NCAA Basketball Tournament: Coaches Overcoaching

Some NCAA basketball tournament coaches should wear uniforms, considering how much they run around on the sidelines.

The college basketball tournament should focus on the young players rather than the coaches, but all too often, that's now how it works out. This doesn't mean that these particular coaches are egoistical, or showboats. They're just sort of following the trend.

A case in point, as this spring's NCAA tournament rolls along, is Tom Izzo from my home state Michigan State Spartans. He acts like a sort of madman on the sidelines, always shouting directions, always in the referees' ears and in the players' faces. Oddly enough, he has brought the MSU program to a really high level, but sometimes he just gets overly geeked up. When Michigan State faced North Carolina in last year's NCAA basketball finals, Izzo gave some sort of football-type speech, and the overly hyped players went over the edge. They were so over-emotional that they could barely bring the ball up the floor, which led to them falling behind by an embarrassing margin of 50-17 at one point.

Or, check out Kentucky's John Calipari. He's a top echelon coach, with at least 30 wins during each the past five seasons. But in the first halves of games, when teams play defense in front of their home benches, Calipari is constantly up, waving his arms around as though he's a windmill on steroids, pointing here and there, shouting out directions.

Any basketball tournament fan who pays attention will see occasions when a defender is distracted by his hyperactive coach and an opponent dribbles right around him.

At the same time, what's with all of these timeouts? Why do coaches, at the end of games, call timeouts to set up plays? The defense generally gets an advantage from this, not the team with the ball.

Is all of this activity necessary? I'm thinking back to the all-time legend, UCLA's John Wooden, who generally would sit calmly on the bench with a game program rolled in his hand. In the NBA, the Lakers' Phil Jackson and to a lesser-known extent, Utah's Jerry Sloan, are top-notch coaches who seem to do just fine while generally staying in their seats. Lenny Wilkins always had a similar demeanor. The Celtics' legendary Red Auerbach was more feisty, but he reaped all of his success with seven basic plans.

Consider this: No less a hothead than Bobby Knight did not constantly roam the sidelines during games. He might jump up and explode at a referee, or a player, but when we think back, he was not on his feet for every ball possession, shouting and pointing.

Coach Knight, and the others aforementioned, did the vast bulk of their coaches during practices. That's how it should be. Nowadays, too many coaches do too much coaching during the games.

SOURCES

Personal observation (basketball fan for 45 years and counting)