Two hundred and one?

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Two hundred and one points?

There’s been a lot of discussion about this total put up by Lincoln on Saturday afternoon. Most of the discussion appears to revolve around “class” and other abstract concepts. None of the people commenting on the game saw it.

Neither did I. That’s why I’m not going to jump to conclusions.

A box score isn’t available that I’ve seen. Salem International, the Division II school which invited Ohio State-Marion to its tournament, hasn’t even posted Friday game info on its site, let alone Saturday. But from looking at the site of UDC, another Division II school at this tournament, it’s not like trouncing Ohio State-Marion was unprecedented. On Friday, UDC beat this team 133-53 — scoring about double its previous season average in the win.

For Lincoln, 201 points is about double its previous season average as well. The Lions came into the tournament averaging 103 points per game.

Perhaps a little perspective before you jump all over Lincoln on this. Just a thought.

26 thoughts on “Two hundred and one?”

  1. That’s fair, I suppose… but I just watch the Top 10 on SportsCenter, and they showed a few clips of the game. In each clip, OSU-M had, at most, 3 defenders on their side of the floor. I watched two clips in particular where the guy who SHOT 41 three’s stole the ball at half court, and pulled up to shoot a three, with nobody in front of him defending the basket. That, and the fact that they pressed the whole game, kept shooting threes, etc is why I feel that Lincoln played without class.

    And I wouldn’t simply judge without seeing any of it.

  2. I looked up OSU-Marions website and it strikes me that they are more of a junior college, with few 4 year degree programs, than they are a true four year school. No info as to affiliation so I’m guessing they are an NAIA D2. They only have 9 players so entering a tournament hosted by an NCAA D2 probably was not a good idea to start with.

    What goes around comes around and if/when Lincoln makes its move to D2 they will be outmanned a few times and get to see what it feels like. I’ve always felt that it was ok to score as many as you like in non-confernce games so I have no problem with Lincoln running it up.

    OSU-Marion hasn’t updated their site since early November and based on the remainder of their schedule they may have gotten their lone win for the year.

  3. I’m pretty sure that OSU-Marion is not NAIA. They compete in the Ohio Regional Campus Conference (ORCC), a conference of branch campuses of state schools, such as Ohio-Eastern (whose home arena is the Robert W. Ney Center *rolls eyes*). One could analogize this league to a big intramural league across several campuses. Outside the league, they play JVs and club teams about as often as varsity teams.

  4. ESPN says that Marion had only 6 dressed for the game, but Lincoln did pull their starters quickly, with Wylie only playing 24 minutes (so those 69 points are Grotberg numbers). All 16 Lincoln players got minutes. Lincoln did shoot an unreal percentage of shots. It’s just amazing to me that Wylie could even get 41 threes off in 24 minutes. His arms must be tired today.

    I’m not going to make judgements on class, but I am in favor of a squad not changing its style, even when they are up. If the last five guys on the bench are in, I expect them to go all out. Lincoln presses the whole game and shoots lots of threes. I’ll hold final judgement until I see the box score, but right now I’m ok with it.

  5. “I’m not going to make judgements on class, but I am in favor of a squad not changing its style, even when they are up. {If the last five guys on the bench are in, I expect them to go all out. Lincoln presses the whole game and shoots lots of threes.} I’ll hold final judgement until I see the box score, but right now I’m ok with it.”

    I agree, especially with the statement that I put inside the brackets.

    Also, Lincoln is the guest at this tournament. They had very little “say” into which opponenets they would play.

    My comment on the message board about an asterisk is how do the authorities on the various records committees deal with this performance against what does not appear to be a traditional four-year degree-granting institution.

  7. Wylie shoots a lot of threes — that’s just his game. I can’t say I’m all that surprised at the number of attempts, to be honest.

  8. I actually talked with Coach Yuille today about this game. Since I am hoping he will join us on Hoopsville tonight, I am not going to mention what he told me. If he doesn’t join us, I will try and post parts of what he told me later on.

