Sling Shift

Three! Press. Steal. Sprint. Three! Press. Steal. Screen. Three!

Whistle. Buzzer. Squeak. Shout. Five guys out. Five guys in.

Three! Press. Steal. Long pass. Three! Press. Loose ball. Thump. Crash. Three!

That’s one minute.

There are five remaining in the greatest show in college basketball, the scoreboard creaks, the exhausted nets twitch, the tiny gym gasps.

The scoreboard operator has swollen fingertips that appear to be bleeding. The scorekeeper is heavy-lidded and sweating.

The sideline waste cans are overflowing with water cups. The floor beneath the benches is littered with wet towels.

At one point the referees suddenly call timeout because, well, there are players rolling around the floor and players running off the bench and balls flying from rim to rim and, c’mon, can everybody just please stop?

Redlands smiles. Redlands shrugs. Redlands wins.

Then it doesn’t. Then it does. Up by five. Up by one. Down by one. Up by two. All in the time it takes you to read this sentence.

Press. Steal. Three! Clank. Rebound. Darn. Drop my pen. Lean down. Miss two baskets. Forget it.

Your humble servant lacked the stamina and the supplies to properly record the final moments of Redlands’ Division III showdown at Occidental on Wednesday, which makes me pretty much like the Occidental guard who was hyperventilating.

The last thing I remember is that Redlands missed four three-point attempts in the final dozen seconds -- or something completely alien like that -- and lost.

While the soul of college athletics continued to win.

The final score was Occidental 125, Redlands 121, notable in that it was Redlands’ third lowest scoring total of the year.

While along-for-the-ride Occidental scored more than in its previous two games combined.

“Yeah,” Redlands guard Andrew Alhadeff says with a sigh. “What we do is kind of nuts.”

On a madness march, they are, these 21 nonscholarship kids who buy their own shoes and sweats to play for this tiny school at the edge of the desert.

The Redlands Bulldogs are on a pace to become the highest-scoring team in the history of all divisions of NCAA basketball, averaging 139 points a game.

Without a star or even an official starting lineup.

They scored 172 points this season against La Sierra. They also gave up 181 in a loss to NAIA Cal Baptist. Another time, they attempted 106 three-pointers -- nearly three per minute.

Yet only one of their players is averaging more than 15 points, and none ever plays more than half the game.

They are the epitome of fastbreak basketball, long passes and constant sprinting.

Yet of their 1,687 shots, only three have been dunks.

They set up their runs with a constant full-court, trapping, in-your-face defense.

Yet often they will intentionally allow uncontested layups.

No team in the country makes so many decisions while constantly on the run.

Yet in some games, Coach Gary Smith never even calls timeout.

The players play in 45-second shifts, five at a time, with assistant Gordon Hunt so involved in substitutions that he never watches the game.

Asked if his basketball philosophy has been influenced by the Celtics, Boston native Smith smiles.

“No,” he says, “the Bruins.”

The fans are kept in 40-minute stitches, howling and fuming and never quite believing.

After the system was instituted three years ago, a couple of longtime locals were so outraged by the apparent lack of fundamentals that they refused to make the one-mile drive to the games.

They were the parents of assistant coach Tim Watkins.

“My dad said he would not come until he saw us defend a layup,” says Watkins, smiling. “But now he comes.”

Now they all come, buoyed by a team that won nine of its first 11 games before losing its last four, including Saturday night’s 143-127 loss to La Verne.

Currier Gymnasium is usually filled, 1,000 or so strong, everyone excited about a team that hasn’t won a conference title in 15 years.

Every time a Bulldog hits a bomb, somebody pastes a “Three” sign on the wall, the way Randy Johnson fans record his strikeouts, only with a lot more stationary.

Nobody seems to care that, during one road game last year, home fans put up a “Brick” sign after every wild Bulldog miss.

Imagine the Loyola Marymount teams of the early 1990s, and double that.

Take Arkansas’ “40 Minutes of Hell,” and boil it.

The Runnin’ Incredibles.

Says Smith: “In this offense, there are no bad shots.”

Says Watkins: “Well, maybe the 15-foot jumper, that’s a bad shot.”

Says Smith: “Yeah. We want three-pointers or layups.”

Says Watkins: “It’s not about percentage, it’s about volume.”

Let’s see if we have this straight.

A college coach carries a roster with eight more players than the average team, plays everybody, doesn’t think there’s a bad shot, doesn’t penalize anyone for giving up a layup, doesn’t call timeout

Smith, who has coached 34 years at Redlands with the heart of a Las Vegas showman and the appearance of a geography teacher, smiles.

“Tenure,” he says.

*

The philosophy, developed by David Arseneault at Grinnell (Iowa), is as simple as it is strange.

The team with more possessions will win. You get those possessions through turnover-based defense.

