College basketball historian or not, if you appreciate the game at any level, it will be worth your time to watch the start of the fast-approaching season to see how they have tweaked the rules for the start of the 2015-16 season.
It’s a housekeeping thing they do to the game from time to time, in an effort to keep the game from being sidetracked. Over the decades, they have widened the key, instituted a shot clock, made long-range shots worth three points, all to keep the game pointed in the right direction. Some of the decisions have curious narratives, in retrospect.
Back in the day, say, 50 years ago, coaches all had their individual approaches to the game, but the vast majority of them tended to get their teams ready for the season in similar fashions.
“We had a running program we instituted,” said former University of Hawaii at Hilo basketball coach Jimmy Yagi, watching the Vulcans’ squad in one of its first practices of the new season. “We would take them out on the track and they would have target times they had to hit. Then we would put them in groups with target times and if you didn’t hit the target, the whole group would have to go again.
“You would find out who had the best work ethic,” he said, “you got an idea of what they had inside, what kind of toughness.”
The things about it was, despite all the running college coaches put their teams through in the preseason, before the age of high tech equipment, the games were too often excruciatingly slow. They ran and ran to get ready and then the games started and they walked a lot and stood around. Not everyone, but enough coaches — North Carolina’s influential Dean Smith being the leader — employed the tactic to bring about rules changes for being closely guarded for five seconds, which only resulted in teach more comprehensive passing skills. Eventually, they had to bring in a shot clock to make everyone play more basketball in the games.
These days, teams don’t run to condition nearly as much, with a universe of new strength and conditioning programs, but third-year Vulcans coach GE Coleman still has bit of old school in him. Since Labor Day, his players have had a running program of their own, including beach workouts, which is a part of that new universe of conditioning.
Coleman is a little like Yagi in another way, too. Both of them like to coach teams that get up and down the floor and make defenses chase them. The coach is encouraged that the players collected since the end of last season will help in that regard.
“Our talent and depth is the best we’ve had,” Coleman said after a weekend practice, “but that being said, we lost a guy (6-8 potential all-conference first teamer Tre Johnson, who signed an international pro contract), that we simply can’t replace.”
What he has instead, Coleman thinks, is a team with more flexibility that last year’s 12-14 group that had some encouraging efforts against the top teams in the conference, yet couldn’t sustain the performances on the road.
But here comes the NCAA again, making a rules change that could alter the basic functionality of the game every bit as much as the shot clock and the 3-point shot did in their own way.
The point of emphasis this season is going to be on what you might call hands-free basketball, that is, you can no longer play defense with your hands, especially away from the basket. Freedom of movement is a catch phrase you will hear a lot once the season begins.
Whether this is one of those rules that gets called immediately in November and December and is forgotten by March, we will have to wait and see, but a smaller, more versatile roster might weigh in Coleman’s favor.
Coleman felt he brought in three players last year who made significant impacts, but Johnson was one of those and he cast shadows over the others. This season, the coach feels five new players will produce, including some ball-handling guards and some long range shooting talent.
A team that can be capable of moving the ball around without worrying about being grabbed and wrestled, employing an up-and-down the floor?
Aided by the promise of more offensive freedom, it could be the best new way to play an old game.
Contact Bart with comments and ideas at barttribuneherald.com
