Adjacent News

Oh, goodness gracious, I do hope I am not intruding by bringing this up during such a peaceful Thursday morning. If anyone is in the middle of a very important spreadsheet or simply trying to enjoy a quiet moment with their lukewarm cup of decaf, please, by all means, ignore this entire column. I would hate to be a bother, truly. It is just that, well, looking ahead at the upcoming slate of basketball fixtures for our Oral Roberts Golden Eagles, I had the tiniest, most insignificant thought about our offensive spacing. Of course, modern analytics gentlemen with their bright charts and their very loud keyboards probably know infinitely more than a quiet person who spends his afternoons apologizing to coat racks, so please feel free to discard every word that follows. I certainly do not wish to step on any toes or imply that anyone's shooting form is personally offensive to higher powers, though sometimes a missed three-pointer does feel like a tiny, polite tap on the shoulder from the cosmos, doesn't it? Oh dear, I am already saying too much. Let us just take a collective, deep breath and cough softly into our cupped hands. Nobody needs to change a thing on my account. It is just that when we run our high-pick-and-roll sets, perhaps—and I say this with the utmost hesitation, entirely subject to revision if it causes a single furrowed brow in the row behind the press table—we might consider setting our screens with just a hair more gentleness? Not that our current physical demeanor is aggressive, heaven forbid! Our young men are absolute angels, every single one of them, and I would feel simply awful if they thought I was criticizing their defensive slide-steps. It is only that when a possession breaks down and we force a contested jumper late in the shot clock, one worries slightly about the spiritual ledger, if you take my meaning. Not that anyone keeps a ledger, of course. That would be terribly forward of me to suggest. But as we look toward the horizon of our schedule, sitting here on this lovely, uneventful Thursday with no game to actually analyze, one cannot help but wonder if our collective posture might benefit from a touch more Christian forbearance on the wings. Or perhaps not. Perhaps I am entirely mistaken and our current defensive rotations are a testament to grace itself. If so, I sincerely apologize to the coaching staff, the athletic director, the referees, and anyone who might happen to read this while waiting for the elevator. Please disregard my nervous jitteriness. I am just a guest in this arena, after all, and I would hate to make anyone feel the least bit uncomfortable.