Houston Yates got a lot of attention for beating Houston Lee, 170-35, earlier this week. And make no mistake, that was what the Houston Yates coach was trying to accomplish: national attention.
You can read about the game in the Houston Chronicle’s story. The Yates coach, Greg Wise, said he can’t tell his third-stringers to not play hard, or to not play the high-pressure style he preaches in practice.
Come on, Coach. When a team is down 100-12 at halftime, your guys aren’t getting enough resistance for anything your team is doing to be worthwhile. You might as well be playing against air at that point.
There were complicating circumstances in the game, such as a second-half fight that limited both teams to just five players. And there is no shot clock in high school basketball, meaning the Lee team could have helped themselves by stalling – if they could get the ball past Yates’ constant press.
If you read the final quote by the Yates coach in the Chronicle’s story, it’s apparent he doesn’t mind the negative publicity. Although the score is similar, this is a different situation than the 100-0 girls basketball game that received so much attention a year ago. The winning team, Covenant Christian, is a small private school that didn’t have much to gain by the ridiculous score. Elite high school boys basketball is a completely different world.
If Houston is like most urban areas, the competition for high school basketball players is fierce. Spineless transfer rules contribute to what is essentially a recruiting battle between the top public, private and AAU programs. This is a case where any publicity is good publicity, and the spotlight shown on Yates for humiliating an opponent only raises Yates’ profile and that of its coach.
It’s time for the UIL and the National Federation to adopt a mercy rule for high school basketball. They already have them in baseball and six-man football. Cleaning up the underground recruiting that goes on in high school basketball would be a monumental task, but the UIL and National Federation could easily remove the incentive to humiliate opponents with one simple rule change.
