Bing-ball on PED's Topic

Grinnell set a couple other single game scoring records. the entire system is set up to set records. Taylor said this AM the coach told the team at half the goal was to break the record. Taylor admits he was told not to play D, if the press is broken, let them have the layup and cherrypick to Taylor for an 3. Grinnel has used their huge team to foul teams intentionally over and over to increase posessions. anyone who watched also knows other Grinnell players could have had more points, but passed up easy buckets to pass it back to Taylor.
11/21/2012 2:33 PM
I saw just a few of the clips I imagine we have all seen on Sportscenter.  The guy was very small and the defender was way off of him.  I think either the coaches were in cahoots (sp?) or the coaches were in cahoots.  Since he wasn't even coming off screens for those shots and didn't have any assists, I would think that it would have been easy for the opposing coach to tell his team not to allow any more 3's and force him to drive and dish. 
   I imagine the conference will be looking into this and we'll hear about one or more heads rolling within a few weeks. 
11/21/2012 3:41 PM
Grinnell recruits almost exclusively shooting guards.  They substitute a new lineup every minute and shoot a lot of 3's. That's their "System"
11/21/2012 3:54 PM
Posted by tbird9423 on 11/21/2012 3:41:00 PM (view original):
I saw just a few of the clips I imagine we have all seen on Sportscenter.  The guy was very small and the defender was way off of him.  I think either the coaches were in cahoots (sp?) or the coaches were in cahoots.  Since he wasn't even coming off screens for those shots and didn't have any assists, I would think that it would have been easy for the opposing coach to tell his team not to allow any more 3's and force him to drive and dish. 
   I imagine the conference will be looking into this and we'll hear about one or more heads rolling within a few weeks. 
I think it's more of a result of fatigue. That team does hockey style substitutions every 30 or 40 seconds. I think I heard 80 of his points came in the 2nd half.
11/21/2012 4:18 PM
I checked their recent history. Their roster full of guards had a rebounding problem

2011-12   18-5 (14-4 conference)-  average margin 110-98, outrebounded by 11/game
2010-11  18-7 (12-6), margin 102-94, outrebounded by 5/game
2009-10  8-15  (6-10)  margin 96-104, outrebounded by 9/game
2008-09  18-7 (13-3) margin 113-100, outrebounded by 8/game
11/21/2012 8:01 PM
Posted by tianyi7886 on 11/21/2012 12:34:00 PM (view original):
Posted by backboy13 on 11/21/2012 12:06:00 PM (view original):
Posted by stinenavy on 11/21/2012 10:35:00 AM (view original):
Couple notes:

1) That's a truckload of turnovers. 16 for one guy, 15 for the other.
2) The opposing coach must have been cool with the whole thing. Not running down the clock, not triple teaming Taylor, having his own guy put up 70 points.
3) 20 man roster is nuts, compared to 10 for the losing team.
Having known the Grinnell system for years - I'm actually Facebook friends with two of their stars from about four years ago - the other team most likely wasn't cool with it. I can see the "not triple teaming Taylor" as an indication of being cool with it, but would you rather guarantee one guy not score or guarantee that the opposing team will score?

But as for "not running down the clock," that has to do with Grinnell, not his own team. They press and bring in a fresh batch of players every minute or so, so the pace is beyond hectic. They press you and come after you and don't give you time to think. I'd be amazed if they could hold the ball for even 15 seconds without getting the ball stolen, having a foul called, or getting a wide open shot.
I believe the second part. Larson is 34/44 from the field. A bet 20+ of his shots were wide open layups from broken press. 
My cousin is currently enrolled there. He said that's exactly what happened.
11/22/2012 3:30 PM
This article was in the NYT back in 2004:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

''Circus Comes to Knox,'' read a recent headline in the sports section of The Galesburg Register-Mail. ''Fasten your seat belts,'' the article began, ''college basketball's biggest thrill ride is coming to town.''

