Ball does lie
While we’ve seen various terrible attempts to lose games in all sorts of sports, from tennis to football, we’ve never seen two teams trying to lose the same game.
But that is what happened at the weekend in a high school basketball game in Tennessee. Both teams, Riverdale High School and Smyrna High School, were in a consolation final and both wanted to lose as it would put them in the opposite half of the draw in the regional tournament as the best team in the area, Blackman High School.
So both teams went out to lose, resulting in some ludicrous scenes, as posted on FTW. From a player trying to have the ball stolen before deliberately going back court…
Smyrna trying to hand Riverdale the ball back. Intentionally getting called for a backcourt violation. pic.twitter.com/hkBPJIpEY7
— Trevor Goodson™ (@CousinTrevvv) February 21, 2015
to deliberately missed free throws…
Riverdale purposely missing FTs. Tanking to be on a certain side of the bracket. @BleacherReport @VChandler10 pic.twitter.com/lEPbYb2BaO
— Trevor Goodson™ (@CousinTrevvv) February 21, 2015
There were numerous other time wasting tactics employed but according to the report, it took a player trying to score into their own basket, only to fail because the time ran out, before the referee got fed up.
After the ref had a word in the ear of the coaches, and some of the school adminstrators, the starters went back in and Smyrna won the game.
But, for their actions, both sides were banned from the post season and put on a year’s probation for their behaviour.
