How fine-tuned are your college basketball gamers by halftime

That sounds both stat-centric and intangible. I guess, if you have to.

 

When covering college games, I like to start writing about halftime, or at least play with some ideas and jot them down. When it's a high school game, I have to keep stats, so other than the lede, I generally don't have anything done until after I do interviews. But most of our high school gamers are only 15 inches, or so. The story is usually written within 20 minutes.

 

Never had college on deadline, but for a few years running it seemed like we'd have a high school team playing the late game at regionals and I'd get the assignment. Would always write a little bit at halftime and, if the result didn't seem in doubt, would put in a little bit more during each time out. The big trick was getting quotes to go along with what I'd written already.

 

If it's high school, I would be adding the stats that I had so that would be less to compile at the end of the game.

If the stats are being done for you, look at the play by play to see if there are key plays or runs that you might want to talk about. If the game is a blow out, the key parts of the game happened in the first and second quarter. If it's close, then the first and second quarter are probably going to be the 15th and 16th inches that will probably get cut anyway.

At worst you should be writing down 5-6 key points from the first half that you might ask a question about at the end of the game. It does not mean the question will be asked, but it could not hurt.

And if you are live blogging, then you would probably be writing.

 

I'd say most of my college basketball gamers have a paragraph or less from the first half. There's the "Home State jumped out to a 13-4 lead, with John Forward scoring six points early." That kind of thing, but if you're gamer's substantially written at the half, you've covered a bad game ...

 

Usually if the bus started, the officials showed up and the lights came on are the three biggest plays of the game, you got a stinker. Sometimes, stinkers allow you to have some fun, though or write about people you don't usually focus on.

 

True, but you would prefer a stinker if you have a tight deadline, right?

 

No. Tight games write themselves.

 

I disagree entirely. If you're filing a no-quotes version, you need to have three-quarters of the gamer written by the buzzer. You're much better off if the result is not in question.

 

It always seemed like I could write a last second shot type of game in half the time as a blowout. Sometimes you get writers block in a blowout, just sitting there trying to make the dogshit game interesting.

I also loved painting the picture of a certain play, and in a close game you can do that.

 

I'll agree with that. I recall having a place that wanted around 700 words of no-quote story at the final whistle. Filing that after a football game that was one possession throughout with two ties and three lead changes: not fun.

 

See, how do you feel the writers at the Niners game are feeling right now, if they had a tight, online at least, deadline to get their stories in. There's almost no way they had much of anything written before the clock hit triple zeros.

Also, in that scenario, when would you head down to the field? With nine seconds left? Before? After? Thoughts?