Girls basketball team in Minnesota loses 65-0

Most areas in the United States have different levels for high school sports as well. But as Rosie said, in rural areas the astronomical travel costs means that from time to time you'll have some large schools playing small schools, though in this case the larger school wasn't that much larger.

As an aside, in Upper Michigan the biggest schools (from towns of 10,000-20,000) are having a cow because they're going to have to play each other multiple times a year, even in football, because of a new rule out of Wisconsin limiting play against out-of-state teams. For a lot of UP schools, it's a quicker trip to find large schools in Wisconsin than it is in Lower Michigan. Plus, for football in Michigan, your wins, for purposes of determining playoff entry, are weighted. If you beat someone in a higher class, that's great, but if you beat someone in a lower class, that doesn't count like a full win. So it's not like the bigger UP schools could just play the smaller ones, and that's that.

 

Intramural sports!!!! That's the answer.

Sorry, Double J, why are AAAA teams playing against A teams? (At least they break them up for the provincials. )

It's like the Leafs (well, maybe that's a bad example) playing the Ayr Centennials.

 

Thanks Bob. That makes sense

 

That's the way it is, JR. Teams play within their associations, which are determined by geography. Grey and Bruce counties are grouped together in the Bluewater Association. My old school is the only AAAA school in the district. There are a couple of AAA schools, a bunch of AA schools and three or four A schools.

And, just to clarify, sometimes it's the A schools laying the smackdown. For example, there are three high schools in Owen Sound. One is AAAA, one is AAA and one is A. And the smallest of the three schools has, by far, the best football team of the three.

Playoffs are a treat, by the way. It's possible for a team to not win its district but win the province, just because the district encompasses all four classes but OFSAA does not, in most sports.

 

Football, certainly you have to be more worried about the big-school, small-school matchups. There's physical danger involved. But basketball? Half of Minnesotans are still upset that the boys state tournament isn't one class - hello Edgerton's 1960 Dutchmen. Even when I played there were just two classes, now there's four.

But several times in the last 10 years, there's been a decent argument that the "best team regardless of class" was a Class AA team or a Class 3A team, from a team led by the grandsons of former coach John Kundla to a team led by current NFL tight end John Carlson and his older brother. The point is, in basketball - boys or girls - you only need a couple of great players and you can compete against anyone, so I don't think you should be limiting the chances they have to play against other great teams.

Certainly there are always going to be blowouts, and Minnesota does now have running clock when the deficit gets too large. But there have been blowouts in basketball, bad, ugly blowouts, forever. When girls hoops first started, some of the scores were absolutely ludicrous, just like today. There's not much you can do. Call off the press, I agree. take out the starters eventually. But if it's bench players, they do deserve to play hard and score and play defense. Things are going to get ugly, no matter the size of the schools.

 

There's a difference between playing to win and piling on against a team that's already defeated.

 

On the subject of basketball oddities, I came across this one this morning. In a private school game in Mississippi, the losing team had five players foul out.
There were seven on the roster.
The losing team (ended up losing by 27) played the last four minutes with two players on the court. The winners only outscored them 5-3 in that stretch, so it doesn't sound like the coach was a dick. Story doesn't say, but I assume they just ran the four corners and burned clock.

http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/news/2009/dec/10/huntington-has-five-players-foul-out-loss/

 

A great SI story (reproduced in BASW 2009) tells the story of an Alabama high school team that had seven guys foul out, played out the game 2-on-5 and actually came back to win it. It happened in 1992.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1149384/1/index.htm

EDIT: I should mention, if you're gonna read it, set aside some time - it's a long one, but it's worth it.

 

Sorry, but a 65-point victory really isn't that bad when you have such mismatched opponents.

 

Except for that one run they let the other team go on, they played them even.

 

That's fantastic.

 

I have never understood the handicapping system in golf.

What purpose does it serve? Does the 22-handicapper who takes 18 more shots than a scratch golfer actually feel as though he "won" by 4 shots? You're playing the course anyway, so its not like tennis, where a 3.5 player would struggle to get a point against a 5.0 player.

How is golf's system any different than Roger Federer spotting me a 5-0, 40-0 lead? If I get a point . . . I win. Ridiculous. I do not belong on the same court as him, and no manipulation of the score will change that.