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A sports author and editor I respect has a firm set of rules for his fellow freelance writers, most notably this one:

“Ass in chair.”

He was only getting started:

“Let me say this again: ASS IN CHAIR. You don’t get anything done going for coffee every hour. Most of the time, this isn’t easy or fun. The job is ass in chair, alone for hours. It’s cool to say you’re a writer when asked at the bar, but the rest of the time, it’s ass in chair.”

My apologies to those offended by the profanity, but I thought about this while watching Wisconsin coach Bobbie Kelsey’s post-game tirade following a Jan. 27 loss at Nebraska. It was prompted by a brilliant shooting display by Nebraska’s Natalie Romeo, who knocked down eight 3-point shots to tie a school record. With a few alterations, Kelsey repeated this line a half-dozen times in about two minutes:

“Get your butt in the gym!

I’m not sure what it is about posteriors as a reference for fiery motivational messages—for writers or basketball players—but the analogy works. At least I know that “ASS IN CHAIR” really works for me.

As for Kelsey’s admonition, it’s hardly for her own players:

“Women’s basketball, you hear me? Get your butt in the gym.

“You’ve got people throwing the ball over the basket. Nobody wants to watch that. I enjoy watching good solid basketball, where people make shots.”

The whole sport! Listen up! Do you understand!

This may be the clarion call in women’s college basketball not just for this season, but perhaps for all time.

This is a bumper sticker slogan, heck, it ought to be the title for a WBCA convention clinic, for what has been discussed in the women’s game since the Val Ackerman report came out nearly three years ago: a better product with better offensive skill.

I can’t imagine what Kelsey would have said if Rachel Banham’s NCAA-tying 60-point performance against Northwestern last weekend had come against her team.

In a 112–106 double OT win for the Gophers, Banham also drilled eight treys, but it was her overall floor show that dazzled as much as the point total: 19 of 32 from the field, 14 of 16 from the line, four assists, two steals and only six turnovers.

“Only?” I know some coaches may cringe at that suggestion of collateral damage, but when you touch the ball as much as Banham, that’s going to happen.

What’s so great about what Kelsey said—other than that she just kept saying it, over and over—is that this wasn’t a coach’s familiar retort about buckling down and working only on the unglamorous parts of the game. This was a scolding to get busy doing what for most players ought to be the greatest thing there is do to on a basketball court—shoot!

“If people think you’re going to get it on the pillowcase, it’s not going to happen. You can’t nap your way to being a great shooter, and Facebooking and all these things that teenagers do.

“Put the phone down, stop FaceTiming, stop Tweeting, and get your butt in the gym.”

But wait, there was plenty more:

“We can’t dunk. Brittney Griner, she graduated. I don’t see anybody else dunking. Candace Parker, she’s gone, long time ago.

“We need to get in the gym, making shots. That’s how our game needs to grow. We need to be shooting the ball and making it, and people will come watch us play.”

Naturally, the women’s basketball Commissioner of Offense was thrilled.

In the video clip that followed Kelsey’s remarks, “Big Ten Women’s Sports Report” host Lisa Byington and analysts Taylor Rooks and Brooke Weisbrod noted that for the moment, only UConn and Maryland shoot above 50 percent for the season. Baylor, Notre Dame and Ohio State are a fraction or two behind.

But here’s the money quote from Weisbrod, explaining the UConn formula for mastering the fine art of offensive precision:

“You do it right, until you cannot do it wrong.”

That, too, ought to be placed somewhere close to Kelsey’s homily, because these cold-slap references need to be echoed for all the young girls who wish to pick up basketballs and do something beautiful with them.

We saw that on Monday, in UConn’s win over South Carolina, and not just from Breanna Stewart (25 points, 10 rebounds, 5 blocks). It was the Huskies’ ability to score at all five positions, in half-court and transition, that remains the reference point in a sport where their closest challengers are still trying to catch up.

That includes the Gamecocks. I would have loved to have seen what they could have done had A’ja Wilson not gotten hurt in the first half, but this is a program still putting all the necessary scoring pieces together. Next year they’ll have more firepower at guard with Allisha Gray and Kaela Davis, to go with Wilson and Alaina Coates.

As I wrote a couple weeks back about struggling offenses in the SEC, pretty offense isn’t just for show: it’s imperative for teams harboring serious Final Four aspirations.

Yet as the exploits of Banham and other developments in the Big Ten show, flashy offense isn’t the only ticket. Minnesota has good won-loss numbers (16–7, 8–4) but an RPI of 87.

Michigan boasts a high-scoring guard in Katelynn Flaherty (22.7 ppg) and averages 81 points a game, but is 13–10 and 5–6.

Weak non-conference scheduling is another sore spot in women’s hoops, along with shooting, but that’s a topic for another post. (Perhaps Washington’s Mike Neighbors, who urged his Pac-12 rivals to schedule up, can offer a different kind of “Get your butt in the gym!” clinic to get his national peers to play better teams.)

It’s no accident that the Big Ten teams that can score and defend well enough are in the Final Four hunt: Maryland and Ohio State. They also have the No. 1 and No. 4 recruiting classes coming in next season.

Kelsey, whose Badgers haven’t come close to posting a winning season in her five years on the job, signed six players, her best class. What she faces is a long slog back to respectability in a league whose best teams, and others who want to join them, take the high-octane offensive concept to heart.

But it’s also refreshing for a coach struggling to build her program to embrace what’s grudgingly becoming obvious: 

Don’t stop preaching it.

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Wendy Parker is a sportswriter and web editor who has covered women's basketball since the early 1990s. She is a correspondent for Basketball Times and formerly covered women's and college sports, soccer and the Olympics at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She is the author of "Beyond Title IX: The Cultural Laments of Women's Sports," available on Amazon, and the creator of Sports Biblio, a blog about sports books and history.

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