College basketball star Laura Mosbach (played by Terry Farrell) is hired as an assistant coach for a high school girls' basketball team that has been molded into a perennial powerhouse. The problem is that pretty much everyone associated with the school is a jerk. The parents push their children too hard, beginning when those children are in youth soccer. Parents mock others' children. Girls on the team are passed in school despite failing to do the work. The list goes on and on.
After the first game of the season, the coach is hospitalized, and Laura takes over. The team begins to lose, and the town shows its colors: crank calls, more abuse, and, ultimately, violence at basketball games.
Though the movie claims to be based on actual events, it comes across as cardboard, and I'm not sure that its message is all that positive (since the new coach apparently passes two students who cheated, despite league rules to the contrary). The characters have almost no depth and could have come from central stereotype casting. There's the overbearing father who videotapes every game, insults fellow parents, pushes his daughter too hard, and harasses the referees. (Actually, there are two like this.) There's the outgoing coach to whom winning is everything. And so it goes. I certainly don't deny that there are people like this, and, indeed, I've seen them. But the portrayals here are one-note portrayals and make for a rather pedestrian made-for-TV movie.