If you blink, you might miss two or three baskets by Rhodes

Tommy Sexton had a problem. He had just finished keeping the official NCAA scorebook for Rhodes College and he had run out of room. “The scorebook only goes up to 139 points,” said Sexton. Rhodes had just scored 142. In a regulation college basketball game. In 40 minutes of play.

Rhodes defeated Birmingham-Southern on Friday night, 142-100.

The official box score required two pages to capture the merry chaos of the proceedings. It should either be framed, burned or celebrated as the dawning of a new day.

Seventeen players saw action for Rhodes. Eight of those players scored in double figures. Twelve of them launched 3-pointers. Indeed, Rhodes hit 20 3-pointers while holding Birmingham-Southern to just one.

“It’s fun,” said Rhodes senior Tyler Gee, who had 21 points, seven rebounds and (get this) 12 steals in just 18 minutes on the court. “It’s a great way to play.”

Unless you are Sexton, who had to write all that down. Or Bill Cochran, the Rhodes golf coach who had to try and keep up with it on the PA.

“The players come in and out so fast, it’s impossible to keep up,” said Cochran. “Usually, I just say `Line change.’ ”

The man behind the madness

Have you noticed the basketball scores at Rhodes this year? If not, you should.

Rhodes beat Wilmington in its opener, 124-113. It then lost a squeaker to East Texas Baptist, 119-116.

Every game is like this. Some are particularly preposterous. Rhodes lost to Dallas, 136-127, in game in which Dallas did not hit a single 3-pointer.

The man behind the madness is Mike DeGeorge, the 47-year-old Wisconsin native and a self-described “pleaser” who is in his seventh year at Rhodes.

The first six years, DeGeorge coached traditional pick-and-roll basketball. He had plenty of success, too, winning the conference championship in 2012-2013 and the regular-season championship two years ago.

But all along, DeGeorge was thinking about doing something different, about deploying the crazed, breakneck style that was developed by coach Dave Arsenault at Grinnell College in Iowa.

DeGeorge worked as recruiting coordinator at Grinnell in 1999-2000. He saw how ruthlessly effective the system could be.

“In the 30 years before he started running it, they won 30 percent of their games,” DeGeorge said. “Since he started running it 22 years ago, he’s won 60 percent of his games and five conference championships.”

So DeGeorge was tempted to unleash it as soon as he arrived at Rhodes. But he decided it was wise to wait.

“I wanted to get credibility in the community as a coach and as a person, before I went to it,” he said. “I didn’t want to come in and have people immediately start saying, ‘This guy is nuts.’ ”

DeGeorge won plenty of games as he waited. But he knew there was a limit on what the team could accomplish simply because of the sort of players it could recruit.

“One of the differences in recruiting here as compared to the Midwest is in the South, that 6-7, 230-pound kid is not a power forward, he’s a tight end,” DeGeorge said. “For us to be nationally competitive, we just haven’t been able to recruit that kind of kid. We have skilled guards. We have a lot of depth. So the system really fits Rhodes at a lot of levels.

“The idea behind this is simple. The teams that have gone to this system in the past — Grinnell, Greenville College in Illinois, Redlands in the early-to-mid 2000s — all of them before they went to it, they were lower division teams, and it elevated them. My goal is to take a team that has been an upper-level team in its conference and see if it can elevate it to a nationally-competitive program.”

So this became the year. DeGeorge invited the players to his house before the season began and informed them of the change. They would play three groups of five players, swapping them in and out every 30 seconds. They would press like (strategic) maniacs. The would only shoot layups or 3s. They would do this, even though it would be discouraging at times, and even though the game would sometimes look like a layup drill for the other team.

“There was a lot of introspection that went into this,” DeGeorge said. “I know people who have tried it, but then they get scared about giving up so many layups, people are asking them why they give up so many layups. My Dad asked us why were giving up so many layups! That’s how it goes. But the encouraging thing is that even though we haven’t been very good at it yet, we’ve been in every single game. And there honestly hasn’t been any questioning of it from the kids.”

So never mind that Rhodes had lost five straight heading into Friday’s game against Birmingham-Southern, the defending conference champion. Spirits were high.

“Wait until you see this,” said Eddie Dowdy, who works in campus safety at Rhodes basketball games. “I told the officials, they better stretch or they’re going to pull a muscle tonight.”

Rhodes introduced its five starters: Brennan Sullivan, Andrew Lowrie, J.J. Weir, Bryce Berry and Tyler Gee. By 18:43, those starters had all been swapped out of the game. There was another mass substitution at 17:50. And another at 16:10. And another at 15:23. And another at 14:33. And another at 14:00.

“Line change by Rhodes!” Cochran, the PA guy, kept saying.

The fans were variously stunned or numbed or thrilled.

“I started out clapping but I had to stop a while ago,” said Rob Van Peursem, sitting in the stands. “My hands were starting to hurt.”

The halftime score was 65-56, Rhodes. Birmingham-Southern simply couldn’t keep up.

“People absolutely hate playing against it,” said DeGeorge. “It’s awful to play against. You throw out everything you do in practice, you put together a game plan that goes against everything you’ve learned all year. You can try to simulate the speed, but you can’t really do it. We force opponents to play the way we play.”

And yet, it’s still an experiment. DeGeorge is upfront about this too. It’s not something Rhodes would abandon this year, certainly. To deploy the system effectively, you have to be all in. DeGeorge believes the team will get better and better at this style of basketball. He believes Rhodes will become nationally relevant playing this way.

But is he going to stake his entire career on the system? No, he is not. “What I told my athletic director was that, `I have four kids, this job is important to me and I love it. This is the way I think we should play. But if it gets to a stage where you don’t think it’s the right thing for us, you’ve just got to tell me because I can coach conventionally and have success.’ This is something I’ve been wanting to do, but it’s not worth it to me to lose my job over it.”

So keep watching, as those eye-popping scores stack up. Or better, yet, go catch a game.

“I’m telling you, it’s wild,” said Dowdy, the campus safety officer. “It’s like nothing you have ever seen.”