how bout u fire the coach who lost 100-0



DALLAS (AP) — The coach of a Dallas high school basketball team that beat another team 100-0 was fired Sunday, the same day he sent an e-mail to USA TODAY and other news media outlets saying he will not apologize "for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity."
Kyle Queal, the headmaster for Covenant School, said in The Dallas Morning News online edition that he could not answer if the firing was a direct result of coach Micah Grimes' e-mail disagreeing with administrators who called the blowout "shameful."

Queal did not immediately answer phone messages or e-mail from the Associated Press.

On its website last week, Covenant, a private Christian school, posted a statement regretting the outcome of its Jan. 13 shutout win over Dallas Academy.

"It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened. This clearly does not reflect a Christlike and honorable approach to competition," said the statement, signed by Queal and board chair Todd Doshier.


Grimes, who has been criticized for letting the game get so far out of hand, made it clear in the e-mail Sunday to the newspaper that he does not agree with his school's assessment.

"In response to the statement posted on The Covenant School website, I do not agree with the apology or the notion that the Covenant School girls basketball team should feel embarrassed or ashamed," Grimes wrote in the e-mail to USA TODAY. "We played the game as it was meant to be played. My values and my beliefs would not allow me to run up the score on any opponent, and it will not allow me to apologize for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity."

A phone number for Grimes could not be located by the Associated Press. The Dallas Morning News said Grimes did not respond to their repeated e-mail requests for a telephone interview.

A parent who attended the game said Covenant continued to make three-pointers — even in the fourth quarter. She praised the Covenant players but said spectators and an assistant coach were cheering wildly as their team edged closer to 100 points.

Covenant was up 59-0 at halftime.

In his e-mail, Grimes described the situation his team faced:

"We started the game off with a full-court press. After 3 minutes into play, we had already reached a 25-0 lead. Like any rational thinking coach would do, I immediately stopped the full-court press, dropped into a 2-3 zone defense, and started subbing in my 3 bench players. This strategy continued for the rest of the game and allowed the Dallas Academy players to get the ball up the court for a chance to score. The second half started with a score of 59-0. Seeing that we would win by too wide of a margin, running down the clock was the only logical course of action left. Contrary to the articles, there were only a total of four 3 point baskets made; three is the first quarter, and only 1 in the 3rd quarter. I continued to sub in bench players, play zone defense, and run the clock for the rest of the game."

Dallas Academy has eight girls on its varsity team and about 20 girls in its high school. It is winless over the last four seasons. The academy boasts of its small class sizes and specializes in teaching students struggling with "learning differences," such as short attention spans or dyslexia.
There is no mercy rule in girls basketball that shortens the game or permits the clock to continue running when scores become one-sided. There is, however, "a golden rule" that should have applied in this contest, Edd Burleson, the director of the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools, said last week. Both schools are members of this association, which oversees private school athletics in Texas.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
[Edited 1/25/09 22:55pm]

They should not have been on his schedule.
His team was easily and obviously superior.
What did his girls learn pounding someone 100-0?

SUPRMAN said:

what did the other team learn by not making a friggin basket all game? if you ain't won a game in FOUR YEARS...well you suck.

sad firing for doing a good thing, it's like u can't win- fired for getting point and fired for not.

Competition is competition, when you enter you have to prepare for either outcome. To not compete or ask someone to not compete (as implied by the apology) is contrary to the idea of competition. Fucking ridiculous.

man people today are fuckin crazy "its not Christlike" oh shut the fuck up.. the other team sucked ass and got blown the fuck out..

As someone who coaches a high school sport and watches way too many high school basketball games, I think the situation isn't as cut and dried as you're making it out to be. This isn't big money college basketball or the NBA. I think schools and coaches have a responsibility to teach students about sportsmanship in addition to skills and fundamentals. I hate the "everybody's a winner" mentality as much as anyone, but there is a way to win with dignity and it looks to me like this school crossed the line.

As SUPRMAN said, what are they doing on the schedule? Is this some kind of district matchup? Doesn't sound like it. I would never have agreed to this game in the first place. It's embarrassing and the school should definitely have apologized for bad judgment.

That being said, this coach is kidding himself if he doesn't think he was running up the score. I'm assuming they play 8-minute quarters, which makes it rather difficult to score 100 points without a lot of quick shooting (especially since we can safely assume they didn't shoot 100% from the field). They pressed for 3 minutes and were up by 25?!? Come on! What in the world made him think the press was needed in the first place? I mean, they'd clearly learn more about positioning and execution in practice than they did in this game, so don't tell me they had to practice game situations.

