The highlight of the school sports calendar has always been — in my eyes, anyway — the winter tournament season.
You have two sports that are played at frenetic paces, competing at indoor venues with frenzied crowds. On a good night (and there are so many of them in late February and March), being at a high school tournament game is better than being at the Super Bowl.
Win or lose, these games create lasting memories. I can list a handful of them without having think about it, such as when the English boys basketball team ran onto the gym on a Sunday night in Woburn, about 18 years ago. The Tanners had a couple of big, 6-9 kids with some beef on them, and they looked very imposing. Out came the Bulldogs, led by Anthony Anderson (current Bulldog coach Antonio’s brother). They proceeded to use the pre-game warmup as a dunking clinic, completely flummoxed the Tanners, and won easily. That team made it to the Tsongas Arena in the Division 2 North final before losing to Charlestown.
I remember going to Charlestown and seeing the Townies put up 100 (in regulation) against Classical. You might think that was little much, except that the Rams poured in 85. If you’re like a lot of us and follow every dribble of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament every March, a sidelight to that game is that UConn’s Shabazz Napier was a sophomore on that team. Napier later led Connecticut to the NCAA title in 2014 and was named the tournament’s most outstanding player.
There was Tech’s Marvin Avery, hopping up and down on the scorer’s table at the TD Garden, after the Tigers won their state semifinal game there. There was the genuine happiness I felt for Mark Lee after the St. Mary’s boys hockey team won the state title last year. I could go on and on.
But once in a while, things happen that remind you it’s not a perfect world. And Tuesday night’s Bishop Fenwick girls basketball win over East Boston is a glaring example of that.
Fenwick won, 54-6. That’s the type of score you’d most often see in a lopsided football game. But not in basketball.
While this is certainly a nightmare for the coach and players on the receiving end of such a drubbing, it’s no less of a nightmare for the winners. Nobody wants to be involved in a game like this. There’s tremendous temptation to do instant revisionism, which is what Fenwick coach Adam DeBaggis tried to do. That is why the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association’s website has the score as 48-16.
DeBaggis is not the “run-up-the-score” type. He’s an honorable guy who was trying to do the noble thing and soften the blow for posterity. But it doesn’t change what happened in the eyes of those who went through it and those who were there to see it.
But there are reasons for it, and it’s time for the MIAA think seriously about going back to the way it was back when I didn’t mind people stepping on my lawn.
Back in the Pleistocene Era, teams had to either win 60 percent of their games or finish first or second in their leagues to qualify for postseason play. So when the MIAA seeded teams based solely on their records, you had some assurances that even the top-seeded teams were at least playing schools that could hold their own.
In the ensuing years, the integrity of this format has taken a real hit as the MIAA endeavored to give more teams a chance at the tournament experience. There was even a year where the tournament had an open format, and anyone who wanted to play could sign up.
That didn’t work. But now, rather than be held to the higher standard, teams merely have to finish with .500 records. Now, throw into the mix the fact that some leagues have been gerrymandered almost as much as congressional districts, creating formats that make it even easier for teams to reach that magical .500 mark.
Finally, we have the Sullivan Rule, which was established in hopes that deserving teams that play most of their games against higher-division opponents aren’t left out of the mix year after year. It allows a Division 3 school that might finish 8-12, but plays in a league consisting primarily of 1-2 schools, to qualify the tournament if it finishes at least .500 against D3 teams.
Of course, that’s not how it’s turned out. If you’re 3-17, but 3-3 against your own division, you’re in. But remember: the 3-17 team has the option of choosing not to go too.
If there’s such a thing as perfection — at least where tournaments are concerned — it’s in NCAA Division 1 men’s basketball, also known as March Madness. Teams are put through a meat grinder to make sure they pass muster before they’re invited. Every year there are two or three teams left out, and everybody complains, and then they all wake up the next morning and go on with their lives. And there may be 1-16 games, but more often than not, the 16 team rises to the occasion and at least makes it a game for a half.
Maybe the MIAA should take a cue. Because we’re reaching a point here where the branches are in desperate need of pruning.
