Tich’s Take

The final score: 161-2.

Yes, you read that right. That was the score of a varsity girls’ basketball game in California between Arroyo Valley High School and Bloomington High School earlier this month. Predictably, it did not take long for the outrage to bubble to the surface.

Arroyo Valley coach Michael Anderson was promptly suspended for two games and lambasted as classless, lacking even an iota of sportsmanship. Is that
really fair?

In a word, the answer is “no.” Let us get one thing straight: Bloomington is bad. Before their game with Arroyo Valley, the closest they came to winning a game was a 54-13 loss, according to MaxPreps. Their average margin of defeat leading up to the game in question was 61 points, including a 101-point loss.

Compare that to one-loss Arroyo Valley, who had beaten its previous three opponents by a combined 181 points. This was a matchup between a shark and a newly trained swimmer.

Still, according to reports, Arroyo Valley unleashed its usual full-court press with its starters for the entire first half, only to pull back the dogs in the second half with a semi-comfortable 104-1 lead at the break.

As a coach, leading a team into a game where there is a vast talent gap is a sticky situation. Coaches see every day, whether it is practice or a game, as an opportunity for their team to get better. How can a team get better if they have to alter the way they play because their opponent cannot keep up with them? Arroyo Valley might have been playing Bloomington on that particular evening, but they had important league games coming up down the road. Are they supposed to write off the Bloomington game as nothing more than a meaningless exhibition?

On the other hand, unleashing a full-court press on a team with no chance at breaking it does not improve a team anyway. Anderson could have used the game as a different type of learning tool for his team. Use the game as an opportunity to work on half-court sets. Give some little-used bench players a chance to start for maybe the only time of their high school careers.

Still, to say Anderson showed exceptionally poor sportsmanship might be taking it a bit far. His team was just playing basketball to the best of their abilities. That is all you can ask a group of high schoolers to do. Telling an athlete to give less than 100 percent would be worse, or at least equally as bad, sportsmanship as running up the score. He simply treated Bloomington like it was any other team.

So what should Anderson have done? Was he absolutely wrong for coaching a team that won by a 159-point margin? All I can offer is to say what I would have done.

If I were coaching a powerhouse team with an upcoming game against a team that was struggling like Bloomington, I would not have come at it with the “it’s just like every other game” approach. I would sit down with my team before the game and explain the situation. Protecting players from scrutiny is a top priority of a coach, and I would not want my players under fire for beating up on a team because they were simply more talented.

I would start players from the end of my bench to let them experience the limelight. I would not change the way my team played, at least in the first half, because they would be lost on the court without playing how they have been practicing all year long.

And if my team still won 161-2, so be it.

TICHENOR is the sports editor.