I am not saying you cannot critique basketball players individually. You can and it is perfectly acceptable, but criticising the whole league is much different. You cannot say that DIII competition sucks: there have been many professional basketball players overseas and in the NBA. I know what Grinnell does; I have seen them play. I know many people that have played DIII, and I can guarantee you the majority of them are much better than they people at Grinnell. First off, Grinnell is an outlier in the data set. Before the coach came, they had a bad team and could not win games or get attendance. The coach comes, and installs this system of high scoring to generate excitement and more wins because they are not that talented. This system is just absurd: have you read what they have to do? They even give up wide open layups as part of the game plan. Name one other team in any grade, division, league, or even in the gym that does that. Even after the new system, they are still not a good DIII team. You can argue that his accomplishment is not impressive (which I agree) because it really is not hard to shoot 108 shots: most basketball players shoot hundreds of shots each day in practice, so their arms should not be abnormally tired in games. But to base all of DIII on this outlier is not correct. Another note: the opponent they played is not even in DIII: they are on a lower level IIRC. Which shows why their double teams kinda failed and they did not have a decent defender. Once again, another reason why you cannot stereotype the DIII league.
It's only difficult in a normal game because time limit prevent you from having so many possessions. But if play in such a way where you can minimize time-per-possession, then it's fairly easy. Taylor wasn't even all that efficient. Put someone like Jimmer in the same situation, and he might crack 200.
Well, this seems like a valid argument. I'm not a big Div III watcher, so this game is really the only thing I'm basing that statement on. I also agree that it's not fair to judge a whole division from one game, but it's the internet, people generally tend to speak in "this sucks," or "this is awesome" it's just easier to get your position across without having to go through any laborious explanations. But, you're right, the statement was too brash and generalising. I, therefore, retract my Div III sucks statement. That being said though, I think I was just shocked in the obvious skill-dip from Div I games to that Div III game - that game was bad... Anyways point taken.
http://www.gocrimson.com/sports/mbkb/2012-13/boxscores/20121109_q7ll.xml Not that much skill-dip, especially considering that MIT, a real DIII school, was missing four starters in that game. Harvard is not a slouch DI school either. Daryl Morey would be proud.
