[McDunkin]

Yesterday, I was looking over the scores nationwide from the England Basketball National League Under-14s, as a coach of a U14 team myself, I find it useful to plan for the future and see what how my potential playoff matchups are doing in their respective divisions. I Tweeted “Wow an Under 14 team won 133 – 8 this weekend… 1st quarter score 51 – 2… ridiculous.. How does that help development in any way!!” Os instantly came back and asked me for a writeup. So here it is…

Let’s start with some results from earlier in the season.

October 15th, 2011: Team A 152, Team B 8.
Scoring by quarter:
Home 33 – 38 – 38 – 42
Away 2 – 2 – 4 – 0

October 15th, 2011: Team C 144, Team D 4
Scoring by quarter:
Home 45 – 34 – 33 – 32
Away 2 – 0 – 0 – 2

November 13th 2011: Team E 133, Team F 8
Scoring by quarter:
Home 51 – 26 – 26 – 30
Away 2 – 0 – 0 – 6

As they say, team names have been changed so as to protect the innocent. If you wish to see the true identities of the monogrammed squads, visit the England Basketball official website.

You will see a theme in those above scores: A total of 429 points for the victors, compared with 20 for the losers for a difference of 409 points cumulative or 136.3 points per game. In a country where basketball is not exactly the most popular sport, do association members really think that it will help to annihilate the opposing team, possibly forcing those players to think to themselves “maybe basketball isn’t for me” before giving up on the sport altogether?

And what does the winning team gain? A lack of an offence with a game plan simply relying on fast break layup after fast break layup … was any defence played in any way, shape or form? I understand that holding an opposing team to zero points in a quarter is a good goal to set for your team, but at this level it is unnecessary; 143 points in a 40-minute game is 71 baskets (not including three-pointers and free throws): That’s 1.8 baskets per minute, which can’t possibly come from playing help defence and not gambling on steals.

After the 144-4 win on October 15, Sam Neter of Hoops Fix tweeted “An U14 National League game yesterday resulted in a 144-4 scoreline…what a joke. Clearly of no benefit to either team.” He went on to respond to a follower reply in adding “…there are results like that. What I’m saying is, for our players to get better, they need to actually be able to compete” and “I’m saying there shouldn’t be a situation where there is such a disparity in the standard of players. NEITHER team’s players are getting better playing a game like that.”

I understand where Sam is coming from on this one and in my personal opinion no U14 game should finish with a score line like the above. However, I want to hear your views: Can you take many positives from a game like this? What do you think of this scoreline? Have you ever been in a situation like this? Let us know in the comments section.

[McDunkin]

http://www.ballineurope.com/youth-basketball/critique-england-basketball-league-u14s-1528/

[David Stern a.k.a. da muthaf@cking leader of da kryptsParticipant]

That’s just how it is in highschool basketball. The good teams are far better than the bad teams. My team had 3 games so far this season and we won all of them by an average of 67 points… And I agree that you gain almost nothing in these kind of games no matter which side you’re on. In fact the team that wins gains less than the one that loses because you have to put in effort to get better and you don’t put in much effort when you’re winning by triple digits…  

[ProudGrandpaParticipant]

I was like, "This is an interesting post." So I looked at who wrote and I was shocked.  Bravo, McDumpin.

[TallmanNYCParticipant]

 Yeah, I think those type of scores are just terrible. There is no reason to do something like that, especially in a kids game. I’ve been in a few games where my team ran up the score (running clock 48-minute rec league games). We were trying to score 100 points which is really hard when the clock never stops and the entire game is done in less than an hour. That team was basically running the other team off the court and either shooting threes or layups. As I recall in those games the other team was ususally scoring around 60 or so points. People watching thought it was actually kind of neat to watch and this is with adults. 

But with kids, I would never do this as a coach. Also, as a kid myself, if someone had done this to me . . . well I would have fouled out or been tossed out well before the end of the game. That is what I don’t understand when I read about some girl (and in the U.S. it always seems to be girls basketball where this happens) dropping a hundred points in a game (or in a half). I can’t believe that she isn’t just hammered at some point by the other team. 

[GrandmamaParticipant]

I can remember a few years back a high school coach was fired b/c his team beat someone 100-0 I believe, and they slowed it down in the 2nd half and never pressed.  There was a huge controversy and a lot of uproar over the firing.  It might have been girls bball, not 100% sure, but I remember the story b/c they aired it on sportscenter.

 

I remember one of my ymca teams beat someone 44-2, we were like 5th or 6th grade.  We were trying so hard to shut them out and they hit some garbage bucket with like a minute left, we were pissssed.

 

To answer your question, no, there is no benefit for either team….except for something to laugh about later in life, or maybe later that night if you’re the winning squad.

[providencefriars1Participant]

My AAU team lost to the BABC national championship team with Nerlens Noel, Micheal Carter Williams and that whole crew, 120-24 last year. Their team obviously had no business playing us and really was a waste of their time.

[Da1potParticipant]

  My high school baseball team lost 36-0 once…… We had some "football scores" as the results of our games if you know what I mean…..

[aamir543Participant]

This is ridiculous. I am now 15, but when I was 12 and 13, I was the best player on some pretty bad teams, and we’d often go 5-6 in most leagues. And somtimes we’d play teams with 4 to5 good players, while we’d only have one other good player at most, but even we never lost like that. Are they playing against kids that don’t even know how to play, cause whenever we were down by 15 or so with no hope of a comeback, I would start hoisting threes, and at least some would fall. And even when we would get beat bad, They would never score more than twice as much as we did, and if the competition is really as far of as it seems, the score should at least be as much as what Providence Friars stated, even if it is still a complete blowout.

[HitsterParticipant]

Being based in the UK relatively few senior schools ( what you’d call High Schools) play competitive basketball so players have to develop through the junior teams of the local teams or via County Level. The professional leagues here are not of a brillant standard and most good young top players maybe look to get to a US School or college to try and develop their games.

The crowds for games are now quite sparse which is sad as in the 1990’s my local team pulled in between 3,000 to 5,000 for a lot of games.

The trouble was really once the NBA with Jordan and Co got televised over here, everyone could see the huge difference and thus went off the local teams.

[Author]

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