Finally, they scored 41 points in the second half! That means they made 20 baskets (including the one 3-pointer). God only knows how many shots they took! To say that they had called off the dogs is ridiculous. Those numbers only make sense if they had a shot clock, which I highly doubt. I'm not saying they should turn the ball over on purpose or let the other team score, but I'd have benched anyone who took as shot before, say, the 30th pass of each possession. I have no doubt that it unfolded like that one person's account: people's ridiculous parents were cheering them on to shoot and get to the magic number of 100 points.

IAintTheOne said:

He deserved it, no question about it. He tried to justify his actions, and he was 100% wrong.

Two years ago, I was coaching a youth basketball team and because of a school track conflict, we only had three players available. Actually, we had a fourth that we needed to start the game, but he was so sick that all he could play was the opening tip, and then he had to go back home.

Anyway, the other coach had a full team. It was 5 on 3 and he pressed the whole first half. In our league, you couldn't press when you were up by 20.

My son banked in a miraculous 3-pointer at the half-time buzzer and the score at the half was 24 - 5. Trust me, all 5 points we scored were pure luck, and everyone knew it.

The other guy opened up the second half trapping at mid-court (he couldn't press) and never let up. It was bush league. After the game, I wouldn't shake his hand (I know, that was immature of me) and he got in my face and we argued. Later, parents of the other team's players came up to me and said they were embarrassed by what their coach did during the game.

So, in a way, I have been there. According to other articles that dispute the coach's email, the Dallas coach was pressing in the second half - EVEN THOUGH THE OTHER TEAM HADN'T SCORED A SINGLE POINT? Give me a F***ING break.

The dude SHOULD have been fired right then and there.

So...did they give the losers trophies and fire him with purple ink?

AlexdeParis said:

I totally agree with you. From what I keep hearing on the local news here, the teams were both Christian schools. Also, the team hadn't won a game in a long time, but had never gotten beat 100 to 0.

Coach Says He's Not Sorry for 100-Point Shutout
Last Edited: Monday, 26 Jan 2009, 7:04 AM CST
Created: Monday, 26 Jan 2009, 6:54 AM CST
http://www.myfoxdfw.com/m...eId=1.1.1.


The coach of a Texas high school basketball team that beat another team 100-0 was fired yesterday, the same day he sent an e-mail to a newspaper saying he will not apologize "for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity."

Kyle Queal, the headmaster for Covenant School, said in The Dallas Morning News online edition that he could not answer if the firing was a direct result of coach Micah Grimes' e-mail disagreeing with administrators who called the blowout "shameful."

Queal did not immediately answer phone messages or e-mail from The Associated Press.

On its Web site last week, Covenant, a private Christian school, posted a statement regretting the outcome of its Jan. 13 shutout win over Dallas Academy.

"It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened. This clearly does not reflect a Christlike and honorable approach to competition," said the statement, signed by Queal and board chair Todd Doshier.

Grimes, who has been criticized for letting the game get so far out of hand, made it clear in the e-mail to The Dallas Morning News that he does not agree with his school's assessment

"In response to the statement posted on The Covenant School Website, I do not agree with the apology or the notion that the Covenant School girls basketball team should feel embarrassed or ashamed," Grimes wrote in the e-mail, according to the newspaper.

"We played the game as it was meant to be played. My values and my beliefs would not allow me to run up the score on any opponent, and it will not allow me to apologize for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity."
[Edited 1/26/09 9:58am]

So what should this coach have done? Sat his team down and let the other side play uncontested for awhile? Told his players to miss intentionally? Turned the ball over on purpose and given the other team a clear shot at the basket?

The team "continued to make 3-pointers"? That tells me that he told his players to take low percentage shots. Would it have been better if they'd just played keepaway out there?

He was damned if he did and damned if he didn't. I hope he sues the hell out of 'em.
[Edited 1/26/09 10:03am]

Genesia said:

Don't take this personally, but it's obvious you don't know much about basketball.

RodeoSchro said:

Don't take this personally, but saying I don't know much about basketball and not providing any illumination makes you a jerk.

