St. Louis ? When Mike Anderson arrived on the UAB campus two years ago, everyone on the men’s basketball roster quickly learned their new head coach had come from the University of Arkansas.
After Anderson’s first couple of practices, they thought he might be from the University of Torture.
“After the first couple of days of conditioning,” fifth-year senior guard Mo Finley said, “you re-evaluated and asked if you really want to play basketball or not.”
Sidney Ball, another Blazers’ veteran, put it this way: “At first I thought, ‘This guy’s crazy.'”
Anderson was pushing the bleachers back and running longer suicide drills than the Blazers ever had known. He had them racing up and down the floor carrying medicine balls. And he had them lugging misshapen balls filled with water.
Thad Allender/Journal-World PhotoNone of this was innovative. All were tactics used by Razorbacks coach Nolan Richardson. Anderson, who was a player and assistant coach under Richardson for nearly two decades, merely brought them to Birmingham, Ala.
In fact, the UAB team that Kansas University will face tonight in the NCAA Sweet 16 in the Edward Jones Dome is a clone of those Arkansas teams that put Richardson on the map in the 1980s and 90s.
Richardson, currently unemployed, was even on the UAB bench during Thursday’s open practice session, wearing Blazers’ warm-up togs.
Richardson gained national prominence by using his familiar all-out style and now UAB, in the wake of last Sunday’s stunning disposal of No. 1 seed Kentucky, also is making waves.
Yet the buzz-saw brand of basketball hasn’t really caught on. Practitioners are rare, and Anderson isn’t sure why.
“When you go to it, you have to commit to it,” Anderson said, “and maybe a lot of people don’t want to do that.”
It’s a style suitable for undersized overachievers, and plenty of those teams exist on the mid-major level. Still, overachievers are much more difficult to find than undersized basketball players.
“You want people with character,” Anderson said. “You want people that are going to work, that will do whatever it takes to win.”
It took that kind of person, Anderson noted, because his style allowed less time for actual game coaching.
“They have to make decisions at a rapid pace,” he said. “Believe me, it’s harder to coach that way. It’s hard because you are entrusting those kids to make decisions.”
Thus, during the offseason, the Blazers arise before classes begin and put their noses directly onto the grindstone.
“We get up and we run,” Anderson said. “I am not a track coach, so I don’t go to the track and run five miles. We may run a mile or so, but everything is geared toward the gym.”
Once in the gym, out comes the medicine ball.
“You get that 15- to 18-pound ball,” he said, “and you are going up and down the floor pushing at full speed and then you get that regular ball and it’s zip, zip, zip. It works for the psyche, I guess.”
The farther the Blazers go in the NCAA Tournament, the more likely other coaches will emulate Anderson’s determined effort to maintain Richardson-style basketball as a viable alternative to the standard halfcourt game.
“They gave us a Cinderella slipper,” Anderson said. “But I think we are a good basketball team. I really do.”
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