There was no slew of midgets -- or, in this case, 6-footers -- spilling unaccountably out of a backfiring motorcar; there were no Keystone Kops-like characters chasing each other around the hippodrome; there were no jugglers with a half-dozen balls filling the air -- it only seemed that way.

The Grinnell College Pioneers are the most high-tailing, high-scoring men's basketball team in the N.C.A.A. this season. They start five players and have only five players on the court at any given time, but -- like when they recently played at Knox College -- it often looks as if there are many more. They are scoring 128.9 points a game with about 100 field-goal attempts, including better than 63 3-pointers. Two seasons ago, they set the N.C.A.A. record for most points averaged in a season, at 124.9.

The Pioneers even set scoring records when losing, like the N.C.A.A. record, 149, in a game in 1994 in which Illinois College scored 157 (the most that college ever scored).

But Division III Grinnell has won the Midwest Conference championship three times in the last seven years. This season, Grinnell started 13-0 and was in first place in the conference (Knox was 7-5) before losing back-to-back conference road games last weekend at Carroll College, 134-129, and at Lawrence, 125-111.

Grinnell frequently substitutes in three waves of five -- like hockey shifts. The players press and hound the other team with such ferocity, they race the ball upcourt with such alacrity and fire mostly 3-point shots so swiftly, giving the sense that there are a half-dozen balls in the game, that sometimes it must appear to the opponent as well as the fans that all 16 Grinnell players are playing at once.

At every whistle, or dead ball, after 35 seconds -- the length of a shot clock in men's college basketball -- five new players are amassed at the scorer's table, ready to plunge into the game. Everything moves at such a rapid pace that referees have sometimes had to grab Pioneer players by the jersey as they raced onto the court to check their numbers with the official scorer.

Terry Glasgow, the coach of a conference rival, Monmouth College, has been quoted as saying that Grinnell ''makes a travesty of the game.'' He laughed when asked about that in a recent phone interview. ''Well, it is way out of the tradition,'' he said. ''To beat 'em, you have to adjust to that tempo.''

Tim Heimann, the Knox coach, said: ''They're the most refreshing thing to happen to basketball in my lifetime. I travel to see them play when I have a chance. But I hate playing them. Everybody does.''

Yet, wherever they play, crowds stream in to see the circus. ''We always double our attendance when Grinnell plays here,'' Heimann said. And on the recent night when the Pioneers visited Memorial Gym on the Knox campus, an estimated 800 fans showed up, as opposed to the usual 400.

And they see a show: it's as though the Grinnell players can't wait to get their hands on the ball. And indeed they can't. And the coach doesn't want them to wait, either.

''I guess I'm about the only coach in basketball who screams only one thing at his players: 'Shoot more!' '' said David Arseneault, the tall (6 feet 3 inches), broad, balding, 50-year-old genius of this curious system.

Arseneault, in his 15th season and a three-time Midwest Conference coach of the year, normally sits at the rear of the bench, at a distance from the rush of traffic of his players. ''Some gyms get so hot that the only breeze is from opening and closing of the door at the back of the gym,'' he said. ''So that's where I sit.'' He smiles at this, for there is invariably a rhyme and reason to his scheme, a method to his madness.

He explained the team's style of play. ''We're trying to perfect chaos,'' he said. ''We have fun. It's almost a lost art in sports.''

On offense, Arseneault's theory is that if you can hoist more 3's than the other team -- and hit a decent percentage -- then you can beat them if they shoot mostly 2's. Grinnell players may even let a 2-point shot by the opposition go uncontested, because they don't want the other team to stall or take the 3; that would disrupt their manic flow and puncture their strategy.

There is more to the Pioneers' unorthodox defense. They never run back to their end of the court after the other team snares a defensive rebound, or when it takes the ball out of bounds after a basket. They press every single time, all over the court, double- and triple-teaming the player with the ball, even when the other team has moved the ball into its halfcourt.

That is one reason they substitute so frequently. ''After about a minute of this, you're tired,'' said Steve Wood, a 6-2 senior point guard, the conference's player of the year last season. He is the team's high scorer at 28.1 points a game even though he only averages, like the others, 20 minutes of the 40-minute game.

