Today in sportsmanship

 ... in which a Connecticut high school girls basketball team beat an overmatched opponent 92-4, which compelled the winners to apologize and suspend its head coach for a game.

This happened at Sacred Heart Academy in Hamden, Conn., a name to which all sorts of irony now attaches given the heartlessness displayed by its coach, Jason Kirck. What Coach did against Lyman Hall High School the other night, see, was the basketball equivalent of pulling the wings off flies. 

He reportedly sent his team out there to press and fast-break even after the issue had long been decided.  God only knows why. Maybe he was channeling the evil Cobra Kai sensei from "The Karate Kid."

Sweep the leg, girls ...

Yeesh. 

Now, at this point you might be asking "Why were these teams even playing one another, Mr. Blob?" It's an excellent question, and the answer is "Because they're in the same conference." Also, there's no mercy rule in Connecticut, which means the teams didn't play with a running clock once the score reached absurd levels.

None of this explains what valuable life lessons Sacred Heart's coach thought he was teaching by doing what he did. Nor does it explain the valuable life lesson the Blob would have imparted to his players -- which is "When authority is clearly insane, defying authority is the noblest path."

Now, it's probably too much to expect 15-, 16- or 17-year-old girls to defy their Coach, because sports is a top-down dictatorship and that's ingrained in athletes from a very young age. But wouldn't you have loved to have seen a little passive resistance in this case?

Like, instead of pushing the ball up the floor at breakneck speed when you're up 50-0, you deliberately slow it down juuuuuust a step or three. Or, oops, blow a layup or two. Or go all Bobby Plump and tuck the ball under your arm while the clock runs down.

Maybe some of that did happen. Maybe a brave soul or two spoke up and said "Coach, why are we still pushing the ball upcourt?" Or suggest that deliberately embarrassing an opponent is not, you know, sportsmanlike.

Of course, Coach would likely have immediately benched anyone who did any of the above. So, no, it probably didn't.

But wouldn't it have been great if it had?