Feb 25, 2015 4 min read

Every year, we see stories about high school football and basketball coaches who get in trouble because their teams run up exorbitant scores against overmatched opponents, but we don’t recall hearing about a coach getting in trouble for trying not to score, until now.

Girls basketball teams from Riverdale and Smyrna high schools in Tennessee met Saturday in a district playoff game. One might have expected a hard-fought contest under such circumstances. But neither team wanted to win.

Let us explain. The winner of the Riverdale-Smyrna game was slated to be placed in the same side of the bracket as defending state champion Blackman in the subsequent regional playoffs, and a loss in the regional semifinals against Blackman would bring their season to an end. However, the loser of the Riverdale-Syrma contest could potentially have advanced through the regionals without facing Blackman until the finals. But by reaching the final game in that tournament, the team would automatically qualify for the state playoffs. So, the loser of the Riverdale-Smyrna game presumably had a better chance of surviving further into the postseason. And, boy, did both teams try to lose.

Here are some of the “lowlights,” according to a report in The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville:

• Smyrna players deliberately failed to bring the ball across the half-court line within the allowable 10 seconds.

• The game referee reported that Riverdale players missed more than a dozen free throws deliberately.

• Smyrna players stood in the lane without budging in attempts to get called for three-second violations.

• A Riverdale girl took it a step further by standing in the lane and waving three fingers at an official in a bid to get whistled for a violation.

• Both coaches pulled their starters out of the game and let second-stringers play.

• And, finally, a Smyrna player was attempting to shoot the ball at the wrong basket in order to give Riverdale two points.

After that last move, the referee had enough.

“That was when I called both coaches together and told them we are not going to make a travesty or mockery of the game,” the official said in his report. “We are not going to start trying to shoot and score for the other team.”

Smyrna ultimately “won” the game, 55-29 – they pulled away after their coach, under pressure from a school administrator, put his starters back in – but the organization that runs high school sports in Tennessee, the TSSAA, did the right thing and removed both teams from further playoff action. Both schools also were fined and put on probation through the 2015-16 school year.

An administrator from Riverdale tried to tell state athletic officials that their coach, Cory Barrett, did not tell his players to lose, according to TSSAA executive director Bernard Childress.

“He said he talked to them about bracketology,” Childress told The Tennessean. “He told them, ‘This is where we will be if we win, this is where we will be if we lose.”

So, Barrett didn’t tell his players to lose. He just told them how much better it would be for them if they didn’t win. Got that?

Some argued that the coaches should have been reprimanded, but that removing the teams from the playoffs unfairly punished the players. Childress was having none of that.

“The student-athletes bought into it,” he said. “They were the ones asking to call three seconds. They were the ones stepping back over (midcourt). They were the ones not attempting to shoot at the basket.”

There’s plenty of blame to go around here. The behavior of the coaches was reprehensible, and they should be fired. The players who willingly went along with the sham should be ashamed of themselves, but at least they have the excuse of being children. We assume the players’ parents were in the stands for this farce, and they should be blamed for not pulling their kids off the floor when they saw what sort of mockery was being made of the game.

Riverdale principal Tom Nolan summed it up pretty well when he said, “It’s a total embarrassment. It sends a bad message to everyone. Bottom line is, you play the game to win.”