Why Jim Larranaga might surprise us again this year in the NCAA tournament

I tend to think of Jim Larranaga as an unorthodox head coach, making moves that sometimes leaves you scratching your head but in the end produces results. This season has already been living proof of how good this team can be when they fully buy into his game plan philosophy. And we saw how great of a game coach he can be in 2006 during the Final Four run when he has a balanced, versatile group of players.  I believe he has a squad like that again this year and it allows him to take high-risk high-reward chances like he did five years.  In the Patriots' last NCAA tournament game in 2008 it was a different story. They relied heavily on the play of Will Thomas and Folarin Campbell and had spotty production from the rest of the group both on offense and defense.  Perhaps the difference in those two teams is the amount of trust Larranaga had in each one and how it effected his coaching decisions.  

An article today from Yahoo Sports reminds us of the gutsy call Coach L made in that 2006 Elite Eight game versus UConn:

The design of the greatest NCAA Tournament upset ever came not in frantic scribbles on a clipboard and furious offensive calls but rather in the beautiful simplicity of the same play perfectly run over and over and over again.

Larranaga calls this play “three” and drawn out on paper it must look so confusing with its array of options: Curls across the top, passes down to the two big men below, a drive and layup underneath. But as the mighty Connecticut Huskies lunged at George Mason that afternoon in 2006, Larranaga did something few coaches would have the stomach to try. He shouted “run three,” with about 10:00 left in the game and then after watching his players score a basket, he never took it off for the rest of regulation and all over overtime until the Mason players were dancing on the floor, trimming the nets and heading to a Final Four that UConn, the No. 1 seed, seemed to treat as a birthright.

It is a brilliant example of coaching. Or rather, not over-coaching, of not letting ego complicate something that is working well. Too many other men in his place would have been signaling for substitutes, holding up fingers, bellowing anything simply tolook as if they were coaching harder than they ever had in their life. Larranaga resisted this temptation in the biggest game he ever coached. In addition to running the same play the last 25 times George Mason took the ball down the court, he never made a substitution in that time, either.

Yes your reading that correctly, George Mason ran the same play with the same five players for their last 25 possessions against UConn in that game. I think this a perfect example of Coach L getting the most out of a team he had built to near perfection when it comes to playing as a 'team'.  We don't know if he can get the same results as from this year's team as he did that season, it's very unlikely, but it just goes to show how good this team can be if they believe in their coach like the players did in 2006.

I'm not trying to complain this year's team to the 2006 one, I'm just saying this team might instill the confidence in Coach L that that team did during the post season.  We may see some more interesting coaching moves that pay off like that way that one did against UConn.  Larranaga has already said they will be tweaking their game plan a bit so don't be surprised if we see some new things on Friday. I have a feeling Larranaga has got a few more tricks up his sleeve this go around.