It looks so easy from the stands ...
by: Carol Harrison
There's a vast difference between making a suggestion and a decision, but that doesn't stop most fans from vocally sharing their recommendations, particularly with the benefit of hindsight.
Tennessee's Pat Summitt and North Dakota State's Amy Ruley have to make split-second decisions, with games and even careers on the line, and bench jockeys might not find it so easy to make the call with the crowd screaming and the players looking to them for last-second guidance. Summitt and Ruley have seven NCAA championships and 995 wins between them, so they've probably been there and done that in almost every situation. So we asked them about this one:
Your team is on defense with a one-point lead and one time out remaining. Your foe scores a two-point hoop with :06 on the clock. Both teams have been in straight player-to-player defense with token pressure on the guard bringing it up the court. What do you do?
If you opted for a time out to set up a play, think again. You've just burned the only one you had, 94 feet from the hoop, in a situation that you could and should have been drilling on in the weeks leading up to post season play. And if you called it to stop the clock, give yourself the Boner-of-the-Year award because the clock stops after a score in the final minute of college play.
"If you're a transition team, it's to your advantage to bring the ball in immediately from the endline and not give the other team a chance to set up," says Ruley, the 40- year-old chief of the Bison program that has won four Division II national championships. "We have our go-to player predetermined -- our best scorer and free throw percentage shooter -- and our inbounder is looking to connect on one of two looks to get the ball inbounds and up the court."
Ruley knows she may catch the other team celebrating what may be the winning shot, and she isn't afraid to leave the outcome of the game in her point guard's hands.
"It's a player's game, and sometimes the coaches take things over and forget that the players are capable of reading advantages and disadvantages on their own. We like to have time outs at the end of a game for insurance. If there's a problem with the inbounds, if there's a recovery of a loose ball, or if we're not as organized as we'd like, we'll take a time out. But I worry about paralysis through analysis. I like to keep it simple and have my inbounder know to look for this first, then this. If that's not there, she has the option of a time out."
The same with her point guard. "In the past, my point guards have been pretty smart. I give them some room, and they know to look to our best post player coming to the ball from a screen on the weak side."
Ruley's teams haven't been in many close games, which is one reason North Dakota State is Division II's Team of the '90s. The reverse is true for Summitt's Lady Volunteers, who have survived two overtime wins and a stressful 64-60 victory over Alabama in the championship game of the southeastern Conference Tournament already this year.
If she can trust her team to react immediately and get it up to or past half-court, Summitt prefers to use her time out there. But she stresses that the trust is earned through game experience and practice performance.
"More times than not (in our scenario), I will call a time out, and in most situations, I'd prefer to take the time out at half court. But in pressure situations with this year's team, I'd probably take the time out right away. The time out gives me an opportunity to reassure everyone, settle them down, let them know that we're OK. And it gives me an opportunity to reiterate exactly what we're going to do."
Summitt's first hope would be for her opponent to take the time out, thereby giving the Lady Vols the best of both worlds: a chance to settle down free of charge, and still have a time out of their own to spend past half-court.
"It's always a concern having to inbound four (receivers) against five (defenders)," she says of the task facing the inbounder coming out of a time out. "And your first decision when you're there is whether you're going to attack the basket immediately (with a long pass), or whether you're going to get it in and then attack. I like to attack immediately.
"Every day from here on out, we do situations. If it's man-to-man, screen at this angle. If it's zone, screen here. They need something they can do against whatever they see."
"We have a full court situation to go to at the end of a game, and at the end of the year we do it almost daily," says Summitt, the 1995 Converse Coach of the Year who has led her team into the Final Four 12 times in her 21 years at Knoxville. "We've had a lot of practice games in the last month, and that helps, because a coach's decision depends on the ability your team has demonstrated in previous games in close situations."
So what's your decision? The ball has just gone through the hoop, you're down by one, the fans are screaming, the alumni are muttering and the point guard is looking at you. Do you call the time out? Or trust your players to win the game for you?
Regardless of what you decide, one thing's for sure: If it doesn't work, the second-guessers in the stands will know exactly what you should have done.