If you can’t steal the ball, allow the layup so you get it back quickly. You compensate for opponents’ layups with three-point attempts, as many as possible, whenever and wherever.

Because the style involves such total effort, players can last only about 45 seconds before being replaced.

And if all of that isn’t crazy enough ...

One of the most important pregame preparations is not done by a coach or player, but by one of the equipment guys, who must stretch the nets so the ball falls through faster.

“You have to get guys out there willing to forget everything they learned about basketball,” says junior guard Donald Brady. “Sometimes, I actually feel guilty. I’ll miss a shot, I’ll miss another one, and another one, [but] I get to keep shooting.”

Redlands and Grinnell, which will showcase the style on national cable TV next month, are the only two teams using it.

There is a reason.

Redlands won the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championship using the system in 1990, but then Smith dropped it a couple of years later because he felt he didn’t have the right talent. The Bulldogs haven’t won the SCIAC since, and have started 0-4 in the conference this season. Grinnell has won only three conference titles in 11 seasons using it.

“Sure, it’s basketball, but you have to have the right guys and they all have to be hot to make it work,” says Brian Newhall, the longtime Occidental coach who runs an acclaimed summer basketball camp. “The only coaches who can really use it are ones who either know they’re going to be fired, or who can’t be fired.”

Newhall, who noted that it would never work in the NBA because neither the full-court presses nor egos would survive, credits Smith with taking a chance.

“When it goes good, you’re a genius, but when it doesn’t, you’re insane,” he said. “We all kidded Gary about having a midlife crisis.”

Call it an educational crisis.

“I wanted to find another way to teach the players,” said Smith, who, believe it or not, was once known for low-scoring teams. “And I think this system teaches them.”

In ways totally contrary to today’s basketball culture, it teaches them.

It teaches humility, as nobody gets to play longer than his 45-second shift, even if he makes four three-pointers (it has happened) during that time.

“At first, you hate to come out when you get hot,” Brady says. “But then you realize, everybody else is coming out too. It’s all about the team.”

It teaches sacrifice, as some players are assigned to only make passes or set screens, such as Matt Houdek, a senior starter who recently endured this unusual box score:

Against La Sierra, the Bulldogs took 129 shots ... and he didn’t attempt even one of them, or score any of the team’s 172 points.

“Yeah, my friends see that and say, ‘Man, all those points, and you didn’t even take a shot?’ ” he said. “But it’s my job to screen. If I don’t screen, we don’t score. It all works together. I’ve learned that.”

It also teaches effort. Besides setting NCAA Division III records for points, three-pointers taken and three-pointers made, the Bulldogs may have set a record for floor burns.

Of the four team awards given at the end of the season, none is for scoring, and only one is for all-around basketball. The rest are for hustle.

“There’s not a guy on that team that won’t dive for everything,” says David Dangleis, a veteran SCIAC referee. “Their games are a lot of running, a ping-pong match, there’s so many things happening. But what you really have to watch is your feet, because their guys are always on the floor.”

They work so hard in games that they practice only twice a week.

Their defense is so intense, they never practice their full-court press.

“We might look like a bunch of guys chucking it up, but it’s far from that,” Watkins says. “This takes a tremendous amount of teamwork.”

As much as anything, the system teaches inclusion. If you are good enough to make the team, you are good enough to play.

The Redlands bench is so long, the chairs curl around the baseline, yet all 21 players have scored points this season, with 13 players averaging more than 10 minutes a game.

“Isn’t that what college athletics is supposed to be about?” Smith asks. “Giving opportunities for as many kids as possible? That’s what you can do in this system.”

And who would have thought you could have so much fun doing it?

What other team gives referees sore arms from signaling three-point shots?

What other team plays so hard it wears out the fans, all the noise and commotion at Currier causing a headache-blurred vision affliction known as “Gym Head”?

Where else can you find opponents so frustrated, they will actually pass up layups to run off the clock in an attempt to slow the Bulldogs down?

If the Bulldogs are leading in the last five minutes, they usually have a good chance, because the officials are often too tired to call fouls, and opponents are too tired to make free throws.

Only in Redlands games do the road stats sometimes arrive jumbled with the following disclaimer from weary scorekeepers: “Crazy game. We did our best.”

“Gary believes this is all part of their education, and so do we,” says Jeff Martinez, Redlands’ athletic director. “That’s why we call them ‘programs,’ not ‘teams.’ ”

The Bulldog program was running over a stunned team from Pittsburgh-Greensburg earlier this season when a wide-eyed opponent grabbed Brady with a breathless query.

“Don’t you guys ever slow down?” he asked.

One wonders whether the price of tuition and sweats and shoes can ever match the value of Brady being able to look that kid in the eye and honestly say, well, no, never.

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.