There’s No Mercy In College Hoops

In this space we’ve talked about the college basketball blowout. There’s no real numeric threshold for determining when a game between two schools becomes a waste of time for both, but there are no on-court gains when one team defeats another by 94 points. No one wins those games. Not the winning team, not the losing team, and certainly not the paying customer. The television viewer can simply change the channel. The paying customer can just leave, but they’ve already paid their money, purchased concessions and parked their vehicles. The players on both sides are stuck. There are many factors that would result in a college basketball game between two teams within the same classification ending up with a 94-point differential, but the moral of the story is that there’s no mercy in college hoops.

SAME CLASSIFICATION, DIFFERENT WORLDS

Large Conference, Large School

In men’s college basketball on November 8, 2019, the University of Utah, a member of a Pacific-12 Conference considered one of the country’s strongest, defeated visiting Mississippi Valley State University of the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) by a score of 143 to 49 in Salt Lake City. The 94-point margin set an all-time record for a contest featuring two NCAA Division 1 men’s basketball teams.

These two schools are from different worlds, for sure. While the Pacific-12 Conference is not quite considered on a basketball par with, say, the Atlantic Coast Conference, they can boast of a couple of Top 25-ranked teams in a given season, and are annually well-represented in the NCAA’s Division 1 Tournament every March. The Pacific-12 is one of Division 1 college basketball’s power conferences, and for the 2019-20 season, the University of Utah is not ranked among its top teams. It’s a large school with a top football program and a student enrollment of close to 33,000.

They didn’t schedule this game because they needed the money.

Small Conference, Small School

Mississippi Valley State University, one of the nation’s 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities, is located in Itta Bena, Mississippi and has a student enrollment of just over 2,000 students. The men’s basketball team last won the Southwestern Athletic Conference Tournament in 2012 and has appeared in the NCAA Division 1 Basketball Tournament five times. Athletically, the school’s football program is more celebrated, with National Football League Hall of Famers Jerry Rice and Deacon Jones among several alumni who have played in the league.

Unfortunately, as one of the smaller of the NCAA Men’s Division 1 Basketball’s 350-plus members and with a limited athletic budget, Mississippi Valley State University is one of many schools that annually schedules most or all non-conference games in November in December on the road against stronger, more financially solid athletic programs for a fee from the larger schools to help meet athletic department expenses. Every member of the SWAC conference, among others, falls into this category.

As one of Division’s lowest-rated conferences, most years the conference tournament champion—and winner of an automatic bid to the national tournament—has to clear one of the so-called NCAA Tournament’s First Four “play-in” games in Dayton, Ohio just to advance to the “real” 64-team tournament where a salivating, top-ranked team awaits them.

THE WINNING TEAM’S PERSPECTIVE

No Film Session Necessary

It’s difficult to imagine this contest getting the Utah squad any more prepared for conference play or some of the tougher opponents on their out-of-conference schedule, which includes Kentucky and Minnesota. Perhaps the opportunity to get some court time for those scholarship players who won’t see much against stronger competition is the one benefit. A glutton for punishment, I actually watched the last few minutes of the replay of this game, and late in the game Utah’s seldom-used players were nailing three-pointers while their teammates on the bench celebrated.

You can’t blame Utah for rolling up such a huge scoring advantage. Sure, third-stringers were shooting threes late in the contest, but you can’t bring them into the game and ask them not to play ball, and those kids were also trying to impress their coach in hopes of earning more playing time going forward. It’s not like they were in a full-court press with an 85-point lead. At the youth level the game could have been stopped or the scoreboard could have been turned off. At the high school level, the winning coach would have to explain why he ran up the score and deal with angry parents of the opponent.

When it’s Division 1 versus Division 1, there’s no mercy.

In situations like these, it would be interesting to know how many coaches of teams who win the early-season blowout have trouble getting their team’s attention during the next practice session. Even if the opponent is clearly inferior, it’s not difficult to become overconfident.

THE LOSING TEAM’S PERSPECTIVE

Are We There Yet?

Understandably, the MVSU players’ body language conveyed fatigue—probably from travel and playing at altitude in Salt Lake City—and embarrassment in only the second game of the season. Those kids wanted to go home, which was almost 1,700 miles away. Even without a rooting interest, it was tough to watch even for a few minutes.

