Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
It’s a schoolyard play that often finds its way into varsity action. You’ll even see it at the collegiate level. You’re about to fly out of bounds, and instead, you turn and drill the defender closest to you with the ball, bouncing it off his or her leg and retaining possession. It’s a classic play.
There are other classics I’ve seen over the years.
One night in a Riverton varsity girls game I watched former Lady Wolverine great LeAnn Brown bounce the ball off the back of defender, step inbounds, grab it and scored on an inbounds play. It was magical.
You see that play once in a while since then, but LeAnn was the first around here.
Another classic takes two players and a bit of naivety on behalf of the defense. Like the other plays mentioned here, it always takes place under your basket.
The official hands the ball to a player out of bounds on one side of the basket. As the count begins, a second player walks toward the one out of bounds and says, “No, coach said I’m supposed to take it out.”
The player keeps walking. Kids will usually step aside to let the approaching player by, when they do, the player with the ball throws it inbounds and the walking player has an easy shot.
It confuses the kids on defense, but it infuriates the coach whose team was just tricked. Yep, we used to run it at team camp, and it always worked once. Once.
Another staple of team camp basketball was the “barking dog.” We ran it in practice and a few times at team camps in Douglas, Casper, or at Mesa State in Grand Junction. It always brought a laugh, and occasionally a basket.
With the ball set to throw in from under your basket, the most uninhibited player on your team drops to his hands and knees on the opposite side, outside the three-point line, and starts barking like a dog. When the defense turns to look, the ball goes inbounds to a wide-open player. Yes, it was fun during summer play.
In my final years, and with many current coaches today, the summer league was much more fun than the regular season. You get to know your team, have a little fun, play a few games, and there aren’t any parents or administrators to interfere and ruin things. Summer is often the only reward a coach gets these days.
The prime example of the “barking dog” didn’t come in summer. It came in one of the state’s most heated rivalries. There are many rivalry games, Gillette / Sheridan, Riverton / Lander, East / Central, Shoshoni / Wind River, and everyone on the east side of the state when they play Pine Bluffs.
This one was a battle in Oil City. It wasn’t the Mustang and Trojan varsity, but a boy’s junior varsity game when the “barking dog” decided the outcome.
Tim Nolan was a longtime coach at Greybull High School. I always enjoyed playing his teams. They were defensive demons, playing an especially tight style of man-to-man defense that had you putting a little extra mustard on screens and learning to pass back door since they overplayed so hard at every position.
When you played a team that Tim coached, it was going to be a low-scoring affair. We went into triple overtime at Greybull one night before finally pulling away in the third extra period for a four-point win. In the first two overtimes, we won the tip, missed the initial shot, and watched as the Buffs stalled for the last shot. Thankfully, they missed the first, and Shane Palmer swatted the second one into the upper deck as the buzzer sounded to end the second overtime.
We scored after the opening tip in the third, and that proved to be the difference.
A Tim Nolan team would do anything to win, especially defensively.
Tim left Greybull and moved to Casper, where he started coaching at Kelly Walsh.
In 1994, the Natrona County and Kelly Walsh junior varsities were in a tight, low-scoring defensive game, just like you’d expect from Tim.
With just a couple of seconds remaining in the game, the Trojans had the ball under their basket, trailing the Mustangs by a single point.
After a timeout, Kelly Walsh took the floor. Jason Holt, a player for the Trojans, ran to the far three-point circle opposite the ball. Holt dropped on all fours, started barking, and the rest is history.
The Trojans scored, won the game by a single point, and bedlam ensued.
That wasn’t the end of the story. The game was videotaped on an old-style VHS camera. Someone sent it to ESPN to be considered for play of the day.
In those days, when ESPN was just about sports, and not the ridiculous, politically correct, largely unwatchable network it is today, they looked for plays like the “barking dog.” It made the play of the day, going nationwide.
One of Jay Leno’s producers saw the ESPN broadcast and contacted both Holt and Nolan. The player and coach went to Hollywood, met Leno, and appeared on the Tonight Show. The “barking dog” was a big hit at home, on ESPN, and finally a popular segment on NBC’s Tonight Show, then the top-ranked late-night show on television.
It’s the end of the winter season. Congratulations to both the Lander Tigers and Riverton Wolverines swim teams. The Tiger boys did it again, 30 in a row. Riverton emerged as a power in Class 4-A, finishing just out of the trophies.
Wrestling begins and ends tomorrow with the state finals in Casper. Good luck to all the young men and women in competition.
By Saturday afternoon, the hoop dreams of the small school seniors will either become stories of “back in the day” or one more week of practice for a shot at the brass ring of a state title. Enjoy it either way.
An errant bounce, a deliberate subterfuge, or a downright ridiculous act like barking on your all fours can give you an advantage.
But it only works once.