Here's an incredible story. A female high school basketball player from New York scored 113 points in a game on Wednesday. That breaks the record of 105 held by Cheryl Miller (Reggie's sister). But that's not the most amazing achievement in women's basketball. The most amazing achievement was Lisa Leslie scoring 101 points in the first half of a game in high school. The other team refused to play the second half, so she didn't get to set a record no one would break.
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This is probably due to the same factor as with baseball. The variance of dominating acheivements is high because the quality of the teams and players are so irregular. Not because women are themselves irregular players, but rather because the leauge, just like like men's baseball used to be, is underdeveloped and doesn't have the same sort of vast source of interested players for teams to pick only the very best from.
So this young player is of the same caliber as Lisa Leslie and Cheryl Miller. I hope "plunge" is not suggesting that these two women are special solely because of the "variance of dominating achievements?" Given their success in high school, college, and professional (yes and Olympic) experiences, they have proven themselves to be deserving of the records they still hold for interscholastic competition. Ms. Prince can look forward to such success i am sure. I am still blown away by the consistency of her shooting. damn.
And here I was thinking that this post had something to do with promiscuity.
The achievement for this young lady may well be greater than that of Lisa Leslie or Cheryl Miller just because she's a 5'9 guard. Cheryl Miller is 6'3 and played in the 80s when virtually no one was big enough to guard her. Lisa Leslie is like 6'7 and in high school there probably wasn't another player within 6 inches of her on the court. Which is not to take anything away from the two of them, who were both incredible basketball players. But for a guard to do that at that size is astonishing.
Why does the height of Miller and Leslie diminish their achievements?
Who really cars about High School scoring records. They don't mean crap. Sure Prince may only be 5'9", but when the other team stops playing defense as a protest it doesn't matter how tall you are, it's easy to score.
This coach ran up the score on a clearly inferior team. Tell me when someone socres 100 points in a game where the final score is 120-115. Then that'll be impressive.
Interesting facts: The final score of this game was 137-32.
When Cheryl Miller scored her 105 the final was 179-15. How can Lisa Leslie brag about forcing a team off the floor after scoring her 101 when the score at the half was 102-24. She actually let one of her teammates shoot a free throw, how nice of her.
None of the games are against teams that should even be on the floor against these players. I bet if they put Allen Iverson in a game against High School kids he might even break the record, but it wouldn't mean crap. Running up the score against inferior competition should be condemned not lauded.
Also when you do something like this, what kind of emotions do you think are running through the opposing teams mind. Do you think they enjoy this? I guess Prince is lucky that John Cheney was not the oppsoing coach, he would have had one of his goons take her out of the game and she'd be rehabbing and thinking about what could have been instead of basking in her "accomplishment".
I don't blame her, however, I blame the coaches. First the winning coach should have pulled her when the game was well in hand. Put in your scrubs and make it a game. I'm not saying lose, I'm saying don't embarrass the other team. Second, the opposing coach. Don't stop playing defense. If you really want to make a mockery of the game guard Prince with all five of your players. You're going to lose, but you can probably still stop what is clearly an attempt at the scoring record.
As for Wilt, some may think it's a double standard, but what he did was more impressive. He did it in a game against an NBA team that was of closer caliber. The final of that game was 169-147.
Rufus wrote:
I didn't say it did. In fact, I quite specifically said it didn't. I just said that the fact that this girl was 5'9, and therefore didn't have an obvious physical advantage over the girls she was playing, might make her feat even a bit more impressive. That doesn't mean it diminishes what they did.
bourgeois rage:
I guess I just don't get why this would be so traumatic for the other team. When I was in the 8th grade, I was on the basketball team and I played center. I was maybe 5'8 at the time. We played a game against a team that had a kid named J.P. Oosterban, who was 6'7 in the 8th grade, ended up being a 7 footer and playing at Michigan. I had to guard him. I don't recall the exact final score, but it was ugly, like 84-26 or something like that. He must have scored 50. I'm sure we did our share of whining about it after the game, but it was hardly some huge blow to our lives. No, I didn't enjoy it but no one ever enjoys losing. And after a while you just start laughing about it. What else can you do? They're just plain better than you are. You may well be right that the better thing to do would have been for the coach to put in the scrubs in this game, but that doesn't mean it's outrageous that she didn't.
Ok, maybe I was being a little melodramatic about the other team beind scarred for life. But my point still stands that it doesn't really prove anything except that you are willing to run up a score over a vastly inferior team just to get a name in a record book.
ESPN wrote an nice article about this "feat".