The Grinnell College men’s basketball team plays as if its basketball-playing license were about to expire, so no time to waste.

As if the ball will explode if the pace of the game drops below highway speeds.

This being Grinnell, you could say that they play as if the repressive, narrow-minded establishment has demanded that they slow down.

I always wondered what it would be like to see these guys in action. For years now, they have produced points the way Iowa farmland produces kernels of corn. Earlier this season, they beat Principia College 145-97. They beat William Penn University 150-137.

So we drove over to watch undefeated Grinnell host Carroll University of Waukesha, Wis., in a Midwest Conference game.

Inside the first-class Darby Gymnasium, at an admission price of zero – when you have a billion-dollar endowment fund, sometimes ticket-selling just isn’t worth the hassle – we sized up the small arena while we caught the end of the women’s game. There above us hung a row of Men’s Division III National Scoring Champions banners. A lot of them. Enough fabric to make scarlet and black togas for six or seven good-sized philosophy professors.

The Pioneer women lost a heartbreaker, but they’re just the warm-up act for the “Greatest Show on Court,” as the announcer billed it, and soon it began.

When it ended, the Pioneer men had launched 48 three-point shots, which is sort of what I expected. However, they made only 14. The main thing, really, is that they’re relentless at both ends of the court. Grinnell loves the full-court press – although, as often as not, the opponents would break the press, score on a dunk shot, and the home team student section would cheer. They just like dunks, I guess.

Playing full-bore would wear a team out if the starting five stayed out there all the time. Things being different here, the coach substitutes four or five players whenever play stops. You race onto the court, dash around madly for 40 seconds or so, and then scamper back to the bench.

It’s like ice hockey without the fights.

It really is entertaining. As a fan at the concession stand said, “You get used to watching these guys, and then when you watch Iowa State play Iowa, you say, ‘What is this?’”

The crowd was fairly sedate, and we had to do without cheerleaders, a pep band or halftime dancers. Too bourgeois, I suppose, for a venue that offers the choice of a “gender neutral” locker room. Still trying to grasp that concept.

Fortunately, even intellectual Grinnell has a group of intense male students to liven things up. In response to a questionable call by the referees, the lads hold their hands at chest level and move them forward and back while yelling “PUSH it! PUSH it! PUSH it!” Try it out loud. By sports crowd standards, very clever.

The Pioneers won with a modest output, for them: 103-89. Afterward, an affable custodian took us through a door and down a hall to a blackboard listing six combinations of players; for example, I think Michigan native Xander Strek, my new favorite sports name, was assigned to three different positions in three different lineups. It’s substitution by permutation.

We should have come earlier in the season for a real show, our guide said. Grinnell attracts non-conference opponents by assuring them that, even though they’re going to lose, they’ll have fun scoring lots of points. Near the end of a victory, he said, the Grinnell students shift gears and cheer for the other guys. Afterward, the two teams have a pizza party.

“Sorry, I have to take this call,” he said, drawing his cellphone. “It’s from the Philippines.”

It would be.

Jim Pollock is the managing editor of the Des Moines Business Record. He can be reached by email at jimpollock@bpcdm.com