DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Officials: HS Teams Kicked out of Playoffs for Trying to Lose

This is just sad.

Link

FREESBORO, Tenn. (Csaba Sukosd/CNN) - Two girls high school basketball teams have been kicked out of the playoffs, and will spend the next season on probation, after officials said both squads purposely tried to lose their head-to-head postseason matchup.

Fans expressed their outrage during and after the Tennessee high school playoff game between Riverdale and Smyrna. Riverdale purposely missed 12-of-16 free throws and Smyrna's players started shooting at the wrong basket.

Those actions prompted referees to plead with the coaches to stop making a mockery of the game. The winner of the game was scheduled to play the number one ranked team in the state in the following round, which was an elimination round. Officials say both teams wanted to avoid playing that team.

Each school was fined $1500, and a Nashville-area TV station reports both coaches were suspended for the rest of this season and the next season.

It's big news here. And it certainly is a sad thing.

They should be kicked out.

I watched a vid. of part of the game. That wasn't basketball. Heck, one girl was dribbling the ball, high, in front of her and the defender didn't even make at attempt to steal it. Next thing you know, the girl with the ball walked past the half court line to FORCE an over and back call.

Coaches get total blame for this, imo. All because they didn't want to be in a bracket against a top team?

Know what our high school team did a few years ago? They pretty much owned the competition around here, but got smoked by Columbus Africentric in the regionals. Next year, the coach, A.D., got them in a tourney in Detroit so they could play schools similar to Africentric (extremely athletic, go go go, aggressive, fast, quick teams.) Just to prepare our team for facing Africentric again.

Africentric beat us in the regional finals that year, but it was a good, close game.

Play to win - don't play to lose.

Devils advocate:

Say this year in the NBA in the East, Atlanta ends with the one seed, but struggles to finish out the regular season, while Cleveland is playing great and ends up at the 2 seed..

If you're the 7 seed, wouldn't you rather lose a couple regular season games, and drop down to the 8th seed, and get the better matchup?

Yes you'll most likely end up having to play that team later if you advance..

But there's a greater chance you advance by playing a "lesser" team in the first round..

Good point.

Did you watch any clips or vids of the game? It was pathetic. It was obvious both teams were trying their hardest to lose - until the officials (and if I remember correctly, a state official) warned the coaches about it.

If you're cheating, at least don't be obvious about it.

NBA teams tank today on purpose, but not to the level of this. I'm pretty sure if a team started intentionally shooting at their own basket, air balling all of their free throws, and intentionally dribbling across the mid-court to get an over and back call the league would come down HARD on those teams.

You can try to not win, maybe not play hard (which I still disagree with) but what these teams did was completely uncalled for.

It's silly how far they went, but the strategy is employed often even at the Olympics.

http://espn.go.com/olympics/summer/2012/...ng-lose-matches

I heard about this.. on one hand I don't like the message it sends your team, basically that you are scared of that #1 seed team and don't think you can beat them..

On the other hand, if the objective is to win the tournament, and you think that losing one game helps your chances to win the tournament, then what's the problem?

The Spurs have sat their stars for years, basically giving up games putting them at risk of a lower seed, so they are ready for the championship run... NBA teams tank entire seasons to improve their chances next year... The problem is that you usually don't have 2 teams trying so hard to tank the same game, which is what made this one look so bad.

I do not think they should have been kicked out of the tournament..

well perhaps the school district has been set up to purposely allow one school to have a talent advantage to the point no one else can compete. I could see teams protesting by making that match up a joke along with their playoffs.

I'm not saying that happened but I have seen it happen in the past.

My solution: The top seed picks the team it wants to play from the remaining teams. The 2nd seed can pick its opponent from the remaining teams, etc. I think this is a superior system to fixed brackets (e.g. what the NBA uses) and rearranging brackets (top seed always plays the lowest seed, what the NFL uses) for lack of better terms.

This completely negates any shenanigans in losing on purpose to get a more favorable matchup, and gives the top seed an extra reward for, well, being the top seed. Bonus points for some extra 'bulletin board material' when teams inevitably feel slighted for being picked as the most desirable team to play against.

Isn't that kind of how it works now? The top seed plays the lowest seed, the second seed plays the second lowest seed........?

What he's saying is that if you are the top seed, you don't have to pick the lowest seed.. you can pick anybody below you.

Okay. Wouldn't you pick the lowest seed though in most situations?

I guess you would take match-ups into consideration. Sometimes, like this year, OKC is the #8 seed in the west, if they get healthy and enter the playoffs as the 8, it's not outside the realm of possibility that somebody would rather play the struggling Spurs or New Orleans or some other team than start off with a healthy and well rested OKC team.

(I'm not agreeing that this is what they should do)

Sometimes, sometimes not.

Think about the situation DC pointed out. If the season ended right now, Memphis (the 2 seed) would have an easier matchup in the first round than Golden State (the 1 seed). What's more, Memphis could easily end up with an easier second round matchup as well. What does Golden State get in return? If both GS and Memphis win their first two playoff series, and the West Finals goes to 7 games, GS gets an extra home game. That is one small advantage for having the best record in an 82 game season.

More importantly, I dislike how the rules are such that teams can sometimes get very real advantages by losing on purpose (whether it be in shameful acts of sportsmanship like in the OP, or milder examples like resting your starters or whatever.)

I don't see any major downsides to my proposal. It adds a little bit of complexity to things and it is a bit of an outside the box solution but it seems like a better way to do brackets overall. JMO of course

In High School basketball your scenario wouldn't likely happen because here in Ohio ALL the teams make the tournament so unless the worst team which stunk all season suddenly got a lot better right before tournament the #1 seed is going to want to play them. The way it's set up in Ohio is that the #1 seed gets to pick where it wants to go on in the bracket, then the #2 seed, and so on, so usually the top seed either plays the worst team or in some cases gets a bye.

I didn't know that about Ohio HS sports brackets (and didn't even really know when I played HS sports) but it sounds like they actually do use a pretty close variant of what I was talking about. Instead of picking teams to play, the top seeds get to pick their spot in the bracket. That seems pretty reasonable, and similarly takes away the occasional incentive to lose. Does it work well in practice?

I say you make it to the playoffs that you draw lots to see who plays who. Who cares about your record it earned you a spot and nothing else. now when you play the best of the best that is when it really matters IMHO.

I don't know how many teams you are talking about but it could still work.. leave the system as it is now until you get to 16 teams or the final 8 teams or whatever.. then reseed based on the preference of the higher seeded teams.

It could create some unusual matchups though. Imagine you are the #1 seed and in the last game of the regular season the #2 seed loses it's best player to a mild ankle sprain and can't play. So you pick to play the #2 seed immediately.. getting out of the way when they are weaker rather than facing them later when their star player is back.. that would be neat.