  9. For what its worth OSU-Marion is in the United States Collegiate Athletic Association (Division II — smaller schools)

  10. Everyone wants to be “nice” and not besmirch “poor” Lincoln…as if they are a victim here. I am sorry but my son plays for a UAA team…and our coach has the class to tell his youngsters to hold back,.,.His third string would have played a chunk of the first and most of the second half…no one player would have been able to hoist up 21 shots…let alone 41…how can a guy keep raining three’s in a complete route and overmatch…there is NO EXCUSE…and you ALL know it…this was an exhibition of very poor sportsmanship…and any attempt to rationaliize why “its ok” is just more of the same.

  13. USCAA D2…………… Even more reason why they didn’t belong in a tournament hosted by an NCAA D2 in the first place. I realize that program building must start somewhere, however, look before you leap next time OSU-Marion. NJCAA might be a better place to start.

    In the 1992 Troy vs. DeVry game several DeVry players commented afterwards that it was a fun experience to be a part of. “Yes, we got trounced but we will be part of the record book for all-time.”

    I say let this one go because it was a mismatch that never should have happened.

  14. Several things:

    1) You just don’t “accidently” score 201 points against a team of juco students. After the outcome of the game was clearly obviously (maybe halftime), the coach should have slowed down the offence.

    2) One of the major gripes that people have against D-III sports in general is that often times, you get the lopsided scores. I mean, how much fun is it to watch one small college beat another 60-0 (in football)? Not very. (UWW vs. St. Norbert a couple of weeks ago almost fell into that category.)

  15. I’ve got a personal understanding of this one. In High School my brother was on the best team in the state. He was the 9th man, when the coach ran 8. However, he and guys 10-12 (there were only 12 guys on the team) could have started on any other squad in the state. It was just an unusually stacked high school team. They also pressed the whole game and shot threes whenever they were open. They’d been conditioned to play that way since 5th grade.

    The only way for my brother to get into the top 8 was to go all out when he did get garbage time minutes. If that meant pouring it on some really awful teams, that’s what they had to do. The coach took a lot of crap, but if they had called off the dogs, there would have been four kids at the end of the bench with some awful high school memories.

    If its true that Wylie was in at all in the second half, that’s not cool, but letting your bench guys play and play the way you would expect them to play if the game were close is the right thing to do.

  17. I don’t know anything about Lincoln, or about the game, but if the Lions play a press defense and a quick-shooting offense all of the time, then it doesn’t make sense (to me) to ask them to play a different style once the game was out of hand. It benefits nobody for them to do so, and it’s as logical as asking them to play soccer. If I’d’ve been the coach, I’d have asked my players to take it easy, but play the same offensive and defensive sets as normal, and I’d probably look at the remainder of the game as a practice, trying some plays or player combinations that we had worked on in practice but hadn’t been able to utilize in game action.

    Substitute Grinnell for Lincoln in this scenario. Would you have asked them to eat the shot clock on every possession, just to allow OSU-Marion to save face? Would the Grinnell players be adept at that style? Would playing that way help or harm them down the road? Would the Marion players and coaches have appreciated the gesture?

    Suppose the opposite of this game, that instead of one team scoring at will, you had the other team being shut out by a team with a far superior defense. Would you ask your players to just stand still on defense to let the other team score? Would you ask them to play a zone if they play nothing but man in all other games?

    There are no easy answers in a game like this.

  18. To me, this is real easy to evaluate. Lincoln had their All-American, Sami Wylie, in the game at the end. Just read through that running play-by-play in the boxscore. Wylie scored points 200 and 201, giving his team a 120 POINT LEAD!!! And Wylie was in there chucking up all kinds of shots just before that.

    Last weekend I watched Illinois Wesleyan dismantle NAIA Judson. The Titans got up 33 with about 10:00 to go and IWU All-American Zach Freeman had a legimate chance at the school’s single-game rebounding record. Freeman had 16…IWU’s record is 24. Freeman didn’t play the final 9:37 of the game — only bench players were in at that point. That is just what you do.

