This happens when you're too good

[jr/shotglass]

Guess they should have gone four-corners for the second half. When will they learn?

Minnesota Basketball Team Kicked Out Of League For Being Too Good

 

[LongTimeListener]

This story is remarkably low on specifics, including the scores of the first three games. But if it follows the pattern of previous stories on this general topic, my guess is the coach recruited all the best players in the league and they are curb-stomping everybody else so they (and he) can get a massive ego boost. And that would be strange since this sounds like a youth league that includes kids who got cut from the high school team, so I'm not sure what the point is of setting out to curb-stomp everyone.

Anytime a youth league team is running to the TV station, that's a pretty good tip-off that things won't be what they appear.

But, it makes for red meat on Fox News.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I figured this thread was about my posts.

 

[jr/shotglass]

High school girls' score in Pennsylvania tonight: Reynolds 53, Jamestown 0.

Break up the Reynolds Raiders.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Starman's Koalas should challenge them.

 

[Big Circus]

High school girls' score in Pennsylvania tonight: Reynolds 53, Jamestown 0.

Break up the Reynolds Raiders.

Never would have thought Sweet Dee could ball.

 

[jr/shotglass]

Maybe not hoops, but ...

 

[LongTimeListener]

Yep, I was dead-on about this.

RAYBA is a private club with 1,100 kids. It runs its own house leagues, travel program, and Website. Home

RAYBA put up a statement on that Website to address the "tremendous amount of misinformation" that has been in the public eye -- information that RAYBA itself put out there by crying to the TV station about being suspended.

It turns out they don't have facilities during the winter, so they went to the league a few months ago about the girls playing in the Northwest Suburban Basketball League, which RAYBA had never participated in before.

From RAYBA's statement:

3. The NWSBL informed our board that the other teams entered to participate in the league were composed of multiple teams from each of the other communities, with their most talented players dispersed equally between their community teams (through a draft process).
4. RAYBA had a total of 14 young ladies express an interest in participating.
5. RAYBA asked the 14 young ladies if they would split into two equal teams, comprised of seven players each. The decision from the participants was that they would prefer to play together on one team. This was communicated back to the NWSBL including the fact that the team was comprised of 11 seniors prior to the start of the season.

That's where it should have ended with NWSBL -- anybody should have been able to see that a team of almost all seniors who grew up playing AAU was going to be a horrible fit for their community rec league that includes underclassmen (underclasswomen?). I don't know why they allowed the group to enter as a team in the first place, but it was clearly a bad decision that was going to ruin the balance of the league, and they saw that immediately.

If RAYBA players just want to play, they can go into the draft and split up. If they want to play as a team, they can join AAU tournaments and get their own heads bashed in. My guess is they wouldn't like doing that.

Sorry, ****. This thread turned out to be about me.

 

[Riptide]

the team was comprised of 11 seniors prior to the start of the season.

That's just damn fine writing, ain't it?

 

[LongTimeListener]

Oh don't even get me started on their brazen incorrect usage of "comprised."

 

[Riptide]

And the other one. Prior to.

 

[jr/shotglass]

I'm curious as to whether any of those 11 seniors turned into postgraduates during the season.

 

[KJIM]

The "young ladies" part irks me.

 

[Starman]

1) If you're a club with 1100 members, you ought to be able to scare up a gym somewhere. Charge $50 entrance/membership fee, you have a 50,000 operating budget. Go scare up an abandoned garage/ pole barn and set up courts.

2) The video report was comically bad. Nobody is named: some people are just mad at some other people. Still photos are dropped in for 1-second shots with no indication of who or what they're of.

3) One of the early still shots looked pretty telling to me. In the middle of the picture is a girl clearly 1 1/2 feet taller than anyone else -- well over 6 feet, probably 6-4 or 6-5.

4) So their game plan undoubtedly consists of 4 super fast guards full court pressing buzzer to buzzer then throwing the ball up to the 6-5 center. I can see how that undoubtedly loses its luster real quick.

5) If you have a 6-5 center and 10 varsity-quality guards on your roster, you ought to go play AAU anyway. Nobody learns anything in 87-23 ass kickings over a bunch of Waldos.

 

[micropolitan guy]

Sounds as if not everybody is above-average in that neck of Minnesota.

 

[dixiehack]

If this league was operating normally, no one outside of it would give a single **** about it and no stories would ever be written. So why should they be now? This is less than nothing. This is two geezers in assisted living mad at what's on the TV in the day room. This is somebody not respecting the sign-in sheet at the Y. This is beyond pointless and banal.