Last night a Division III guard by the name of Jack Taylor who plays for a school you've most likely never heard of made headlines by pouring in a ridiculous 138 points. Yes, that is a ridiculous number, but not as crazy as how he got to those points. He took 108 SHOTS!!! Let that sink in for a minute. The average NBA team as a whole shoots in the mid 80s for a game. That's a 48 minute nba game, as opposed to the standard 40 minute NCAA contest. The Mike D'antoni "7 seconds or less teams" wowed the NBA world by shooting over 100 shots a game. They played really fast, and were unconscious gunners. Can you even imagine one guy shooting that many times? All of the articles I've read say that Taylor had a rough shooting weekend so his coaches decided to give him the green light in order to, I guess, make him feel better about himself? Does he have some kind of terminal disease? Did his grandfather die at 108 years old yesterday? What kind of a sick world does Divison III hoops inhabit in which some clown can hoist up almost 3 shots a minute and not get beaten with soap in the locker room like he's Vincent D'Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket? Taylor also seems to be a delusional asshole judging by his post game comments (and I can imagine this was the first time Jack Taylor or anyone who has ever played for Grinell college has been approached for an interview so I suppose we can forgive him for trotting out the usual cliches but c'mon). ""There was a point during the second half where I hit a number of threes in a row -- maybe seven or eight -- I felt like anything I threw up was going in," Seriously, dude? You missed 56 times. You're accuracy last night was only slightly better than Mark Sanchez's completion percentage. You really felt like MJ in the 92 finals against the Blazers? I'm pretty sure anyone reading this could shoot 26 of 71 from 3 as well. This record is equivalent to Miguel Cabrera hitting 90 home runs this season, but he got 15 at bats a game. Adrian Peterson scored 20 TD's in one game, but the team never ran another play except running the ball, and instead of running clock they kept going for the end zone. I haven't seen many quotes from the opposing team but they couldn't have been happy with Grinnell and Taylor making a mockery of the game at their expense. When you're up by 70 maybe you can take the foot off the gas a little. He couldn't have stopped at 100? I've seen Kobe's 81 point game a few times. It seemed like Kobe shot the ball every time down court, after the game, Toronto players were criticized for not knocking him on his ass. Kobe shot 46 46 times. Taylor took 52 shots IN THE SECOND HALF. Much of the blame for this can go to the coach of Grinnell, a man who is essentially Mike D'Antoni on meth. He requires that the team shoot over 90 times a game, something that is pretty ridiculous in a 40 minute game.
Obviously, last night's debacle was designed to attract attention since one guy himself shot 108 times and it has just as obviously been successful (I just wrote two paragraphs about a Division 3 basketball game). . Detractors will brand people like me and other critics as cynical haters. "Why can't we be happy for the kid? It's not like he's some spoiled millionaire athletes padding his stats." But running up the score is poor sportsmanship in the pros, in D1, D2, D3 or D whatever. More than that though, it's just lame. Grinell has a history of attention seeking B.S. like this. It's ok to be happy for the kid, I guess, but let's not try to paint this kid as some kind of hero or superstar athlete. It's not a great athletic achievement, it's a side show.There's no joy in rigging a game in order to make a dumb record. By the way, another kid for the opposing team scored 70 points. He must be pissed.
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