The Art of Sideline Celebration: A Conversation with the Monmouth Bench Mob

Nobody in college basketball is having more fun this season than the reserves on the Monmouth University men's team. The team is playing very well—they've already knocked off USC, UCLA, and a ranked Notre Dame team—and yet the starters have had a hard time wresting the spotlight from the benchwarmers. The bench's choreographed routines—in which they form a human basketball hoop, or mime reviving a teammate after a pretend heart attack, to describe but two—have gone furiously viral, and made the players involved minor celebrities on campus.

A core four Monmouth players are responsible for choreographing and executing the routines: forward Greg Noack, and guards Louie Pillari, Dan Pillari (Louie's cousin), and Tyler Robinson. Through Tuesday, they've played a combined five minutes and have yet to score a point, but still they've managed to capture the college basketball world's imagination. VICE Sports talked to Robinson and Louie Pillari about their avant-garde sideline theater.

When Monmouth upset UCLA to start the season, the Hawks bench went wild, but "just improv stuff," as Pillari describes it. "We saw the guys liked it," he says. "It brought energy. It raised their level of play, so we figured, why not keep raising it?" So now, after the core four are done with the regular team meeting to go over scouting reports for the next game, they begin planning celebrations. "We'll just talk about it for like 10 minutes, 15 minutes," says Pillari. "We'll bounce ideas off each other. Sometimes, we'll pass up on them. Other times, we'll take them."

We cookin' fish tonight! — Mike Zimmermann (@MCZimmermann)November 28, 2015

A celebration as glorious as the Trophy Fish—Pillari's personal favorite—doesn't just happen. It takes a flash of genius to come up with the concept, but it requires rehearsals to perfect a routine. Some formations come together fairly quickly; others need to be rehearsed over and over. "There were a couple that we had to practice a couple times," says Robinson. "The Trophy Fish, we had to practice at least, like, five, six times."

Aspiring bench-celebration performers have to know when an idea isn't working. Explains Robinson: "There's one that we had thought about that we called the Towel Burst, which was basically, Dan was going to have, like, a baby towel, and it was going to be this whole hospital scene. But when we got to that, it had nothing to do with basketball at all; it just had to do with us being stupid. So we kind of just tossed that to the side."

Pillari adds that a piece doesn't work if it's over the top or disrespects the other team. Given some of what does make the cut, however, it's fair to say that there's a high bar for what's considered "over the top."

Bench goals — Athlete Confessions (@AthIeteFession)November 28, 2015

Robinson says that his favorite celebration is the Heart Attack, reserved for when the team is playing without much energy and needs a boost. In it, Noack and Louie Pillari hold up Dan Pillari, and Robinson mimes bringing him back to life with an imaginary defibrillator. According to Robinson, Dan's acting chops really make it work. "I think it's mad funny when Dan comes back to life," he says. "He's good at acting that part out."

"When we started doing this, and sitting down and actually thinking things out, it was kind of easy, because we usually work with each other every day," says Robinson. "We knew how each other worked, so when we click like that, and we start doing these, and it started blowing up, it was fun because you're doing it with your brothers. You're doing it for all the right reasons. It's good for the team, it's good for the school, and it's obviously fun for us."

Make no mistake: this sort of thing wouldn't fly on a lot of benches.

"Any other coach in America would have completely shut it down and told us to stop doing what we're doing," says Robinson. But Pillari and Robinson say Monmouth coach King Rice is on board because he wants his players not just to work hard and play smart but to have fun.

"He's told us before that he hasn't even seen any of our celebrations during the game, but he'll go home after the game and turn on SportsCenter or go on Twitter, and just see all of us doing these crazy celebrations, and just be cracking up," Robinson says. It helps, of course, that Monmouth is off to a good start. Says Pillari, "As long as we keep winning and keep playing well, then why stop?"

Details of upcoming celebrations are guarded closely, but Pillari says they aim to come up with new ones for every game ("We come up with so many that we'll forget to use some"). Robinson says they have new material planned, and only the best of the best will be performed again. "We don't plan on repeating anything, I'll say that. Except for, like, the classic trademark ones, like when we go crazy as the Hawks, or the Heart Attack, things of that nature."