By Flint Wheeler
According to the NCAA, which tracks such things in the case of girls’ basketball, only 3.7 percent of those who play high school ball will go on to play for a college team. The percentage is even lower for males – 3.3 percent – because there are more boys’ high school teams and roughly the same number of college teams.
Wouldn’t every player who finished his or her high school career love to have those final moments immortalized on video to cherish over the years? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to look back across the decades and see the pride in wearing the school colors one last time? Ha!
I’d love to be in the room 20 years from now when current seniors from the girls’ teams at Smyrna High School and Riverdale High School in Rutherford County, Tenn., pull up the YouTube video from their final games, which were played against each other in the local district consolation game.
Both teams were going to advance to the regional tournament regardless of the outcome, but the winner of the game would be placed in the same bracket as powerhouse Blackman High School, which had beaten Smyrna and Riverdale, and everyone else in Rutherford County, earlier this season. The Blaze’s only two losses have been to Mater Dei, of Santa Ana, Calif., and Potter’s House Christian, of Jacksonville, Fla., two other nationally ranked teams stocked with the best players the AAU can provide.
Blackman, which finished last season ranked No. 1 by USA Today, ESPN, and MaxPreps, has one starting guard going to Tennessee and the other committed to Connecticut. So, yeah, not a school you go out of your way to schedule, if possible.
Because of the way the high school playoff system is constructed in Tennessee, the regional finalists both qualify for the next round, which are sectionals. That meant a team able to avoid Blackman until the championship of the regional round – by being on the other side of the bracket – could conceivably keep playing for a while.
Of course, for either Smyrna or Riverdale to make that possible, winning the district consolation game would be a severe roadblock.
Before we get to the game, however, let’s take a step back and applaud the administrators who set up this system and put these players and their coaches in this position.
What happens next is American ingenuity at its finest.
The coaches didn’t tell their players to try to intentionally lose the game, but the players were aware of the consequences of the outcome. So, there were players missing free throws by several feet, and lots of bricked field-goal attempts, and players who were called for 10-second violations because they simply didn’t dribble across midcourt. There was an instance in which a girl simply dribbled into the backcourt, and also a possession in which one player tried to take a shot at the other team’s basket but, fittingly enough, was called for a 10-second violation before getting off the shot.
The referees tolerated this for a while – what rules were being broken? – until there was a conference with the two coaches in which the refs tried to shame them into playing the game properly. Finally, an administrator for Smyrna went to coach Shawn Middleton on the bench and told him to put the starters back in and stop embarrassing the school. Smyrna went on to win by 26 points.
Because of the uproar – which was largely due to the video, as with so many things these days – both teams were suspended from participating in the regional tournament and both coaches have been suspended through the 2015-16 season.
The human-nature element of what happened isn’t that different from what we are watching with the 76ers. The Sixers don’t tank games, but they tanked the roster. Why? Because the NBA set up a system in which losing in the short term can ultimately be to their advantage in the long term. That isn’t any different from losing a district high school consolation game in order to advance to a preferable bracket in the regional tournament.
The basic brilliance is how human beings dealt with the system in place. The problem was with the system.
If you want proof, check out the video of the Smyrna-Riverdale game. It will be there forever, and the seniors can get a good laugh in their 40’s.
FlintWheeler.com – Founder of Silex Strategies L.L.C. providing sales and consulting in Insurance, Retirement, Real Estate and Taxes through A.I.G./Valic. PGA Class A Member and T.P.I. Certified Golf Trainer. Host of “The Tilted Sports Radio Show” on Fox Sports 1270 from 3-7pm on Thursdays, Live from The Kilt. Contact at 760-409-4612
