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Basket ... basket ... zzzzzzzzz

By DAVE MURPHY
Published February 13, 2007

It is unclear whether Springstead and Nature Coast were playing basketball or staging a peaceful protest Saturday night.

If it was the latter, they succeeded.

Tim Hennigan's last-second 16-footer aside, the Eagles' 36-34 win over the Sharks had all the electricity of an Amish village. Forget Catch 47. This one should have been shown on Lifetime.

The score at the end of the first quarter? 8-5.

At the half? 14-12.

The game started at 7:01 p.m., and the second quarter ended at 7:26. Both of those figures are completely accurate. I was looking at my watch the entire time.

Twenty-five minutes might be more than enough time to cook a pot of rice, but a half of basketball? In a district championship game? Between two heated rivals?

If there was a line at the concession stand, you would have missed it.

"It was like a JV game," Nature Coast coach Travis Priddy said.

But don't blame either team's players. Don't even blame the coaches.

Blame the system.

There were two glaring factors that contributed to the lackluster affair, and both can easily be fixed.

- It is time high school basketball enters the shot clock era.

Eagles coach Craig Swartout said after the game Springstead wanted to play a slow-down game. And he felt Nature Coast wanted to slow it down as well.

Problem is, when both teams want to slow the game down, they'll have no problem doing so.

And the result is a game that is, well, slow.

On two occasions, a team started stalling for a last shot when more than 50 seconds remained on the clock. And on both occasions, the other team didn't seem to object.

The result?

Bounce.

Bounce.

Bounce.

Yawn.

It's time high school basketball join the rest of the world in embracing the shot clock. True, simply keeping track of the game clock seems like a difficult enough task at some high schools. But the change is needed.

- District title games need to be played on the campus of one of the two schools that are participating in the game.

I feel passionate about this opinion. Why make two teams whose schools are less than 10 miles apart drive an hour to play in a tiny gym in the middle of a tiny town that most of the players (and fans) have never been?

Florida isn't known as a passionate basketball state to begin with. Why further dilute that passion by making fans from Brooksville and Spring Hill flock to Bushnell on a Saturday night?

The first two Nature Coast-Springstead games this season were incredible, and the atmosphere was the primary reason. Teams feed off that energy.

Take nothing away from Springstead's dominance of Class 4A, District 8 this season. The Eagles went undefeated, and they won the district tournament despite missing two key starters (forward Jason Haynes and guard Dante Valentine are suspended for the rest of the season).

In a game in which it took a couple of historical eras for a team to score seven points (Nature Coast didn't crack that mark until just more than four minutes remained in the first half), Springstead's 24-16 deficit late in the third quarter looked nearly insurmountable.

The Eagles surmounted, thanks in large part to the play of Hennigan. He hit four 3-pointers, finished with 18 points and did it all with a bruised rib that caused him to miss the fourth quarter of the Eagles' semifinal win over South Sumter.

But Hennigan's heroics weren't enough to cancel out 31 minutes of bad basketball.

Though that might not be fair - in the record book, after all, wins are wins - a couple of simple changes could ensure it doesn't happen again.

David Murphy can be reached at dmurphy@sptimes.com or (352) 848-1407.

[Last modified February 12, 2007, 22:48:22]