Getting Beat And Learning A Lesson From It: A Novel Concept

I don't know why I didn't think of it before, what with all the ranting and raving over the 100-0 high school basketball game in Texas last week, but Lozo's post last night made me remember a team I played on that suffered a similar embarrassment and lived to tell about it.

It was in seventh grade. Early in the season, our "varsity" basketball team (the seventh and eighth graders) made the trip to nearby Hampton for a game. Two things I still remember: the court seemed about half as big as regulation (this place was tiny) and our opponents ran a brutal, suffocating full court press.

We were overmatched from the start. No contest. I was never a good basketball player, always the last guy off the bench. That day I saw plenty of action in the fourth quarter and was on the court when the final buzzer sounded with the scoreboard reading 70-10 in favor of the home team. One of their players, who I noted in later years to be one of those gentlemen who is so intense that he always appeared to be trying a little too hard to BE intense, clutched the ball in both hands, threw his head back, and screamed as though he had just won the NBA championship.

Later in the season, they came to our place. They were in our heads by now and the result wasn't much better, 50-16.

Eighth grade was different. Ben Wheeler had moved from Portsmouth to Rye and immediately became a game-changer, particularly on the defensive end. You know those blocked shots where the defender times his leap perfectly, gets his entire hand on the ball, and either spikes it or swats it about fifteen rows deep into the stands. Ben did that three times every game. He completely changed the way we matched up with opposing teams, especially those with talented young big men.

On the eighth grade trip to Hampton, we still lost. I don't remember the score, but I know it was at least closer than the sixty point difference of the previous season. We had Ben, more experience against that awful press, and weren't surprised by the size of the court.

Again, later in the season, they came to our gym. Our coach was running late and missed the first half, forcing one of the parents into action. Mr. Hodgeman, Billy's dad, took the reins and immediately put our offense into ball-control mode. We didn't rush, we didn't panic, we just sat and waited for a good shot. When it was there, we took it, then went back and tried to limit the number of good looks on their part. It worked: the halftime score was 8-8.

I can't remember the final score. I think we won, but even if we didn't, there was a valuable lesson in it. We got embarrassed, beaten up mentally and physically, and we refused to give in until we proved that we were better than the team that took the floor when we were seventh grade. Maybe that's the message that should be passed on regarding that 100-0 game, that if the losing team can come back next year and play even with their opponents for a half, or a quarter, or even a few minutes, that's just as good as a win.