This style of play was arrived at by trial and error. Mostly, error. The Grinnell teams that Arseneault inherited when he took the job in 1989 were terrible. They had won only four games in the previous three seasons. And they didn't improve appreciably under Arseneault, who played -- conventionally -- at Colby College in Maine.

''Well, we weren't winning, and the morale was awful,'' Arseneault said. ''And then we were playing mostly eight or nine guys. The rest of the players were unhappy not playing. Remember, these are high achievers in about everything they do.''

Grinnell, a liberal arts college with 1,400 students in a small, tree-lined central Iowa town, ranks among the best academic institutions in the country, often considered in the same breath with Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt and Northwestern. ''So the players who weren't playing generally quit the team after a while,'' he added. ''In the last part of the season, we wouldn't have enough players to scrimmage.''

In time, Arseneault thought to solve the problems by using a system that he had seen another coach use when he was coaching at the University of Guelph in Ontario. That coach had used two sets of five players and played them for about four minutes at a time.

''I was impressed with how synchronized the two groups were,'' Arseneault said. ''I thought, if you can get 15 players of at least close to similar ability, you can use them all on a regular, rotating basis, and in shorter spurts.''

He added that a number of his players might not even make other teams in the Midwest Conference, but if they could hustle, shoot 3's adequately, he might have something. And he does.

The fortunes of the Grinnell Pioneers began to change. Happiness began to reign, and games began to be won.

''Because everyone plays, we're more of a team than other teams,'' Wood said. ''There are some negatives. I'm frustrated when I feel I'm going good and then have to come out of a game after 45 seconds. But then, I'll be back in in about another minute and a half.''

Paul Nordlund, a 6-8 sophomore, has realized his dream -- of being a virtual point guard. But then almost all the players play virtual point guard. Most of the players are listed as guard in the program, with a few forwards. There is no center.

''This is the best time I've ever had playing basketball,'' Nordlund said. ''There's great camaraderie because everyone plays, and plays about equal time. And personally, in most instances I'd be posting up inside. But here I can run and gun. It's great.''

Nordlund and his brother, Steve, a senior, are from Madison, Wis. ''I was home over Christmas and saw a Wisconsin-Marquette game,'' he said. ''Two halfcourt offenses. It looked like the game was played in slow-motion. The final score was something like 56-55 -- and that was with overtime.''

The practices are unconventional as well. No scrimmage, just shooting 3-pointers. ''Don't want to wear out their legs for the games,'' Arseneault said.

Indeed, the team tires others. Even referees. In one game, the two officials told the coaches at halftime that that they could not run like that and would be stationed at either end of the court. Another time, Arseneault discovered an official sitting in the shower after the game, so tuckered out he could barely speak.

The game against Knox was typical. The lead changed hands several times in the first half, Knox had some success in breaking the press with full-court baseball passes, and then stalling some in halfcourt to keep Grinnell from running -- which, particularly on days that Grinnell's shots aren't dropping, is how they manage to lose. But in the second half, Knox began to flag under the Grinnell pressure, which is what often happens to Grinnell opponents, and had trouble knowing whom to guard as the Grinnell substitutions came in disconcerting swift surges.

The Pioneers made a run, and then another, with typical pressured steals -- Knox committed 24 turnovers to Grinnell's 7 -- and long-range hoops, and won going away, 98-86. This even though Knox shot 60 percent, on 55 shots, from the field to Grinnell's 43 percent on 74 shots. Grinnell made 17 3-pointers to 6 for Knox. It was the first and only time this season that Grinnell failed to score 100 points.

Afterward, Knox's 5-6 senior point guard, Chris Heimann, the coach's son, his gold home jersey dark with sweat after having played most of the frenetic game, was asked how he felt.

''Exhausted,'' he said.

Then that circus troupe in sneakers packed its bags and left town, setting its sights on its next high-scoring, high-wired game.
11/22/2012 4:08 PM
He broke a record set by Bevo Francis from 1954 when there were no three pointers.

