team. He came up to me before they announced the teams and told me that they wanted to take me but I was drafted #1. They offered to trade the next 3-4 picks for me but the other team wouldn't do it and the league officials wouldn't approve it if they did because they said it wouldn't be fair. (the other team had 2 good kids locked in on it, because their parents were coaching and if I was on it, we would've been stacked). Our team ended up going 2-1 on the year over the other "C" team despite getting outshot by about 10-15 shots each game.

Later that year my team entered the same "B" team tournament that our "B" team entered. We lost our first game but so did the B team. The B team won their 2nd game, so if we were able to win our 2nd game we would have gotten a chance to play them in the next round. We ended up winning our game 3-0. The B team was jumping up and down at the chance to play us because they said they were going to smoke us. I was looking forward to the game as well. I wont ever forget it... We ended up going into the locker room after the 2nd period only down 1-0 and there was a lot of hype that we might pull it off. I ended up letting a goal in the 3rd period though and screwed that up. We lost 2-0 but I still think I proved my point as we were outshot 56-4

I would later go on to make Bantam A teams and stopped playing after that. We too would have some kids make it due to politics and it was just annoying as hell dealing with their attitudes and their parents attitude. The high school coach hounded me to play for a little bit after that but I had no desire, and truthfully I probably would've been the backup. In a 20 game season, I might have played 5-7 games and it just wasn't worth it to me.

As a side note... I had dealt with the same issue the year prior with the same kid. He made the squirt A team over me because his Dad sponsered the team. One of the Peewee C team's needed a goalie and that same friends dad (that wanted to draft me) told them to bring me up from Squirt B's. Was lucky they were preaching for me because my mom would never get involved in that kind of crap. Their were 3 C teams that year and we ended up being the best one. Went like 44-8 on the year, and never lost to the other teams. I played quite well playing up with the other kids.