The Carver College Basketball Tour

When a college basketball team scores over 100 points in a game, it raises some eyebrows. When we hear of a college team finishing a game with less than 25 points, we check for accuracy. When both rarities occur during the same contest, it’s time to dig a little deeper. On November 27, 2020, the Appalachian State Mountaineers hosted the Carver College Cougars. In a contest that could raise questions as to why the game was scheduled in the first place, the home side walked away with an 82-point victory, winning the game 105-23. Both ends of the score tell a story, but the 23 really begs for more details. A view of the 2020-21 schedule and results reveal that outcomes like the aforementioned are actually the norm during the Carver College Basketball tour of the southeastern United States over the past six weeks.

BACKGROUND

Most sports fans have heard of Appalachian State University, which is located in Boone, North Carolina, and has a student enrollment of about 18,000. The school participates athletically in the NCAA’s Division 1’s Sun Belt Conference, considered one of the “mid-major” conferences. While the school now boasts a perennially strong football program, the basketball program has some history of its own since joining NCAA’s top division in the early 1970s. Among their list of former men’s basketball head coaches is Pete Maravich’s father, Press, and Georgia Tech legend Bobby Cremins. Long-time NBA coach Alvin Gentry is an Appalachian State University alumnus. The program, under the guidance of former roommate of Michael Jordan at UNC, Buzz Peterson, had its most successful run, including three consecutive 20-plus win seasons, in the late 1990s. Its men’s basketball team has qualified for the NCAA Division 1 College Basketball Tournament twice in its history, most recently in 2000. There have been five Appalachian State alumni selected in the NBA Draft.

Not a powerhouse athletic program like those found in the larger conferences, but certainly a formidable one.

Carver College (formerly Carver Bible Institute and Carver Bible College) is located in Atlanta, Georgia, and has an enrollment of about 70 (yes, seventy) full and part-time students. The men’s basketball program was established in 1998. The school participates athletically in Division 1 of the 89-member National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA), which, at a glance, is similar in level of competition to the NCAA’s Division 3. Some of the member schools also participate in other associations like the NCAA and NAIA.

In March of 2014, the Carver College Cougars won the Division 1 South Region and advanced to the National Tournament, where they lost in the first round to Southern Nazarene University. In March of 2019, Carver participated in the NCCAA South Region Tournament, entered with a record of 0 wins and 19 losses, was handed a bye to the championship game for the right to advance to the NCCAA National Tournament, and lost 91-72 to Columbia International University.

As we often see in college basketball games scheduled in November and December, different worlds exist for each side.

WHAT HAPPENED ON NOVEMBER 27, 2020

I didn’t see the 105 to 23 game, but this is one instance where the statistics don’t lie:

• Carver trailed 56 to12 at halftime.
• Carver was out-rebounded 61 to 22.
• Appalachian had more offensive rebounds (23) than Carver had total rebounds (22).
• Appalachian jumped out to a 13 to 4 lead, then scored the game’s next 25 points.
• Appalachian won the battle of fast-break points 46 to 4.
• Carver converted on 18 percent of its field goal attempts.
• Carver’s top scorer finished with six points, nine players from Appalachian scored more.
• Carver finished the game with 0 second-chance points.
• Points in the paint: Appalachian 64, Carver 8.
• The outcome could have been even worse had Appalachian shot better than 7-for-30 from beyond the arc.

There are many more box score anomalies but you get the picture. From a competition standpoint, this game should not have been played. Carver was outmanned, overmatched, and probably exhausted, even with the winning team going deep into its bench. But this was not even the largest blowout in college basketball history, not even close. Check Long Island University’s 179 to 62 win over Medgar Evers College in 1997, Southern University’s 116 to 12 (yes, twelve) victory over Champion Baptist in 2013, or Lincoln University’s record-setting 201 to 76 over Ohio State-Marion in 2006. None of these games should have been played, but they were.

After the game, the winning coach was quoted as saying, “This was about App State, this was about us.” I’m pretty sure he didn’t repeat those words after losing the next game at home to Bowling Green, or after losing by 40 points to 10th-ranked Tennessee a few days later, but it’s not every day your team wins a game by an 82-point margin.

THE CARVER COLLEGE BASKETBALL SCHEDULE

The Appalachian State game is but a small part of the story. If the young student-athletes from Carver College were exhausted just from basketball commitments, there’s a very good reason why. A quick look at their 2020-21 schedule (not the easiest thing to find, by the way) reveals a brutal travel itinerary, presumably all by bus. The results to date provide overwhelming evidence that this collection of players should not be subjected to this type of schedule.

