Illinois athletic director Ron Guenther showed unpredictability when he hired Bruce Weber as the men's basketball coach last spring. Now, the No. 14 Illinois men's basketball team must play offense with unpredictability using Weber's motion offense.

"In motion, they can't say this cut is going to happen," Weber said. "Every time it could be something different and then you hope your kids get good at it where they can react to how they defend them."

Teams from junior high school through the NBA, in most situations, use set plays. In a set play, the players receive designated positions on the court to occupy and the players follow the coach's instructions on when to pass the ball or at what time to make a cut.

With the motion offense, the coach gives the players freedom. Players move and cut based on how the opposing team guards them and where the players can find an open spot on the court.

Illinois junior forward Roger Powell benefits from Weber's use of the motion offense. During the last three seasons, former Illinois head coach Bill Self used a high-low offense that pre-determined each player's offensive movements.

With the motion offense now in Champaign, Powell averages 14 points per game for the Illini as the team's leading scorer. Powell likes that the motion offense spreads around the scoring brunt.

"In the motion offense we have a lot of different big scorers every day," Powell said.

Powell only scored eight points a game as a sophomore and needs to thank former Oklahoma State head coach Hank Iba for the offense that eventually reached Weber and the Illini.

Iba coached at Oklahoma State from 1934 to 1970 and coached guard Eddie Sutton for two of those years. Sutton eventually got his own coaching job and hired Gene Keady as an assistant at Arkansas.

Keady earned the position as Western Kentucky head coach and hired Weber to his staff in 1980. Weber went with Keady to Purdue a year later and served 18 more years as Keady's assistant coach.

"I taught him everything he knows about (the motion offense)," Keady said. "All it is is organized free lance and good spacing. You can kind of make up your own roles. He had a big role in us winning here (at Purdue)."

The opportunity for players to move freely in the motion offense makes the offensive end of the court enjoyable for players and agony for the team trying to defend. To get to the enjoyment, a coach must work through frustration.

"I know it's hard as a coach and at different times at Purdue we dinked with different motion," Weber said. "If it doesn't go right, right away, it's easy to say: 'Hey, we're going to go back to this.' But you start getting some confidence, and the kids enjoy it because it allows them some freedom and they can't be scouted."

"Now a team has to scout you for your little quick entries, your little plays. They have to worry about your motion. They have to worry about your fast break and I think it makes it tough to defend."

The words "motion offense" still cause many Illinois fans' blood to boil thinking about Illinois playing against Indiana where Bobby Knight wore red sweaters and used the motion offense.

Knight made the motion offense popular while winning three NCAA Championships at Indiana. The motion offense continues to bring success to Knight at Texas Tech.

Coaches can pound the parameters and guidelines of the offense into the athletes' heads, but the team needs talented basketball players to experience success.

"You have to have the right type of players to run it," said Pat Knight, Texas Tech assistant coach and Bobby's son. "You have to have kids that can think and read effectively. We've had kids in the past that aren't really smart basketball-wise and that can hurt your motion offense. You've got to read the man that's guarding you and not the ball. A lot of kids have trouble with that. You've got to have smart players to be able to run it."

Illinois junior center Nick Smith said he had not perfected reading defenses yet and neither have some of the Illini guards.

"It's got a ways to go," Smith said. "We still get lost every once in awhile. It's an offense where you can't really walk the ball up. So if we do, it throws us out of rhythm. There were some points in the game where I got pretty frustrated (against Arkansas). It's just little things like guards doing some little things wrong."

Matt Painter served as one of Weber's assistant coaches at Southern Illinois and replaced Weber as the Salukis' head coach.

Painter said the time needed by players to become comfortable with the motion offense varied. But Painter said a smart coach would run an occasional set play to ease the transition.

"Sometimes it takes a couple months, a couple weeks. Sometimes it takes a couple years," Painter said. "One thing that (Weber) has done is if it isn't picked up by primary players, he's going to get his good players shots. If certain guys are just very poor in it, he's going to tinker with it to get them shots so they can be prosperous in their offense."

The difficulty players experience running the motion offense comes from its unusual features, such as the point guard not being involved.

"There's really not a point guard in the motion offense," Pat Knight said. "It's kind of an equal-opportunity offense. You need guards that can screen like they're forwards. You just really have to have five versatile players out there. You've got to have all five guys be a threat from outside and also be a threat to drive.

"Our guards have to be able to post up just like our big men. Our big men have to be able to shoot the ball and pass the ball like our guards. You want five guys that can do everything."

Weber cannot wait two years for the Illini to learn the motion offense or for a crop of players that can play every role. Instead, he expected when the Illini tip-off the Big Ten season Jan. 7 that the players would get the job done.

"We've always said in the past it usually takes your team until about Christmas time," Weber said. "A lot of that is because, you get it in, they start getting a feel of it in games. Then at Christmas time you have a little bit of a break and you can kind of go back to it to get some practice time. You hope by the time you get to conference it starts clicking."

When the Illini start running the motion offense correctly, they will display a connection with their teammates, a sense of the other nine players on the court and most important, excellent timing.

"Because we're giving them freedom and they have to learn to read defenses, you have to learn to move without the ball, learn spacing — when to go and when not to go," Weber said.

"All of those things, and then in each situation there's got to be great timing. The passer, the screener and the cutter all have to have the timing. In a play, you know when it's going to happen. In motion, everyone's got to see the thing at the same time."