    I am all for the BENCH PLAYERS playing hard in blowouts, but when you have an All-American in a game chucking up shots when you are up 100, that is despicable.

  19. Does this count as posting? Hmm… I don’t know. Oh well. 🙂

    I’m going to preface this statement by saying: Don’t get me wrong, I think good sportsmanship is really important. I think that good coaches teach good sportsmanship to their players and it shapes into how that player acts toward other human beings as they live the rest of their lives.

    On the other hand, we are using some pretty darn weighty adjectives for something as trivial in the grand scheme of things as a basketball score. I guess it’s just me, but I just think some of the words people have been using to describe Lincoln here and on the posting board should be reserved for people who get angry about basketball scores, but don’t do anything to stop poverty, genocide, famine, epidemics. 😛 😉

    Seriously though, I wish some people would calm down a little. This lack of sportsmanship doesn’t bother me any more than the drunk student sections that yell obscenities at the players in front of children while the school’s administration stands there watching (actually this bothers me a whooole lot more than the Lincoln thing). And then there’s the players who make cocky motions at the crowd after a dunk, or the players who play dirty and get players on the opposite team injured, or the coaches who curse and berate their players to get them to perform better. The list goes on and on. Let’s not pretend that we are morally superior here. All of our teams have done something that has been in bad taste in the past, I’m sure. Just because this one made a highlight on ESPN and a few blogs, does NOT mean that it’s any worse, it just means it’s easier to hype.

    Lincoln is a great DIII institution and this league will be missing a little bit when they are gone next year. Random act of unsportsmanlike conduct and all.

    In the meanwhile, let’s use our gigantic DIII brains 😉 to get upset about the tens of thousands of people in this nation of prosperity who lack access to safe drinking water, or for the one child that dies every five seconds from hunger around the world, or the billion people living below the poverty line around the world.

    Thanks. And now back to lurking…

  20. I just examined the box score from the game again and put a few numbers up on the Bumblin’ B’s board.

    In reality, the last five guys on Lincoln’s bench averaged only 6 minutes in this game, most of those from one guy who got to start because the opponent was obviously subpar.

    In fact, 4 out of the top six players on the team exceeded their average minutes per game in this one (including Wylie).

    I will defend the rights of the last five players on the bench to score and press at will, but for that to be applicable in this case, those guys needed to be in the game. That didn’t happen.

  21. I just looked at the box score, if you look at the 2nd half, the three leading scorers for Lincoln logged the most minutes in the second half, which included their All American, who played 14 Minutes I believe.

    If I was the other coach, I woulda probably pulled my team from the floor. This guy not only is up 100 points, but he left the three best players on the floor that night on for significant minutes in the second half. If that isn’t a downright pitiful thing to do I don’t know what is. Most of the above posts call for them to keep pressing, and its ok to route a team. That route usually consists of 25 points or so or even 40. THis team won by 120!! That isn’t even thinkable in basketball sense, thats because it should never get to that point. What happened out there is a disgrace to the game, and someone should hold this coach accountable for the integrity of the game.

  22. I actually think back about it, and with the team only dressing 6 players, I would have told my kids to foul the players, if they didn’t want to get run up on like that they could have fouled, not intentionally, but in the context of the game. This way the team would have fouled out, and would not quit or just leave the floor. It states a sense of pride that they will not stand for this kind of beating, but are not quitters. That would have been a cool thing to see, and then the team wouldn’t have made ESPN, but if they did, it would have been because of the foul out story, as well as the point situation.

  23. So much for the Year of Sportsmanship in D3. The key is the score at halftime – you should never score more in the second half than you did in the first after you have some 60 point lead. That is where Lincoln is guilty and without merit to anyone arguing their case. Regardless of who plays in the second half, you can do so many things to keep it reasonable and win with class.

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