Record-setting rout creates quite an ethical dilemma

You've heard the expression, "Records are made to be broken."

But are they meant to be shattered, seemingly at the expense of a hapless opponent that stands in the way?

That's the ethical dilemma that came out of last Friday's North Suburban Conference Prairie Division boys basketball game between North Chicago and Round Lake.

North Chicago destroyed the visiting Panthers 129-48 to break the all-time Lake County team scoring record for most points in a game. The previous mark was set during the 1993-94 season by Mundelein, which ran past Stevenson 117-99 in a classic barnburner.

Of course, a bit of quick math will tell you that the Mundelein-Stevenson margin was 18 points. Reverse those numbers and you get the margin between North Chicago and Round Lake last weekend: 81 points.

Yikes.

I did not attend this game, and I'm almost thankful I didn't, record or not. No one wants to see a team, especially a high school team, lose that decisively.

It's no wonder that when I made my weekly call to Round Lake coach Howard Kravets on Wednesday to check in for notebook material, he was ready to unload.

"I can't see how what happened last Friday could ever be a good thing," Kravets said. "In my 15 years of coaching, I think it's the worst display of sportsmanship I've ever seen. Clearly, they are a better team, and clearly, we struggled. I don't expect them not to score, or to stop playing, but I also don't expect this. I just don't think that's what high school sports is all about.

"I think what happened last Friday is a black mark on Lake County basketball."

Kravets contends that the scoring record that North Chicago now owns wasn't achieved in the spirit of good sportsmanship similar to the way in which Mundelein beat Stevenson. According to former Mundelein coach Dennis Kessel, that game was competitive almost the entire way, and both teams were stacked with equitable talent.

Kravets says that despite a 57-13 halftime lead, North Chicago coach Gerald Coleman had his players pressing the entire game, even in the frontcourt with constant run-and-jump traps.

Kravets also claims that Coleman never fully emptied his bench and that he put his starters back into the game in the fourth quarter - with a 65-point lead.

"I want to make very clear that this isn't about the players at North Chicago," Kravets said. "They weren't showboating at all. They never rubbed it in or acted in a bad way. They were classy. They were simply doing what their coach was telling them to do."

OK, so what exactly did Gerald Coleman tell his players to do?

I called over to North Chicago on Thursday to talk with athletic director Jim Hentschel, who brought Coleman into his office. The two of them spoke to me on speakerphone.

I give them credit for not dodging my call.

"Look, if I were a bad sport, we would have scored over 200 points against that team," Coleman said of Round Lake. "It's not my fault that Round Lake isn't competitive. If I were (Kravets), I wouldn't be calling the papers to complain, I would be going back to the drawing board to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. That game was won in about five minutes. Round Lake had 41 turnovers, many of them unforced where they just threw it right at us. We scored 72 points in layups. What am I supposed to tell the kids - to stop trying, to stop working hard, to throw the game? I'm not going to do that.

"This is varsity basketball. I'm not going to give anything away. We weren't trying to hurt anyone's feelings and I could honestly care less about any scoring record. The fact is, we needed to work on things, too. Our goal is to win state this year and I want my guys playing hard in every single game so that they can prepare themselves for that."

But did it have to be THAT hard, Coach? I mean, was it really necessary, against a team that clearly was so overmatched, to press the entire game? Backcourt, and front.

"Yeah, we pressed the whole game, and I would do that if we were up by 50 (points) or down by 50 because that's just what we're going to do this year," Coleman said. "But against Round Lake, it wasn't even full pressure. It was light pressure, like 30 percent (strength)."

"Believe me," Hentschel chimed in, "if we really put the pressure on they would have had 80 turnovers and we would have scored 150 points on layups."

Coleman then pointed out that most of his team's points were scored by reserves and that while it is true his starters went back into the game in the fourth quarter, it was only briefly.

He also admits to playing star guard Keith Ford for nearly the entire game, but only because three major Division I college recruiters were there to scout him.

"I put my starters back in for like two minutes while I was instructing (the reserves) and then I put (the reserves) right back in," Coleman said. "My JV players won that game for us. I wasn't going to jeopardize an opportunity for Keith to be seen (by recruiters), so he had 25 points. But it was really the other guys. My eighth man had 22 points, my ninth man had 24 points and (another reserve) had 22 points. My starters didn't get the record, my JV guys did - and all of them played except for one kid.

"Look, we have no animosity for Round Lake. We weren't trying to make anyone look bad. The fact is, we have a pretty good team and the way we looked at it was that our team came out to play."

Kudos to the Warhawks. It's great that they were intense, and focused and 100 percent on their game last Friday. They are indeed a tough team, one of the best in Lake County.

And I agree with Coleman on another thing: he should never tell his players to stop working hard, or to stop trying their best. That's cheating them - and, in a round about way, that would have been cheating Round Lake.

No matter how bad it got last weekend, I doubt the Panthers were ever looking for charity.

But here's my point: There's a way to work hard and try hard and win decisively, and there's a way not to.

Beating a team to a pulp with a nonstop press is on the no-no list, no matter how ambitious your team goals are for the season and no matter how many things you need to work on in a game situation.

Do we really buy the notion that North Chicago was perfecting its press against Round Lake? Does anyone really believe that what was gained from the Round Lake game will have any bearing whatsoever on how the Warhawks play in the state tournament come March.

I don't.

Also, when a team takes a 44-point lead into the locker room at halftime, as North Chicago did, the starters should be done for good, no matter who is in the stands watching the star player.

If college recruiters came all the way out to North Chicago to see Ford, it probably wasn't the first time they had seen him. Typically, they make that kind of extra effort when they're already familiar with a player and want to see more.

I'm almost certain they would have understood if he sat the bench for the entire second half. I mean, by seeing Ford play against a team that was struggling as much as Round Lake was, what kind of meaningful perspective is really gained anyway?

I say not much.

"I think what it comes down to is that (Coleman) saw an opportunity to set a record and didn't care about embarrassing kids," Kravets said. "He embarrassed the game of basketball, my kids and our program.

"But the thing I told our kids after the game was that when people step back and really look at what happened, this game was actually more embarrassing for his team than for mine."

Coleman told me that he knows all about being embarrassed. That when he was the girls basketball coach at North Chicago years ago, his teams often suffered whopping losses - like the time Stevenson rolled up 80-some points and his team finished in the teens.

He says he never called the newspapers to complain.

Hentschel also referred to the North Chicago baseball team routinely losing games "like 22-0, and we never call in about that."

I agree with Coleman and Hentschel that this issue isn't one-sided, that plenty of other teams around here have doled out lopsided losses - to North Chicago teams and to others.

But does one butt-kicking justify another?

Coleman had a chance to stop the vicious cycle.

Now, he just has a record.

pbabcock@dailyherald.com