Somewhat surprisingly, news that Duquesne had switched to a way-up-tempo offense didn't reach the Midwest outpost of Grinnell, Iowa, until a few days ago.

Grinnell is the home of a strong academic school with a successful Division III basketball team. You might have heard of it as the vortex of the run-and-gun offense with five-man "line changes" that the Dukes are now using.

"It's nice to see a breakthrough at the Division I level," Grinnell coach David Arseneault said.

Arseneault is in his 18th season at Grinnell, which holds several NCAA scoring records, thanks to that offense and a coach who has become one of the foremost experts on it.

He has written a book, "The Running Game -- A Formula for Success," has an instructional video, "Running to Extremes," and works with a moderator on an Internet site, runandgun at www.yahoogroups.com.

"About a third of my daily job description is responding to phone calls, letters, e-mail, film" about the fastbreak offense, Arseneault said.

Yet word hadn't trickled to him that Dukes coach Ron Everhart, looking for answers in a season devastated by injury and illness, had taken up the sometimes maligned offense.

The switch has been a touch of genius for the Dukes, who are 5-1 with a five-game winning streak since Everhart instructed his 10 healthy players to press like crazy, then shoot, shoot, shoot. They have topped 90 points in five consecutive games.

Arseneault remembered hearing about the after-party violence in September that left five Duquesne players shot. He didn't know about the subsequent injuries and health problems that continued to plague the Dukes.

But he's thrilled that Everhart made the difficult decision to change his philosophy in midseason, joining VMI as a Division I team using the offense.

"If that were a preseason game plan, you'd be rolling the dice with two groups [of five] learning to play alongside each other," Arseneault said. "And what if you have an injury or someone fouls out?

"But doing it out of necessity, it sounds like his kids are having fun with it and picking it up."

Arseneault used to get a lot more resistance off the court than his players got on it. The fastbreak style was seen as a bastardization of the sport or a gimmick offense. Some teams declined Grinnell's attempts to schedule them.

That has slowly faded.

"I must admit, we've been credible with the system long enough that there are fewer naysayers now," he said.

Winning tends to shut people up.

Grinnell has led all playing levels in scoring 11 of the past 12 years (including an NCAA-record average of 126.2 points a game in 2003-04), ranked first in the nation in 3-point shooting in 10 of the past 12 years, made the postseason five times and won the Midwest Conference championship three times.

That success has brought new facilities at Grinnell and all sorts of national and even international attention.

Everhart and the Dukes are doing just great with the new style, but if they ever asked, Arseneault couldn't provide them with any big secrets beyond the basics. No one has dazzled him with innovations to the offense in a long time.

"In truth, no," he said. "The tweaks that they're using tend to be a little bit more conservative. We're all about pace of play."

Which would be all-out.

Arseneault tells interested coaches that he doesn't do a lot of in-game coaching because of the nature of the offense, and he doesn't demand much in-season conditioning because of all that running in games.

The Grinnell coach likes hearing about teams that have made the switch, especially in Division I, but he's not so enamored with the offense that he wants to see it infiltrate the sport top to bottom.

In fact, he very nearly switched to a more conventional approach this season because he wasn't sure his personnel fit the mold for the platoon system.

"No lie, I almost packed it in," Arseneault said. "I have seven good players, then a dropoff. If I wasn't supposed to be some sort of guru, I would have done something else."

Like what?

"I would have changed to walk the ball up the floor, take time off the clock and have someone take a good 3 as the shot clock runs down," he said.

His obligation to the fastbreak offense paid off. Grinnell has won 10 games in a row, is 14-6 and leading its conference at 10-3. Arseneault's son, sophomore guard David Arseneault, is second on the team in scoring at 19.5 points a game and is one of 17 finalists for the Bob Cousy Award.

"It's amazing how things turn out," the elder Arseneault said.

Duquesne could give a big amen to that.