JUCO Basketball Insanity

Early season tournament here in town; We knew that this one team liked to run, run and run some more.

I swear to you; for 40 minutes, both teams decided to get into a track meet; Score, pass, shoot, score.....etc.

Team goes 19-51 for the 3-point line, loses 120-113.

I actually felt bad for one of the refs who is in his mid 50's and is in his 3rd or 4th game back after knee replacement surgery.

We were joking with him that we were going to get him a lasso to reel these bastards back.

You always see these trackmeets on tv, and say......damn, that would be fun.......but then you see it up close......and it's just a thing of beauty.

 

Grinnell College (oddly enough, located in Grinnel, Iowa) has a coach who wants his team to shoot either 3s or layups, presses entire game, doesn't mind giving up layups because it increases the game's speed. He usually has 3 5-man teams that he subs like a hockey coach subs lines. Grinnell set some D-3 records for scoring, I believe, but I'm too lazy to look up.

 

Troy (then Troy State) beat DeVry Institute 258-141 about 20 years ago. One kid for Troy had 22 3-pointers.

 

This from a game in 08-09.

Good God.

http://wm.grinnell.edu/athletics/mbasketball/statistics/MBK0809/font.htm

 

And just 100 in attendance.

 

you felt sorry for him because he was struggling to do his job?

he shouldn't be working college basketball games if he's not physically capable of doing it

 

At some JUCO's, you're lucky if you have refs in the area.

 

Ah, the Road to Hutch.

 

Grinnell had one of its games on ESPN a couple of years back but I don't recall all the details except that it wasn't one of their better nights. I think they only got into the mid-90s.

Right now, with the juco men's team I'm covering, I'm experiencing the exact opposite. They lost again today to fall to 0-7. In six of their games, they've scored 55 points or fewer. They've scored just 42 in two different games, which are tied for the second-fewest points scored since the shot clock came into use, and also scored only 42 in a game near the end of last season. They've lost 30 of their last 31 (with a 21-game losing streak as a part of that).

And the women are 0-5, too. This afternoon, they allowed a 21-0 run and were trailing 42-8 at one point. They ended up losing by 40. There was a game earlier this season in which they trailed 27-1.

 

I covered a high school team several years ago with an outside-the-box coach.

He had a rotation of 9 players. Definitely no superstars, and no great athletes. But all 9 were at least OK outside shooters. Tallest guy was 6-3.

So he called up the Grinnell coach and picked his brain about the offense. Watched some film. And decided to do it.

The first game of the season, the team went 21-60 from 3-point range and dropped 101 points. It was incredible. Still the most entertaining high school basketball game I've ever seen, and it's not even close. The final score was 101-85.

But the film got out, scouting reports were drawn up and most everyone was ready for it after the first game.

They never came close to matching the output from that first game and I think they finished about 10-14.

 

The same team I mentioned in the first post; played in the final game last night; I got to talking to the coach for a minute, so I asked him about his team, and he says in a slow Texas voice......"I can't get any big guys (which is true......tallest guy on the roster is 6'4)......and I can't coach a lick.......so I roll the ball out, get out of the way, and let em go." Team goes 1-17 from 3 in the first half......lost 103-98.

Entertaining as hell, and when he's not crawling in the refs' ass, seems like a nice guy.