All about adjustments

Gene Steinmeyer

It looked so simple in college. I went to Kearney State College, now the University of Nebraska-Kearney, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I was going to be a basketball coach. All I had to figure out was a decent offense and we’d score on every possession. Surely teaching defense couldn’t be that tough. Just stick to your man.

It didn’t take long to figure out it was far from simple. Jerry Hueser was the men’s coach at Kearney when I was a college student who had it all figured out. He had great basketball teams, and eventually I took his coaching class. He had just recruited a high school all-stater, Tom Kropp. Tom had originally agreed to play football at Nebraska. It only took one practice to chase him to Kearney.

He was the school’s best football and basketball player. At Hueser’s class, he told us of an adjustment he was making to his coaching philosophy. Hueser told us want-to-be coaches he would never run a delay game with Kropp on the floor. He was a man of his word. I saw a game where Kropp took a 20-foot jump shot with less than a minute to go with Kearney clinging to a two-point lead. It was an adjustment I would never have considered.

Coaching is often luck. One of my first coaching jobs was the freshmen boys’ basketball coach at Milford, Nebraska. All I did was run the varsity’s offense and defense. Not much of an adjustment to that.

One night, we played the Seward freshmen team. They had run us off the court earlier in the year and it looked more like the same. I tried everything I had been given by the varsity coach. I switched to a zone defense, but it was more of the same as Seward’s lead grew.

The bottom of my zone was too aggressive and the top of the zone was too passive. In anger, I called a timeout. I told the bottom if they wanted to be aggressive, switch to the top and chase the ball. I told the top two in the zone to go rest at the bottom of the zone. As it turned out, it was my first successful adjustment.

We started getting steals, gradually fought back and sent the game to overtime. We won going away. That zone press became a regular in my package of defenses. Good thing I got lucky.

When a coach makes an adjustment, fans hardly ever notice. All they think is the players finally woke up. It’s not that simple. UNK was killing Northwest Missouri State with what looked like an unstoppable post play when the Lopers visited Maryville about a month ago.

Just about the time it looked like the Lopers would bully their way to a big upset, the post offense suddenly slowed down. Was it magic? The Bearcats held their lead. Winning close games has become a staple of this year’s team.

It didn’t just happen. Ben McCollum, the Bearcats’ coach, made an adjustment to the defense that stopped the easy post shots. The coaches don’t pound their chests to announce their success. It’s just part of the deal.

The last regular season game for the Maryville boys’ basketball team provided a perfect example. Nic Kemerling, the Savannah coach, came out in an aggressive zone that slowed down the Maryville offense. Despite less talent, the Savages stayed close through three quarters. Kemerling had made a great adjustment.

Maryville’s offense just couldn’t get on track. Trey Oglesby hit three-pointers to begin each half, but the Spoofhounds just couldn’t put a string of points together. You could see head coach Matt Stoecklein searching for the right combination.

He finally found a combination that worked. I was surprised he even tried that particular combination. His only starter was John Zimmerman. He had Alex Bean, a junior guard; Jake Woods, a sophomore forward; Eli Dowis, a freshman guard; and Spenser Morrison, a junior forward.

That combination scored 12 straight points and Maryville won going away. Not only had Stoecklein found the right combination, but he stuck with them. That doesn’t mean the starters aren’t the right combination. It was the right adjustment at the right time.

Usually, some event sparks an idea for this column. Someone from Nebraska called me to tell me Larry Shoff had died of a heart attack at 68. He had coached at a small school in Nebraska all his life. His girls’ team won the first small school state championship in Nebraska history.

I ran into him in 1983 when I had my state championship team at Wilber-Clatonia. My team was scheduled to play in Diller before Christmas. I knew Larry was a really good coach, but he really was one of the smartest I ever faced.

First, he hired an official that called it really close in the post. I had two all-state post players. Next, he threw a triangle and two defense on my post players. They got frustrated and were quickly in foul trouble. We were in trouble until a kid came off the bench to score 12 points. We only scored 42 points, the fewest we scored all season, but won on our way to a perfect season.

I don’t know why Larry never left southeast Nebraska high school basketball. I do know he really taught me what havoc an adjustment can do to a basketball team.