BrokenCowboy: Sports Views with a West Coast Bias

The Yin and Yang of Basketball

Two days before Christmas in 1989, I went with a high school buddy to watch a basketball game between Oklahoma and Loyola Marymount. The Sooners were coached at the time by Billy Tubbs, LMU's Lions were directed by Paul Westhead, and both teams had been running up big scores all season long. Mike and I were there for the spectacle; there was talk that the winning team might actually get to 200 points.

This was not an unreasonable expectation -- Loyola would top 150 points three times that season and set an NCAA tournament record by hanging 149 on the defending champion Michigan Wolverines. In upcoming years, the Lions would actually score in the 160's three times and top out at 181 and 186 in two games against U.S. International. Paul Westhead, the evil genius behind LMU's hardwood track meet, had crafted a game never seen before, and the stories that came out of the West L.A. campus were delicious:

• Looking to keep the game moving as much as possible, Westhead apparently ordered the nylon nets stretched out before games so that balls would drop through without delay.

• Following their first made basket of every game, an LMU player would grab the ball before the opposing team could inbound. He'd then hold it until the referee issued a delay of game warning to both teams, meaning that the opponents would receive a technical foul if they ever attempted to delay LMU's fast break by interfering with the ball after their own made basket.

• An opposing team once went into a stall, trying anything to slow down the Lions. Westhead responded by ordering one of his defenders to stand on the offensive end of the court, assuming that the 5 on 4 situation would entice his opponents to get into their offense. When this didn't work, he simply pulled another defender across center court, putting his team at a two-man disadvantage. This got the game going again.

The game that night between Oklahoma and Loyola didn't see either team approach two hundred points (Oklahoma won, 136-121), but it was certainly worth the trip. Hank Gathers had recently been diagnosed with a heart condition, so he didn't play. The fans started calling for him ("We want Hank! We want Hank!") during the second half, which sadly remains the only time I've ever heard a crowd chanting my name. It would be almost two months before everyone knew how serious Hank's heart condition really was.

All of this came to mind tonight when I ran across an item about a high school basketball game played Thursday night in Milton, Vermont. BFA-Fairfax beat Milton High in a thriller, 5-2. BFA hit one basket in the first quarter, then a three-pointer in the second to take a 5-0 lead. Doing everything they could to keep the game at a snail's base, the Milton anti-Lions answered with a basket of their own to close within three at half-time, but neither team was able to score in the second half. 5-2.

Although it was described as "one of the most boring games in the world," I'd have loved to have seen it, and I would've loved to have seen it with Paul Westhead sitting right next to me. Yin to Milton's Yang, I'm certain Westhead would've gone down into somebody's huddle by the second quarter.

De La Salle Goes Down

Here's something interesting that happened over the weekend -- the team from De La Salle High School in Concord, California, lost a football game. In most communities this happens a few times every fall, and it carries no significance. A quarterback might knock over a water cooler, a cheerleader might have to reapply her mascara after shedding a few tears, and the homecoming dance might not be as peppy as the activity committee had hoped, but life goes on. Losing, after all, is a part of high school football.

But here's the interesting part. The last time De La Salle lost a football game, the calendar said December of 1991. In between that loss and this one, the school had strung together 151 straight wins. They were so dominant that in recent years they had started to range out of their area looking for challenges. They played a home-and-home series with Long Beach Poly, the Southern California power (and Southern Cal feeder) that has sent more players to the NFL than any high school in the country. They flew to Hawaii to play another of the best the West has to offer, St. Louis High School. This weekend's loss came to Washington's Bellevue High, three-time defending state champs.

The streak is amazing. As I was thinking about it, my mind started to think about how best to appreciate the (almost) thirteen-year streak. Here's what I came up with:

During the De La Salle winning streak...
• Barry Bonds hit 555 homeruns.
• The Detroit Lions lost 112 games.
• Michael Jordan retired three times.
• Ricky Williams played an entire college and NFL career.
• The Atlanta Braves won 11 division titles.
• Emmitt Smith scored 146 touchdowns.

This is just the tip of the ice berg, but it's late. Suffice it to say, it was long, long, long winning streak.