However, she would do well to expand her shot profile, lest she go the Ben Simmons route and end up as a point guard with no range. She knows her strengths and keeps to them, the mark of a player with solid savvy and fundamentals. While Zoey acts as her team’s main ball handler, she does all of her scoring damage near the basket: All six of her makes are layups, five from the right side and one down the middle. ( Space Jam was the same, with just one missed shot and zero rebounds as well.) Without any other misses, neither team collects a single rebound all game. However, while her stat line looks mighty efficient, it’s worth noting that Dana’s would-be buzzer-beater is the only missed shot on the game film. Zoey really can play she isn’t “suckish” at all. Zoey: 12 points, 1 assist, 1 steal, 2 turnovers, 6-6 shooting Let’s break down the key individual performances from this instant classic, with the caveat that the episode sadly didn’t show every play of the game. The buzzer sounds and the girls fall by a point. As Nicole complains with an accurate observation, “Face it, Zoey, you’re the only girl on our team who can play this game. The girls’ team is hopelessly outmatched Zoey might be able to hoop-in real life, Spears played when she was younger-but she isn’t the best recruiter. The boys win the tip and Michael scores an immediate layup-an early bucket that’s a sign of things to come. With the school team’s coach serving as a very permissive referee, the game, which will feature two 15-minute halves, begins. According to a sizable contingent on Twitter, he also boasts an eerie resemblance to the writer of this piece. Chase, the main male character and Zoey’s future will-they-or-won’t-they love interest, who is so enamored upon first seeing her across the quad that he crashes his bike into a flagpole.Dana, Zoey’s other roommate, who initially resists joining the team.Quinn, a mad scientist, whose only basketball experience is making a ball “explode” with “chemicals”.Nicole, one of Zoey’s roommates, who summarizes her athletic history by asking, “Does shopping count as a sport?”.Although 11 players eventually compete, we’ll focus on the seven named characters. And on the first Friday of the school year, a sizable crowd arrives to watch the showdown. Instead, he says, “They make cute cheerleaders.”Īffronted, Zoey challenges Logan to a five-on-five, boys-versus-girls battle. But on move-in day, protagonist Zoey is confronted with misogyny as she explores campus: A boy named Logan tells her that girls aren’t good enough at basketball to try out for the school team. The premise of this show, for any readers who weren’t in middle school in the 2005 to 2008 range, is that swanky all-boys boarding school Pacific Coast Academy has, at long last, opened its doors and dorms to girls. Today, it’s time to give Zoey 101 the same sabermetric treatment. Other internet analysts have broken down game tape from The Office and Space Jam, Hoosiers and Teen Wolf. Starring Jamie Lynn Spears as the titular Zoey, the show was a minor phenomenon at the time, it was the most-watched show among tweens, and its Season 3 finale was the highest-rated live action episode in Nickelodeon history, with more than 7 million viewers.Īnd on January 9, 2005, that success started with a basketball episode. And Zoey 101, a TeenNick favorite from the mid-2000s, arranges a basketball game. Game of Thrones gives Daenerys dragon eggs. The pilot episode of any good television show sets the stage with the most important elements to come. And while Zoey 101 wasn’t represented in the bracket, this classic show, and classic sporting moment, warrants deep examination. Throughout the week, we’ll be publishing essays, features, and interviews to get at the heart of what made Nick so dang fun-and now so nostalgic. To mark the anniversary, The Ringer is looking back at Nick’s best-ever characters and the legacy of the network as a whole. Introduced on August 11, 1991, under the brand of “Nicktoons,” Doug, Rugrats, and The Ren & Stimpy Show would quickly become hits and change the course of animation, television, and popular culture at large. Thirty years ago this week, a rising but not-yet-ubiquitous kids network by the name of Nickelodeon launched its first original animated series.

Nicktoons basketball team names