RAY SWANSON \ Keystoner Change in tactics make big impact

What happens when a basketball team is getting run over by the opposition and drops eight of its first 10 games?
Well, if you have the smarts of a good college basketball coach, you must change things, and that's exactly what Larry Ondako, coach of the Westminster College Titans, decided to do last season. The results were staggering.
Ondako decided to switch horses in the middle of the stream. He put the Titans' post-based offense and half-court defense on the shelf and replaced them with a run-and-gun offense and a full-court trapping defense that feasted on turnovers. What a dramatic change.
Having scored a 68.3 point per game average in those first 10 games, the Titans boosted their per-game point total to 102.4 in winning their last 13 of 16 games and capturing the Presidents' Athletic Conference championship, the first in the school's history. It came in Ondako's first year as the Titans' coach.
Small lineup
And all of this was accomplished by a Titan team that showed no senior players and none taller than 6-foot-4.
Guess what? Ondako's back for his second fling as the Titan coach and his starting unit returns intact.
This is the same team that picked up the name of "The Circus" last year and we'll carry that a step further and call them "The Three-Ring Circus" because of their ability to hit the 3-point shot.
After reverting to the 3-point goal last season, the Titans surpassed the 100-point mark nine times, including falling just shy of the school record for points in a game (126) in a 123-96 win over Kalamazoo in the Georgia Tournament. The Titans made at least 10 3-pointers in all 17 contests, including a school-record 25 treys in a 102-74 win over Washington & amp; Jefferson.
And the turnovers forced jumped from 16.9 in the first 10 games to 25.6 in the last 17. Quite a chance, not only on offense, but on defense as well.
The lineup
The returning five, all of whom earned PAC recognition last season, include junior point guard Mark DeMonaco, 18.1 points per game; senior guard Ed Pagley, 15.8 ppg; senior forward Pat O'Connor, 13.9 ppg; senior guard Chris Hatch 8.3 ppg, and junior forward Dom Joseph, 9.7 ppg. DeMonaco led the Titans in scoring 12 times last season and tossed in 47 points in a home win over Case Western Reserve, connecting for 10 3-pointers in the opening half.
The first players coming off the bench for the Titans this year will be junior guard Brian Fadden and junior forward Mica Delo.
The other returnees include Ryan Hauck, John Lauterbach and Randall Poindexter.
Ondako is a former 1,000-point scorer for the Titans who served five years as a Westminster assistant before being promoted.
"I thought the kids were just great last season," he said. "Even when we were 2-8 no one was complaining. I think we had just reached a point where they were trying too hard and we needed a change to keep the team with us."
Remember, "The Circus" is back in town, and this year it's a Three-Ringer.