Platooning is Dead. Long Live Platooning.

Hello, friends. I hope you’re well. Allergies, eh? I understand, I myself have…Oh, my! Bless you. So I was thinking that…oh, gesundheit! Yes, well, I…oh, bless you again! You might want to grab a tissue. You have blown mucus all over your shirt. Friends, this week we said goodbye to a dear friend we’ve come to know well over the past year: the platooning system. With Cal telling press that he’s giving up on the platooning system and hinting that it may be hurting our recruiting in 2015, it’s time to bid adieu to platooning. But what new and innovative technique could take its place in 2015-16? Let’s look at some possible candidates. --------------- 1. Shouldering. Ten players play as five when each position is fielded by a player upon a player’s shoulders clad in an extra long jersey. What we gain in height, however, we lose should one single stray thread of that jersey slowly unravel the entire thing and expose a gasping public to our ruse. 2. Pyramiding. Using a basic three-two system (three on bottom, two on top) the pyramid defense is a great strategy against teams with threatening big men, as it will be vey hard to infiltrate a veritable wall of players guarding the rim at and perhaps on the rim. Once a shot’s been blocked, however, the difficulty comes in rushing back down the court because one wrong move and everyone cartoonishly ends up on the floor. 3. Soloing. One player takes the court at a time and we hope the other team doesn’t realize that they can just all surround that player and keep him from going anywhere, at least until that player has already scored 15 points, which is probably unlikely.  4. Zone Offense. If a player has the ball and he breaks out but crosses out of his assigned zone he has to stop immediately. Otherwise the Zone Offense strategy falls apart. It is important that everyone stay in their zones. Maybe think of your zone as an island, and there’s hot lava all around it. You wouldn’t want to step in the hot lava.  5. Four Corners Defense. With the point guard in the middle, all other team members post up to the four corners of the defensive half-court and wait for the offense to bring the ball to those corners, defending it when it does. COACHES’ NOTE: requires strong defensive point guard. 6. Crab basketball. Crab basketball, in which players walk upside down like crabs, deeply impacts a team’s height and ball handling skills but, alternately, is hilarious. 7. Kick-fighting. This has less to do with basketball and more to do with fighting people using kicks. 8. Man-to-Woman defense. Wooooo! You guys know what I’m talking about. Oh yeah. (I’m talking about making out with girls.) 9. Everyoneing. Everyone plays at the same time. The worst that can happen is that the referee blows his whistle and makes a lot of the players leave the court. But by then we have already scored 40 points in one minute. Advantage: Us.