The Thanksgiving holidays are supposed to be days for giving thanks for the gifts we receive and connecting with one's fellow man. Somehow, an 82-0 prep basketball win doesn't seem to fit in with that message.
Yet that's precisely what happened on Monday night in Miami, where the Miami (Fla.) Country Day School girls basketball team shutout Miami (Fla.) Doctors Charter School by a score of 82-0. MCD led by a score of 48-0 at halftime, meaning that it racked up almost as many points in the second half while holding a completely insurmountable lead as it did in the first half.
The shutout was the second ugly girls basketball shutout across America in as many weeks -- Little Rock (Ark.) Hall High knocked off Little Rock (Ark.) Fair by a score of 88-0 -- raising significant sportsmanship questions within the sport.
The fact that these two games were both blowouts isn't so much of a concern. After all, this is girls basketball, a sport where talent is even more variable than it is in almost any other prep sport in the nation.
What is a concern is that in both cases, the team on the losing end didn't score a single bucket. In fact, they didn't hit a free throw either. Quite frankly, not scoring at all in a basketball game -- even a difficult prep girls basketball game -- is difficult to achieve unless the team defending so stoutly is aggressively pressuring or trapping its foe.
Little Rock Hall assiduously claims that wasn't the case, instead insisting that Fair simply had a bad night in front of a motivated Hall squad.
One can't say the same about Miami Country Day ... at least not yet. To this point, all we know about the team's decisions are that they were successful in helping MCD win a game, though they may have inspired some scorn and additional scrutiny in the process.
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