This is an odd way to play basketball.

[Axxon]

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/02/23/Sp...ing_foes.shtml

Wins nice; making foes dizzy better

Division III Redlands uses wave after wave of players in perhaps the most frantic method the sport has seen.

By BRIAN LANDMAN, Times Staff Writer
Published February 23, 2005

University of Redlands senior forward Matt Houdek has seen the dazed looks and heard the gasps from opponents for three years now and all he can do is sympathetically shrug.

Sometimes he coyly smiles at them.

Sometimes he good-naturedly ribs them.

"We played the University of Pittsburg-Greensburg (in December) and guys I talked to, they're like dead and said, "Do you guys ever stop running?' " he said. "You shake your head at them. "No. We're going do keep doing it all night.' ... They don't know what hit them."

The Division III Bulldogs trap like Tasmanian devils, a ploy that usually results in a turnover or an easy layup. In either case, they counter with their own shot, usually a 3-pointer, in all of 10-12 seconds. To maintain that manic pace, coach Gary Smith sends in a fresh five as if they were a line in hockey every 20 seconds.

Deny. Trap. Shoot. Whew.

"I know there was a point in the second half, I was so tired I couldn't get my wind back," said Pittsburg-Greensburg (Pa.) senior guard Kevin Conlon, who had a career-high 40 points plus 13 rebounds and nine assists. "Our coach told us several times, "This is going to be nothing like you've experienced before.' Until you get in there, you can't imagine how fast the game is going and how unorthodox everything is."

His team put up 142. And it lost. Redlands won 154-142.

"Some of the players made a couple of jokes (like), "You flew all the way out here for this?' " Conlon said.

He and his team had company. Redlands, a school of 2,200 undergraduates in Southern California, is averaging 132.6 points entering its season finale tonight at Whittier. That doesn't just top its division this year, ending an 11-year run by Grinnell, but will shatter the record for all divisions in NCAA history, held by Grinnell at 126.2. Loyola Marymount holds the Division I record of 122.4 set in 1989-90.

"Our players are all very aware of that, but it's not something we've made any big deal about that, frankly," Smith said. "We don't really talk about that. We don't talk about a goal of averaging a certain number of points a game. It's just the way we play."

In the late 1980s, Smith's team played a conventional, half-court offense but saw the success Loyola Marymount was enjoying under coach Paul Westhead and stars Bo Kimble and Hank Gathers.

Though Westhead's ideas weren't embraced by his Division I brethren - in fact many scoffed at them in the way a NFL purist might look at the Arena league - Smith struck up a friendship with Westhead and picked his brain so he could try Westhead's idea at Redlands.

His team led Division III in scoring three times. But by the middle of the '90s, Smith went back to a more deliberate offense and looked like most other teams. Following a couple of poor seasons, he figured he needed to do something to add a "spark" to the offense.

"In the summer (after my freshman year of 2001-02), he told us we're going to run a little faster," senior point guard Andrew Alhadeff said. "I was real excited. I thought we were going to run transition."

Not quite. Smith re-introduced the old offensive plan with an even more aggressive defense.

"The thing that's put this over the top is the gambling that we're willing to do," he said. "The defense is what makes it possible to get this many possessions."

They average 110 shots, mostly 3-pointers, an average of 72.5 (they've tried 106 in a game this season) and hit nearly 24 a game. Still, his players balked at the virtue, or the wisdom, of a defensive scheme that flew in the face of everything they knew.

"It's hard when you're playing basketball for 14, 15 years of your life and you've been taught to play half-court defense and help-side defense and now we give up layups," Alhadeff said.

Smith went to Grinnell and incorporated that program's novel substitution pattern to ratchet up his team's frenetic trapping that forces an average of 32.5 turnovers a game this season.

Instead of using eight players as Westhead did in Loyola Marymount's heyday, culminating with a run to the Elite 8 in 1990 after the death of Gathers, Smith started rolling in 15 or 16 for short, all-out shifts. But that limited players to a high of 16 minutes.

"I find that very creative," Westhead said. "I never thought of that kind of stuff. Although I'd have to say, at a Division I (level) that would be a tough sell."

At the non-scholarship Division III level, too.

"I'd be lying to you if I said it hasn't been a struggle," Smith said. "It certainly was a struggle the first year. But the only way to play as hard as you need to play to make this successful is to play very short shifts of time. I tried to sell the value of a total effort, a real total effort, just giving everything you've got to give for your teammates."

"You have to completely buy into that," Houdek said.

Gradually, he and his teammates have and they find the system fun. With essentially the entire 21-man roster seeing time (most average between seven and 16 minutes), it does forge a deep bond and trust. Fans, both at home and on the road, find it fun. While on a summer European tour, they often received standing ovations.

Though the Bulldogs might not be racking up wins like Loyola Marymount did, they are better than they used to be. They went 9-16 in 2001-02 to 10-15, then 14-12 last season and now 13-11. Each year, they've also markedly raised their scoring average, from 73.2 points to 102.3 to 115.2 and now this season's eye-popping total.

"We've won more, not a lot more, but we have won more," Smith said. "But (the purpose) is twofold. It really is. There's an educational benefit to it: Unselfishness, teamwork, work ethic, are taught in a different fashion. ... And it's an evolution. What we're doing now is not what we were doing three years ago. I'm learning more and my players are learning more."

There are constants.

Shrugs. Smiles. Jokes. Whews.

I think it would be really fun to watch even if it's not overly effective and I can imagine it would suck to play against. I really hope they get the points record too.

[Ksyrup]

I wonder what the average time of a game is. Must be at least 3 hours, with the constant timeouts for shift changes. I'm not sure I would enjoy watching that - maybe once, just to see it, but after that it would seem to get awfully repetitive and tedious.

[Axxon]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

I wonder what the average time of a game is. Must be at least 3 hours, with the constant timeouts for shift changes. I'm not sure I would enjoy watching that - maybe once, just to see it, but after that it would seem to get awfully repetitive and tedious.

Maybe but I'm sure that it's pretty streamlined and we endure huddles after every play in football which take longer and it doesn't get tedious. Surely for it to be entertaining you'd have to think outside the basketball box.

[Cap Ologist]

I doubt they call that many timeouts, you only get 3 or 4 per half. It's more likely that they have guys always at the scorers table ready to come in. I played against a team like that in high school. They had so much depth, they just came in waves. I think I'm still tired 10+ years later.

[Ksyrup]

That's what I mean - not full timeouts, but the constant stopping of play to bring in guys from the scorer's table.

Let me just put it this way - this kind of game sounds like my worst nightmare: the last 60 seconds of a close basketball game, where the clock gets stopped every 5.2 seconds and the game gets painfully stretched out. Except here, that happens for the full 40 minutes or so.

[CamEdwards]

when Grinnell was on ESPN2 earlier this year I watched. Same offense, supposedly. Perhaps if they'd been able to actually place the ball inside of the hoop it would have been more exciting. As it was, it was kind of painful.

[rkmsuf]

That's so f-ing annoying to play against. Takes all the fun out of the game.