Mentor (Ohio) High basketball coach Bob Krizanic should have been ecstatic. His team had just set a new school single-game scoring record by notching 118 points. The team had done so in a sectional final, guaranteeing advancement in the playoffs in the process.
Yet Krizanic may have just set the new threshold for constructive criticism when he had only negative things to say about his Cardinals squad, attacking his team’s defense rather than laud their offensive abilities, following an astounding 118-98 victory against Lakeside (Ohio) High in a story that was first brought to Prep Rally's attention by USA Today.
"If you score 118 and have a great defensive effort, then it's worthy of the record," Krizancic told the News Herald, a newspaper that covers the Cleveland suburbs. "This wasn't. This means nothing. This one should go down as an asterisk with us giving up 98 points and how poor defensively we played."
If you thought that was the only negative thing Krizancic had to say about his charges, you’d be wrong. Just check out the following statement in which he put his entire squad -- and himself -- on blast.
"We played one of the poorest defensive games I have ever coached here," he said. "It starts with me. It's my fault. It was just a very, very, very poor defensive game all the way around, coaches, players, managers, whatever you want to call it. Just a poor defensive effort. Wasn't tough. Wasn't aggressive."
It’s one thing to criticize a team for giving up 98 points. But criticizing a team for giving up a lot of points when it scored far more itself? That seems a bit harsh, particularly when the Cardinals offense is humming so effectively; the Cardinals scored 114 points in their prior game, the third highest total in school history.
Prep Rally has no idea what Krizancic would say if his team lost a game when allowing an opponent to get anywhere near the century mark. Quite frankly, we don’t think we want to find out, either.
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