If Pittsburg State’s Shelby Lopez were any more alone, she would have been on an island. She had plenty of time to measure her three-point shot and make it.
Bam, just like that, first-year Kansas University women’s basketball coach Brandon Schneider called a 30-second timeout and let his players have it. Never mind that the bucket cut KU’s lead to 22 points with 1:42 left in the fourth quarter. The coach had to let them know that sort of inattentive, lackadaisical play doesn’t cut it.
For all but a few minutes of an 80-54 exhibition game victory Sunday in Allen Fieldhouse, the Jayhawks played inspired basketball and had brought out the same from an entertained crowd.
Where had all the long faces gone? The yawns? What happened to the zombies yearning to watch something more interesting, like maybe C-SPAN? No need to send out a search party for joy. It was written all over the players.
“I like it a lot,” sophomore guard Lauren Aldridge said of the fast-paced, attacking style favored by the new coach. “I don’t know if you guys can get the vibe from looking on the floor and on the sideline, but he is a pleasure to play for.”
Oh, it was evident, all right. It was quite the entertaining dress rehearsal. The Jayhawks forever attacked, didn’t look over their shoulders constantly for instruction and generally looked like they knew what they were doing.
“The offense that he has set up is a dream come true for most of us,” Aldridge said. “It’s very open, but there’s structure to it. And you just play with nothing on your shoulders, just go out and get buckets, basically. It’s very fun for us, and I’ve loved every minute of it.”
Asked to describe Schneider’s offense, Aldridge said, “I would say fast and flowing. Everything goes into something. I love how whatever we do, we always know if the ball’s right here, then we can get into something else if the first option doesn’t work out. Fast, we like to push the ball up the floor and get in transition, but transition always ends up in something else, in a different offense. It’s very interesting.”
The options are taught by the coaches, and the decisions are made by the players on the fly. The result: players who feel empowered as never before. That’s a nice formula for growing an athlete’s confidence, and, in turn, performance level.
When a coach trusts players to play aggressively on offense, that coach has the gratitude and respect of the players and gets to use more volume in making demands at the defensive end without players tuning out the voice.
“That’s the cool part about it,” Aldridge said. “Whenever he instills trust in us, then we trust him. So as he’s trusting us on the floor, we’re trusting everything he’s saying to us. So if he’s saying, ‘Lock up on this person,’ what are we going to be doing on the defensive end? He’s trusting us, so we’re going to be doing the same thing for him. It creates this unique chemistry between players and coaches, and it’s fun to be a part of.”
Any coach who freaks out over defensive lapses had better be prepared to allow offensive freedom, or the whole thing becomes too much a grind. It had the feel of a labor of love for the scrappy Jayhawks, too young to make a lot of noise this season, but definitely ready to build a winning foundation. They made 40 percent of their three-pointers in part because staring at the target instead of over one’s shoulder results in more accurate shooting. They limited Pittsburg State to .212 second-half shooting because Schneider let them know what he thought of their lousy second-quarter defense, told them what attitudinal and tactical adjustments they needed to make, and they made them.
That’s what happens when a talented coach inherits coachable young players and sets high expectations for them.