A photo of a basketball scoreboard that read 95-0 popped up on social media Friday.
It was the final score of a high school girls basketball game in South Carolina between Dutch Fork and Lamar, and the winning coach said it could have been worse.
“I know it looks bad on the scoreboard,’’ said Candace Bush, head girls coach at Dutch Fork High in Irmo, S.C.. “It wasn’t my girls’ fault.’’
Before the game, Bush said she realized Lamar was a smaller school and asked that her team be placed in a different bracket at the She Got Next tournament organized by A1 Hoops Basketball.
But Bush said she never heard back from tournament officials and so the game was played as scheduled Friday at White Knoll High School in Lexington, South Carolina.
Bush said Lamar’s players attempted only five or six shots during the game.
“A couple of times they literally just handed the ball to my girls,’’ Bush said. “We looked at each other on the bench like, ‘Did she really just give it to her?’
“If I had known it was going to be that bad, I would have brought my JV girls to play pretty much the entire game.”
How did the game unfold?
“It was out of control from the beginning, honestly,’’ Bush said.
Dutch Fork dropped into a zone defense in the second quarter in an attempt to slow the scoring, according to Bush. But she said Lamar’s players pressed her players, and so the Dutch Fork Silver Foxes continued to take and make shots as the number on their side of the scoreboard climbed.
It was 95-0 with about 2 1/2 minutes left to play, according to Bush.
“So, of course, they see the scoreboard and they’re trying to push 100,’’ Bush said of her players. “I wouldn’t let them do it. I told them just to hold the ball at the top.’’
Ayonna Thompson-Bowen, the Director of A1 Hoops that organized the tournament, said she was not immediately available to talk when reached for comment.
Attempts to reach Lamar coach Randolph Scott were unsuccessful.