• Carver played its first five games on the road against NAIA schools, losing all five by an average of 50.6 points per game.
• Since then, they’ve played 13 games on the road exclusively against NCAA Division 1 opponents, losing each by an average of 56 points per game.
• Their most competitive game, at least in terms of the final score, was a 28-point loss against the University of Mobile.
• They’ve lost 10 of their first 18 games by at least 50 points, and five more by over 40 points.
• Their schedule has already included a stretch of six games in eight days, all including travel.
• They’ve had two instances with scheduled games on three consecutive nights as part of stretches where they played four games in five nights, all involving travel.
• Though most of their travel between games likely involved bus trips of under three hours, they played in Statesboro, GA (at Georgia Southern) on December 15th, then traveled to Lynchburg, VA for a game the very next evening at Liberty University. A seven-hour bus trip, assuming they avoided metro Atlanta traffic. The Liberty game was their third in three nights.
• Their upcoming schedule includes games at Georgia Southern University and Talladega College. Carver lost to both in earlier contests this season, each by 65 points.

Imagine losing to two teams on the road by 65 points each, then having to return to those same buildings to play those teams again a few weeks later. That’s tough.

[UPDATE – 12/20/2020: The “rematch” against Georgia Southern (played in Miami) has just ended. Final score: Georgia Southern 119, Carver 43. The 76-point margin is only the second largest of the season and larger than the first matchup between these two teams five days ago. There was also a 74- point loss at Wofford on November 28th, 111-37. This was Carver’s sixth game in seven days, their seventh game in nine days. They played again the following night against Florida International University, losing by 77 points, 111 to 34. This shouldn’t be allowed. Let these guys sleep.]

WHY ARE THEY EVEN DOING THIS?

Notice there’s been no mention of a textbook yet, but in all likelihood, each member of the basketball team is studying for a career in Theology in between these lopsided defeats. One could easily assume that these players are just being sent around the country to get humiliated for the benefit of the school’s Athletic Department, which wouldn’t be unprecedented. But given the school’s size (the men’s basketball roster makes up about 15 percent of the school’s enrollment) and the fact that the team played a similar schedule last year (from what I could surmise since the school’s website hasn’t been updated), the players just might be taking one for the school.

The ongoing pandemic has played havoc with athletic departments of all sizes with lost revenues from canceled games and limited or no in-person attendance. The fact that the schools are playing at all during the height of the pandemic points to greed in some cases, mere survival in others. Some schools rely more on revenues from their athletic departments than others and lost revenues for a school the size of Carver College can be crippling. At this point, there’s no financial benefit to be had from playing against schools on the same level.

Most smaller basketball programs might schedule a game or two against Division 1 opponents and refer to them as “exhibitions”. These games allow the smaller schools to fill their coffers a bit, gives their players a chance to play against a bigger school (a big deal to kids from smaller programs), or even pull off an upset, and it gives the larger school an opportunity to give its seldom-used players, walk-ons, and underclassmen some game action. But when a school like Carver College schedules 14 games against Division 1 opponents in a month’s time, something else is going on. Time will tell.

That’s my theory and I’m sticking with it.

BANDWAGON HAMPERED BY TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

So now I’m fully on the Carver College bandwagon, to the point of streaming games when available. I managed to watch a good bit of their 94-59 loss to Charleston Southern. Wasn’t so much interested in the score but was looking at other things. Looks like Carver is rolling with about ten players. After all the lopsided defeats, I was expecting some negative body language. But to the players’ credit, though you can never really tell watching television, they appeared to be upbeat and giving full effort. There were some slumped shoulders at times, which is to be expected. And to the coach’s credit, he didn’t appear to be berating his players and telling them how horrible they are, either. These aren’t horrible players, but at this point, everyone knows they’re outmanned most nights. One might suggest turning off the scoreboard at a certain point, but guys this age tend to know when they’re trailing by 75 points.

About a week ago, I was all set to stream the game against Presbyterian, one of several games that popped up on the schedule at the last minute. Upon tuning in I was met with a message on the screen: “Technical Difficulties – We’ll Fix This.” Of course, it was never fixed. I did catch the Georgia Southern game. It was tough to watch a 92-27 game, but imagine playing in that game. This evening I missed the game against Stetson, which must have been added to the schedule yesterday. It’s almost as if these kids are rolling around the southeastern states looking for pickup games.

GOING FORWARD

I wish there was another way to improve the financial health of institutions and their athletic programs that didn’t involve 50-point margins. Not sure how much Carver gets paid for these games or if they’re making a dent in whatever deficit they’re facing. I’m pulling for these players; I just hope no one is telling them that these games are building character or providing lessons in dealing with adversity, which surely many of them had already faced and overcame long before setting foot on campus.

In the absence of any changes, the 2020-21 Carver College Men’s Basketball schedule gets a bit easier in January. There are a couple of NCCAA Conference games and some NCAA Division 2 opponents tossed in. For this bandwagoner, the likelihood of being able to stream most of these games are about as minuscule as the odds of keeping up with changes to the schedule. Hopefully, these student-athletes will actually benefit from whatever situation they’re helping. In either case, they’ll have quite a story to tell. They already do as part of the very few among us who have the opportunity to play their sport of choice at the collegiate level. And perhaps one day we’ll find out if they were really okay with this experience.

In the meantime, can we at least see them get a taste of victory before the season ends?

Photo by Christopher Alvarenga on Unsplash