Tigers make juco-level scheme fly

Daniel A. Anderson, Mct

UCLA's Darren Collison, left, and Kevin Love couldn't stop Memphis' Derrick Rose in the second half Saturday.

Memphis' frenetic offense, with its multiple attack points and passing options, follows a model shared by a junior college coach.

By PATRICK REUSSE, Star Tribune

Last update: April 7, 2008 - 5:44 PM

SAN ANTONIO — John Calipari turned Massachusetts into a short-term basketball power. He coached three seasons in the NBA with the New Jersey Nets. He worked for Larry Brown at Kansas in the 1980s, and sat next to Brown as an assistant with the Philadelphia 76ers during the 1999-2000 season.

Yet, he credits the offense that his Memphis team will display tonight in the national championship game against Kansas to Vance Walberg, a junior college coach at the time the pair met.

"He came to watch us practice and he stayed three days," Calipari said. "On the second day, I took him to dinner and said, 'Tell me what you guys do.' "

Walberg was reluctant, since he figured Calipari wouldn't run the offense anyway. After cajoling, Walberg drew some X's and O's.

"What I loved about it was the spacing," Calipari said. "I had a player, Antonio Burks, that needed space. ... For a year or two, we did it only in spots.

"Now, we have the players to run it full-time. Everyone knows they have the ability to take the ball to the basket. The biggest thing, whenever they drive, they know where everybody is."

Walberg started the offense a decade ago at Clovis West High School in California. His record was 292-29. He took the offense to Fresno City College, where he was 133-11.

Walberg then went to Pepperdine, where he resigned this winter in the midst of his second season because of "personal family matters." The Waves were 6-12 at the time.

Walberg dubbed his offensive plan as "AASAA" -- Attack Attack Skip Attack Attack.

That's what was seen from Memphis on Saturday, as its perimeter players destroyed UCLA's vaunted defense by attacking the lane, either to hit runners or to make passes to open teammates.

The Tigers create the space for those attacks by setting up their wing players almost on the sideline. As Derrick Rose, Chris Douglas-Roberts or Antonio Anderson goes on the attack, the other players read that and go to areas where the defense should be vulnerable.

Calipari refers to the rapid movement and automatic reads as "Princeton on steroids."

Kansas' Bill Self was asked about the Memphis offense and said: "Some serious thought has gone into this. Driving in straight lines. Getting the ball to certain areas of the floor to drive and create penetrate-and-pitch opportunities. And, they are great at creating isolations."

Most of those were run on Saturday by Rose or Douglas-Roberts, the Tigers' two stars who combined for 53 points.

Rose received the greatest share of the publicity after that game, but CDR (as the Memphis fans call him) was equally unstoppable.

"We call him George Gervin, because he's a skinny guy from Detroit, just like Gervin," center Joey Dorsey said. "And, Chris plays that same slow old man's game that George played, never in a hurry, but he carves you up."

Self was a proponent of a power high-low attack when he was in the Big Ten at Illinois and early in his five seasons at Kansas. Calipari said Sunday that the Jayhawks have opened up the court to make more room for their drivers.

"High-low worked pretty good for us until Wayne [Simien] hurt his thumb [in 2004-05], and we didn't have any low-post scoring," Self said. "So, we kept tweaking, trying to find some things.

"You know, if they play us this way, how are we going to attack?

"We're not totally throwing away the power game, but right now, because of the athletes we have, you want them to be able to use their ability to get in the [lane].

"The hardest thing in my opinion to guard is the ball. If it's so hard, then we might as well take advantage of it."

When you get this many outstanding perimeter players on two teams that are always thinking attack, the group wanting to win a national title better plan on scoring in the 80s.

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