Bevo Francis is 80 now, but even twenty years or so ago he could still shoot the ball amazingly well. I know because when I was a kid he taught me how to shoot better. He lived (and still lives) down the street from a house I spent several years at when I was growing up.

He's also really humble, because when I was a kid I never knew he was incredibly famous at one point in time. I knew his name but he didn't brag so other than his obvious skill shooting the ball all I knew about his basketball playing was he was really tall so that probably made things easier for him.

11/23/2012 3:54 PM
Man, reading that article totally makes me want to go see them play. I think some crappy ACC team needs to run that system. Why wouldn't you go chuck at Virginia Tech or Wake vs sitting on the bench at FSU? They'd sure as hell beat my Tar Heels on a regular basis.
11/23/2012 6:45 PM
Geez, did they have a big circle jerk at the end of the game too?  What an embarrasment to the game of basketball...nothing like self agrandizing whores cheapening D3 basketball
11/24/2012 12:22 AM
Posted by colonels19 on 11/24/2012 12:22:00 AM (view original):
Geez, did they have a big circle jerk at the end of the game too?  What an embarrasment to the game of basketball...nothing like self agrandizing whores cheapening D3 basketball
Lol, are you even serious? Get over yourself, basketball isn't a game that is supposed to be played in 1 particular way, simply because you don't agree with it doesn't mean it's embarrasing to the sport, it just means you have a narrow perspective.
11/24/2012 12:01 PM
The part that annoys me is that they purposefully did this to a team they knew was ******.  Some mediocre ******* jacks up 108 shots against a godawful team and it's a big deal?  How many players could have done what this guy did against a terrible team?  Faith Baptist Bible is like 0-infinity and a perennial doormat.  It takes a special kind of ******* to embarrass a team like that.

I have nothing wrong with Grinnell's style and I certainly don't think it "bastardizes" basketball.  I do, however, think taking advantage of playing bad teams in an effort to inflate records/stats in obnoxious.

Edit: And I'm not a big "make everyone feel good" kind of person.  Competitive sports are played with winning in mind.  But there is a respect for fellow athletes that should be observed.  If I'm better than you, and I know I'm better and you know I'm better, and I have proven that I'm better, what is gained from embarrassing someone?

11/24/2012 12:50 PM (edited)
It actually has nothing to do with inflating records/stats, and has everything to do with getting the program and school exposure. Which in turn could get the school more funding and potentially better facilities, which makes life for students even better at school that is already known for being really good academically. Also it gets the other schools in the conference more publicity.

Also Grinnell was going to murder that school anyway, in this case they murdered them, got on ESPN, got a kid from the other team a bit of pub for his 70 point game, and a week later people are still talking about it. If they won 179-104 and 5 different guys scored 20+ nobody would care or even know that a kid from some D3 school scored 70 points in a game his team lost by 75.
11/24/2012 1:36 PM
"It actually has nothing to do with inflating records/stats, and has everything to do with getting the program and school exposure."

A distinction without a difference, I suppose.  Obviously no one cares about D3 records or stats unless they get exposure, so the two go hand in hand.  And I think your rationale is wrong.  Do you really, deep down, honestly believe that this had anything to do with funding?  Grinnell is an elite academic institution.  It has a pretty massive endowment.  Having some guy score 100+ points isn't going to do anything to Grinnell's reputation, or finances, one way or the other.  

I don't think they HAD to beat them by 70.  Is it absolutely necessary to press and bomb 3s up 60 in the second half?  To me, and it's obviously only my opinion, it's a bullshit move at that point.  If you win a game by 70, then you do.  But I don't like the WAY they did it.  It serves no real purpose other than to embarrass the other team at that point.
11/24/2012 1:57 PM
Posted by colonels19 on 11/24/2012 12:22:00 AM (view original):
Geez, did they have a big circle jerk at the end of the game too?  What an embarrasment to the game of basketball...nothing like self agrandizing whores cheapening D3 basketball
People with this attitude were also against the 3-pt shot and the forward pass.
11/24/2012 3:03 PM
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