Oliver High School had an assembly for some of its students Thursday afternoon, and a basketball game broke out.

OK, so the game was planned. Oliver coach Carey White and Seneca Valley coach Victor Giannotta came up with the "assembly game" idea a few weeks ago and their two boys' teams played a 1 p.m. contest at Oliver's gym on the North Side. It was a WPIAL team against a City League team in front of about 150 Oliver students, some school personnel and a few parents.

This was an experiment of sorts. Most high school basketball games are played at night. The City League plays some afternoon games, but they are immediately after school at 3 or 3:30. Oliver was hoping to promote some school spirit.

"I'm glad we did it," said White, whose team defeated Seneca Valley, 60-51. "Maybe we can make some improvements if we do it again next year.

"Hey, I've been a teacher for 18 years and I've been to some ridiculous assemblies. This was a lot better than some I've seen."

Seneca Valley had an "assembly game" five years ago for a junior varsity game, and Giannotta said it was a huge success and the students loved it. So when he suggested the idea to White, Oliver's coach was all for it. But Oliver made the game a reward for students.

Only students who were on the honor roll, had good attendance or weren't tardy this year were allowed to attend. Oliver has 421 students in grades 9-12, so fewer than half were in attendance. The gym was maybe 50 percent full.

"We wanted to see if we could pack the place with students," White said. "At the most, we might get 50 students for a game and that's only if it's Perry or Allderdice. So this was good, but maybe we'll get more next year."

Giannotta said: "I'm glad we did it. Maybe more schools will try it in the future for games that are non-section. I know it sounds kind of goofy, but this late in the season it was probably better than a practice. It was something different. It was a nice changeup."

Some of Oliver's students appeared to appreciate the idea.

"It's cool," senior Ed Mathis said. "Maybe some things like this will help keep some students acting the right way."

Senior David Marshall said: "I think they should do it again, just because it gets a lot of people out to see a game who never come. A lot of kids will be tired after school, have homework or something else to do."

The crowd was fairly loud early in the game when Oliver broke out to a lead. But the students didn't make much noise after that. Also, there was no public address announcer for the game, which certainly didn't help the atmosphere.

"I think it could've been better, as far as crowd participation," White said.

White chuckled at some of the crowd's behavior.

"You could tell a lot of them didn't know how to act at a basketball game," White said. "They didn't know what to do, which is amazing to me for a high school student. Every once in a while, they would stomp their feet on a foul shot. But that was about it. It's almost like we'll have to teach them how to cheer at a basketball game."

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