Charge of the Lightning Brigade

Afterward, Baucom offered to buy Johnson breakfast the next morning, so he could pick his brain about his offense. During a three-hour conversation, Johnson offered a warning. Fans would love the system, but basketball people will criticize you, tell you your team doesn't play enough defense.

No other Division I or II teams run the system, and there's a reason for it. To bring it to Division I, it would take a coach with nerve, unafraid of risks.

"My life," said Baucom, 46, "is a risk every day."

Scary Operation

Baucom became familiar with risk early in life. His entire family had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy -- the same disease that killed Hank Gathers, coincidentally a high scorer on Paul Westhead's breakneck Loyola Marymount teams. The condition causes the muscle walls of a heart to decay. It killed Baucom's father at 42 and his uncle, who was like a brother to Baucom, at 20.

It almost killed Baucom at 30. On Christmas Day 1990, Baucom had a heart attack and was rushed the hospital. Doctors implanted a pacemaker, which saved his life. But it also ended his career as a North Carolina state trooper.

Suddenly, Baucom was facing a forced career change. He became the varsity basketball coach at his alma mater, North Mecklenburg (N.C.) High School, where he had to give up his junior varsity job when he became a state trooper. He took classes at UNC Charlotte and completed his college degree in 1995. He was hired as an assistant at Davidson. He would bounce around schools in the south -- Mars Hill, Northwestern State, Western Carolina, Tusculum College -- for 10 seasons before finally landing his first Division I coaching job last season at VMI.

The Keydets opened last season with four straight losses, but then won their next five. His vision was taking hold. He loved the job. On Jan. 3, two days before VMI's first conference game, Baucom drove to Charlottesville for a standard operation at the University of Virginia's hospital for a new pacemaker. The operation should have taken an hour and a half.

When doctors opened his chest, they found the wires in pacemaker, 15 years old, had calcified. The old pacemaker was stuck in his chest, and they struggled to remove it. Baucom lay on the table for 6 1/2 hours as doctors pulled and prodded his chest.

The operation and chest trauma kept him bed-ridden for days and led to severe complications. Clotting caused his arm to swell to three times its normal size. He would spend 46 days in hospitals from Jan. 3 to Aug. 10, receiving five operations in four states. He saw a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., specialist, who replaced his pacemaker with a defibrillator.

Willis coached VMI while Baucom was away for 12 games. Baucom attended some games, but he could only stare ahead like a zombie. His dream season had vanished, but what he endured had at least made him healthy. He would receive another chance this year, feeling like a new man.

The Swarm

This season, VMI's new offense received a testing audition -- at Ohio State and on national television. The opening tip went to OSU's Mike Conley, a freshman McDonald's all-American, the kind of player VMI wouldn't dream of recruiting. Two Keydets swarmed him immediately.

"He was like, 'Oh, my God,' " Baucom said, laughing.