The concern is always with the student-athletes who have to endure the embarrassment of a history-making defeat, then having to return to campus to face their peers. And for a few minutes, at least, the national media was even paying attention. But the human factor extends beyond the players.

This Is A Little Different

The head coach of the men’s basketball program at Mississippi Valley State University is former SWAC Player of the Year and NBA guard Lindsey Hunter, a Jackson State University alumnus. Hunter won championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and Detroit Pistons during his 17-year career. He has competed and won at the highest levels of the sport. This historic defeat against the University of Utah was only Hunter’s second game as a head coach at the collegiate level; the first one resulted in a 36-point loss at Iowa State three nights earlier.

A humiliating defeat like that is difficult for anyone to stomach, but imagine someone with Hunter’s pedigree having to absorb a 94-point loss after going into the locker room at halftime trailing by fifty points (70-20).

After All This, There’s Study Hall

Honestly, no one was expecting MVSU to win this game, and most of the contests involving teams from these two conferences are one-sided in favor of the power conference and always played at the home of the power conference school. But a result like this benefits no one.

The 2019-20 men;’s basketball season is particularly tough for a squad like MVSU because its 15-man roster includes eight freshman (including the coach’s son) and one sophomore. So these young men will have to adjust to the rigors of college academics while flying around the country to play ball knowing they’ll be outmanned most nights.

Oh, and then there’s that term paper that needs to be written.

Ten of the next eleven games for MVSU are on the road, including excursions to the states of Michigan, Ohio, South Dakota and California before their conference schedule begins in January. The one home game comes against a non-Division 1 opponent, North American University of Houston, Texas. A look at the non-conference schedules for any of the SWAC teams will reveal similar itineraries, as there is no financial benefit for its members to schedule non-conference home games.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

It’s Not Just The SWAC Conference

It’s been mentioned here before and it bears repeating: There are too many member schools in the NCAA Division 1 for men’s basketball, and a lopsided result like this one only reinforces the thought. In this case, the winning team isn’t even ranked nationally, But this isn’t youth sports, and there’s no mercy rule in college basketball. If you schedule a game and suit up, no one is going to feel sorry for the loser in a blowout. If you’re a Division 1 member, the expectation is that you’re able to field a Division 1 squad. And there will always be blowouts.

But this?

MSVU is far from the only school nor is the SWAC the only conference who ends up sending their student-athletes around the country to play early-season games against teams they have no business being on the court with. The prospect of traveling to play against some of the nation’s top programs might be appealing to an 18-year-old and is likely part of the recruiting pitch, but there’s nothing appealing about traveling thousands of miles—including the trek just to get to the nearest major airport—and missing classes to play in non-competitive games.

To be fair, there are upsets involving Division 2 and even Division 3 schools winning early-season contests against schools at higher levels. There are also the ridiculously one-sided games every year. On the first day of the 2019-20 college basketball season, there were multiple games where teams from lower divisions scored less than 30 points for the entire game while losing to Division 1 opponents. No game details are needed to realize these contests are largely a waste of time from a basketball standpoint and both teams would have been better off holding an intrasquad scrimmage.

Have We Built Enough Character Yet?

In the meantime, it appears the 2019-20 college basketball season will be one of character building for the young student-athletes at Mississippi Valley State University. There will be plenty of long flights and non-competitive losses.They just lost their third game of the season at Central Michigan by 56 points, 134 to 78. They’ve lost their first three games against Division 1 opponents by an average of 62 points. Hopefully the team recognizes the situation, sticks together and wins a few games later in the season.

Some serious thought has to be given to adding another division–similar to college football’s Championship Division, formerly 1-AA—and it needs to be populated by at least half the programs currently in Division 1. They can be joined by some of the stronger Division 2 programs for a good brand of basketball. With so many smaller schools still moving up to Division 1 for the prestige and the slim hopes of becoming the next Gonzaga—the powerhouse from a mid-major conference—but unable to finance it, the student-athlete gets lost.

Come on, college hoops. Have some mercy on these kids.

Photo by Elizabeth Camp on Unsplash

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