Genesia said:

Yes, that's exactly that I would've had them do if I had been coaching. It happens in lots of games. If the game is out of hand and the victory is already clinched, then the winning team usually keeps passing the ball around and the visiting team doesn't foul them. That's how you run out the clock. In this case, a team that came out at halftime with a 59-0 lead proceeded to make 20 baskets in the second half. It's ridiculous.

Genesia said:

OK. I was hoping not have to embarrass you, but I guess that's what you want.

First of all, when you're up 59 - 0 at halftime, you are going to win. There's no doubt about that. You don't need to score another point, and in fact, that is what a good coach would do. He'd send his players into a four-corner offense and work the clock for at least a minute each possession before a shot was taken.

The winning team scored 41 points in the second half. That means they took at least 20 shots, assuming they shot 100% from the floor and made only 1 three pointer (we'll get to your erroneous point about 3-pointers in a minute). But let's assume they shot 50%. They had to take 40 shots to make 20. That's 20 shots a quarter taken and 10 shots a quarter made in the second half.

Now, we know the winning team wasn't pressing, so each time the losers got the ball, they probably ran at least 15 seconds off the clock before they missed a shot or lost the ball; after all, it would take 5 or 6 seconds just to get the ball across mid-court. And we know they got the ball at least 10 times per quarter, because that's how many times the winning team made a shot. So the losing team had the ball about 3 out of the 8 minutes each quarter (150 seconds = 2.5 minutes).

That means the winning team had the ball 5.5 minutes each quarter, and shot the ball about 20 times each quarter. That is a shot every 16.5 seconds. But if you assume it takes about 5 seconds to get the ball downcourt after rebounding the losing team's missed shot, that means the winning team was firing one up about once every 10 seconds.

That is not a slow-down game. And it's nowhere NEAR the shot-a-minute position I set forth above.

Now, let's move on to your point about 3-point shots. If you had ever played basketball, you'd know that the most disrespectful thing you can do to an opponent when you have a large lead is to fire up 3-pointers. You don't know this, so I am positive you've never played organized basketball.

No offense.

AlexdeParis said:

You are 100% correct.

I don't know if he should have been fired, but he OBVIOUSLY ran up the score. he could have called the dogs off if he wanted to. These are kids, not college players or pros, and I'm laughing at some of the comments in here about how the girls should have "showed up to compete" and shit like that - THEY'RE FUCKING TEENAGE GIRLS, WITH 20 STUDENTS IN THE ENTIRE SCHOOL! . What the fuck do you guys expect from them?

Should they have scheduled this team? No. But don't sit there and try and make it seem as if they should've competed harder.

RodeoSchro said:

Dayum....you broke it down!! I feel smarter than if I'd spent the night at a Holiday Inn Express....

reneGade20 said:

Ro broke it down to where it will forever be broke .

Wow, that's fucked he got fired. I feel sorry for the losing team because if this is that big of a deal, real life is going to eat them alive.

Vendetta1 said:

It would appear that he got fired as much for his refusal to apologize after his school's administration did as much as for the end result of the game itself...in this day and age, running up the score like he did (and in a manner that suggests he did nothing to keep the beating to a lesser score), its not gonna sit well with folks, especially when the losing squad is from a tiny school that hasn't won a game in 4 years, AND specializes in working with educationally challenged kids....

reneGade20 said:

Am I missing something? Are there rules in basketball where you can only score a certain number of points against the opposing team?

Vendetta1 said:

Running up the score is frowned upon in general, but particularly when dealing with kids.

Vendetta1 said:

It's about sportsmanship....its not like the teams were evenly matched to begin with...but if you're up 25-zip in the first 3 MINUTES of the game, you might notice that you've got a mismatch on your hands...

missmad said:

Is that doing a good thing to play someone who can't compete on your level?
That's sportsmanship?

Vendetta1 said:

Of course there isn't but sportsmanship should have meant they weren't even on the schedule and if you have to play the game, when it's out of hand, don't run it up because you can embarrass your opponent.
They didn't have to score 100 but did because they could.

however....what about the powerhouse high school football teams that beat lesser squads 65-0? or the powerhouse college teams that beat teams 65-3? or the new england patriots last year scoring 55 points against bad teams? where do you start saying that it's wrong? if the winning team was shooting 3's, but were shooting them at the end of the shot clock regulation...well too bad. if they were running set offenses and pick and rolls and backdoors...then that's crummy...but if the worst thhing in the world that these bad news bears ever have to face in life is getting that ass spanked in a basketball game, then good for them. life sucks--you knew the team sucked when you signed up--get over it