Winless Watch (boys): A Very Special "Cannelton Wins!" Edition

First things first:

OK, OK. I didn't end up doing an Indiana high school football Winless Watch. To me, it's just not as compelling, and with only a 9-game schedule plus the tournament, there ended up being 18 winless teams at the end of the season. Too many for my purposes!

If I had to pick a WW Team of the Year for football, it'd probably be the Edinburgh Lancers. Edinburgh went 0-10 on the season, being shut out 6 times and losing by an average score of 52-6. They held only one school – Indiana Deaf – to under 40 points, and had a three-game stretch in the middle of the season in which they were outscored 156-0.

This year, unfortunately, wasn't an aberration for Edinburgh. If there were a word that was the opposite of "dynasty" that connoted "a long era of losing," it would fit the Lancers to a T. Out of the 100 games they've played since 1997, they've won 5. (Wait, it gets better – or worse: One of those wins was actually a loss on the field, but forfeited to the Lancers later.)

And take this for what it's worth: In 1993, the Lancers gave up the first touchdown scored by a girl in an Indiana high school football game. Hey, I'm just saying.

Also take this for what it's worth: It's completely unrelated to Edinburgh, Indiana, but in trying to find more about the school's sordid football history, I ran across EdinburghSucks.com. Unfortunately, it's about Edinburgh's namesake city in Scotland. Too bad, too. (Oh, chin up, lad! You can buy a T-shirt stating same. Or a thong.)

Ultimately, though, this column isn't about football and the boys who play it poorly. It's about basketball and the teams who play it poorly.

Speaking of which, for Cannelton, a funny thing happened on the way to "defending" their Winless Watch Boys Team of the Year crown – they won! Congratulations to the Bulldogs for snapping their 34-game winless skid on Friday night against New Harmony, 58-50.

The season's not been terribly kind to the Bulldogs, but it still pales in comparison to last year's average defeat margin of over 50 points per game. Signs of improvement are everywhere, though, if you look solely at margin of defeat. The 'Dogs have reduced their margins of defeat as much as 50-75% in several games this year - from 61 last year against Restoration Christian to 15 this year; from 74 last year against Washington Catholic to 38 this year, and from 56 last year against Wood Memorial to 29 this year.

Yeah, OK. The numbers are still frightful in places, but they're better. Point is, the Bulldogs are improved to the point where they've played their way off the Winless Watch list. Again, congratulations!

It bears mentioning here that last year's other two winless teams, Howe Military and Cowan, have won two and three games this season, respectively. Congratulations to them also!

So, who is poised to inherit Cannelton's crown as Boys Team of the Year? Any discussion must start with new IHSAA school Tindley, in Indianapolis. Taking their forfeit defeat out of the equation, the 0-13 Tigers have lost:

* 11 games by more than 30 points
* 10 games by more than 40
* 9 games by more than 50
* 6 games by more than 60
* 4 games by more than 70
* 3 games by more than 80
* 1 game by 100 points (a 117-17 defeat by Indianapolis Washington)

And in games played on the floor, they're giving up 86.4 points per game and scoring only 25.2 – an average margin of over 61 points per game. Ye gods.

Yet it's still conceivable that they won't be included on this list at the end of the season; a February 1 return engagement against something called "Terre Haute Falcons" is a winnable game – the Falcons edged Tindley by a 68-62 score on December 16.

If the Tindleys chalk up a W against the Terre Haute Falcons, their futility should still be rewarded: Tindley can split a special award with Seton Catholic, who isn't officially on this list by virtue of two wins over non-affiliated Christian schools, but still have lost 3 games by more than 90 points so far (a 121-20 defeat against Monroe Central being the nadir. It's also worth nothing that – again! – Indianapolis Washington handed the Cardinals one of those other 90-plus defeats – 123-30 on December 28.

(I would be shocked and dismayed if Indianapolis Washington received one of the IHSAA's sportsmanship awards, with a 93-point win and a 100-point win on its ledger this year, and I will raise holy hell about it in this space if it comes to pass. Mark my words.

(Although, on the bright side, those two wins – by an average of 96 points! - pushed Washington's average margin of victory this season to a meager 6.4 points per outing. So that's kinda funny.)

Anyway – I'm off-topic. At this point last season there were still around 10 winless teams left in the state. Even heading into January of this season (according to an unpublished draft of Winless Watch I put together), there were 16 0-fors remaining. But teams like Attica, Whiting, Medora and North Knox, among others, notched their first wins this month, and there are only three left this season. We've already talked about Tindley, the only winless Class A squad left. The other two are Indianapolis Scecina and North Newton (both 2A teams).

3. Indianapolis Scecina has a relatively weak schedule to finish out the season; as of this writing, their opponents' combined record is 28-60. Plus, with three losses by 5 points or less already, the Crusaders have come close, and will manage to get over the hump on the last weekend of their season on February 20-21 (a Murderer's Row weekend against 1-12 Covenant Christian and 2-9 International).

2. North Newton's remaining schedule is against opponents with a combined 47-46 record. Yes, undefeated Tri-County remains, but so does 2-win Lake Station, which represents the Spartan's last best chance at breaking into the win column this season. The remainder of the schedule, dotted with average 6-7 and 7-8 teams, should be just tough enough for the Spartans to fall short.

1. Tindley … poor Tindley. Maybe they shouldn't even be on this list – there are two game scores that have yet to be reported to John Harrell, against an Australian team and Thea Bowman from up near Chicago, and really, it's possible that they won. Anyway, the remainder of their games are against private, non-IHSAA-affiliates (whose records aren't available at this time), with the exception of 11-4 Yorktown and 5-10 Monrovia. It doesn't really matter, though; they're going to go through some growing pains as a first-year school, but they'll eventually make it work there.

(Special thanks, as always, to the inestimable John Harrell, whose Indiana High School Basketball site is priceless to me when putting together Winless Watch. The man should go into the Hall of Fame someday for his tireless work on compiling current and recent Indiana HS hoops info.)