By Patrick Coleman
D3sports.com
It's been loved and hated, deified and deried, and it's been adopted, adapted and modified in all sorts of ways.
The Grinnell System, or more simply, The System, has been called all manner of things over the decades, some of them unprintable. Terry Glasgow, long-ago coach at Grinnell's conference rival Monmouth, famously described it as "five mice coming out of a shoebox." Many people don't think it even qualifies as basketball.
Coverage of The System
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But when Dave Arseneault Sr. came to Grinnell in 1989, inheriting a program with a quarter-century of consecutive seasons at .500 or less, he was looking for a way to make the program competitive, even if it required going to some extremes. And thus was born The System.
This system has very defined goals for Grinnell:
- 100 shots per game
- 50 3-point attempts per game
- 32 turnovers forced
- A shot differential of plus-30
- An offensive rebounding percentage of 33%
And while the Pioneers haven't made it to the NCAA Tournament very often since starting The System, they have finished with a winning record 23 times and finished .500 once in the 32 seasons since adopting it. But this year, under Dave Aresenault Jr., who played for his dad at Grinnell and also coached in the G-League before returning to Grinnell, the Pioneers have gone 20-7 and have made the NCAA Tournament.
But they also don't meet those goals all that often.
"When you phrase it like that, with those statistics, it doesn't even sound like the Grinnell System at all, you know?"
"This year it's been different," said the younger Arseneault on Hoopsville earlier this week. "We've taken probably a few less three-point shots. We've actually shot the ball a little bit worse from the three-point line.
"I also just think how the game has changed and evolved over the last few years and there are more and more teams taking three-point shots, which means they also know how to defend teams taking three-point shots, and we're a little less different on that front."
Hear the whole story in this interview from Sunday's Hoopsville.