With the score 40-40, the Runnin’ Rebels, the boys’ varsity basketball team, were lining up to begin overtime. At this point, the referees met with the scorekeepers and announced that there was a discrepancy between the scoreboard and the statistic books. It turned out that the real score was 40-38, costing the Rebels the game and the playoffs.
When the decision was made, both coaches shook hands. After Rebels’ coach Phil Fisher told the team to lineup to congratulate their opponents, the Rebels were in shock as some put their jersey over their faces while others comforted each other. Senior and captain Jake LaMountain was almost in tears.
This disheartening loss concluded the Runnin’ Rebels game against the Seahawks of Food and Finance High School on February 29. “We asked the refs and they decided that since both the books matched up, the score would be 40-38,” senior and Rebels’ manager Iris Leung said.
“We would have been playing much tighter defense and we would have fouled them if we had to. You play the game differently in different situations,” junior Tarek Elessawi said.
However, according to video obtained by both the Spectator and senior Steven Cao who was asked to film the game by Fisher, 12 points were scored by the Rebels in the fourth quarter. Thus, the score should be 40-40.
LaMountain viewed the footage taken by Cao during the weekend and confirmed that the score is clearly tied at the end of regulation.
“The book had us only scoring 10 points in the fourth quarter, whereas the tape clearly showed us having six baskets,” said LaMountain, who immediately informed Fisher Sunday afternoon.
According to official high school basketball rules outlined by the Public School Athletics League (PSAL), video replays cannot be used as evidence to protest an official’s decision. “I knew I didn’t have much of a leg to stand on,” Fisher said. “Once the officials leave the court, the game is supposedly official.”
After reexamining the score book taken during the game, Fisher found that a basket scored by junior Nolan Becker was not accounted for. “What I don’t understand is that our running score was correct. We did have 40 points in the book,” Fisher said. “The referees always want to do the right thing. Here the right thing is not being done.”
Fisher contacted several people, including Assistant Principal Health and Physical Education Martha Singer, PSAL boys’ basketball commissioner Mel Goldstein and High School of Food and Finance’s athletic director Eric Capuano. “[The commissioner] said that both scorebooks had a missing basket and that’s what they went with,” Fisher said. “[Capuano] was very sympathetic but wasn’t interested.”
Fisher learned via e-mail on the following Monday that one parent apparently launched a protest was filed on Friday before the officials left. “I did not know that a protest had already been filed, because if it was, it wasn’t filed by me. I had no idea what it was going on,” Fisher said. The status of that protest is unknown at this time.
Now that the decision is final, the Rebels can only look back at their performance against Food and Finance. The Rebels had been seeded 34th out of 41, while the Seahawks were the second seeded team. Earlier in the season, the Rebels had lost 64-39 to the Seahawks on November 30, 2007 and 63-50 on January 11.
“The first game against these guys [the Seahawks] wasn’t even close. It was a joke, they were dunking over us,” LaMountain said. The Rebels’ defense proved to be the deciding factor in the game. They held the Seahawks, a team that normally averages 67 points a game, to only 40 points. Stuyvesant also kept Food and Finance’s leading scorer, senior Travis Nichols, to only 11 points. In the regular season, Nichols averaged 23.56 points per game. Rebels’ junior and center Nolan Becker led Stuyvesant with 24 points and had nine rebounds in this game.
“We held them to 40 points, and the furthest we were behind the whole game was four. How much better an effort could you ask for?” Fisher said.
The loss came after the Rebels thoroughly beat the Rough Riders of the Roosevelt Educational Campus, 74-45, in the Bronx on Tuesday, February 26, in the play-in game to make the first round of playoffs. The Rough Riders, seeded 31st, also had a 10-8 record in the regular season. This record placed both teams in the “out bracket”, where the four lowest seeded teams play each other in order to qualify for the final two spots in the 32-team bracket.
The Rebels outscored the Rough Riders after every quarter with three players scoring in double-figures and eight players scoring in total. “Usually we rely on [Becker], but [today] we could rely on anybody,” senior Suraj Cheema said.
Since the beginning of the season, Stuyvesant’s Runnin’ Rebels have improved significantly. Their foul shooting has come from close to 50 percent to nearly 75 percent. “We shoot a lot of free throws at practice,” Becker said. “We’re working on it.”
They have also improved on an individual level. “Everyone has improved. Our team is now beginning to use our skills and improvements at game speed,” Fisher said.
Most significantly however, the Rebels’ played with a lot more emotion. In regards to their game against the Seahawks, “the emotional aspect was there. The hard work was there. We tried our best and our hardest,” LaMountain said.
