GRACE AT THE END [T, 2-25-20]

Teri Moren, the highly successful IU women’s basketball coach, does not huddle with her players at the end of the game, when one play can win or lose the game, because that is when tactics are required, not strategy.

Teri is the strategy coach. She watches the whole game unfold, watching to see if her team is sticking to the game plan, watching what the other coach is doing to counter her game plan, making adjustments accordingly. At the end of the game, she does not need strategy, she needs tactics. She doesn’t need a plan for the whole game, she needs one play, for “the end game.”

That’s where assistant coach Rhet Wiersma enters the picture. He’s been watching the game not with strategy in mind, but tactics. When it comes down to the last minute, and one play will win or lose the game, what will the winning play be? Can they take advantage of # 4, because she always hedges to the right? Or is it # 12, because she is poor with her left hand? Is # 8 slow to respond to a drive on her right side?

At that point in the game, Coach Moren isn’t even in the huddle. She stands outside as the players crowd in around Coach Wiersma as he draws up a play on the white board.

Before that happens, though, Rhet has asked his head coach one thing: Who do you want to have the ball?

Coach Moren told us how this whole scenario unfolded in a game last week. She told Coach Wiersma, “Put the ball in Grace’s hands.” In that particular situation, that was counter-indicated. Grace Berger was not having a good game, even an average game. She couldn’t “hit the side of the barn,” as we said back in my days, when the goal was literally mounted on the barn side. But Teri had a feeling. So Rhet drew up a play where Grace would be free to take the shot that won or lost the game. She made it.

It’s an interesting division of labor. Teri makes the big decisions. Her assistants figure out how to execute them.

I think I have learned from listening to those coaches. Now that I’m at my “end game,” I want the ball in the hands of Grace.

John Robert McFarland