FAIRFAX, Va. - George Mason guard Tony Skinn stood under the basket at one end of the Patriot Center, holding a black-covered foam bat with a yellow plastic handle. The bases were loaded. He did a Babe Ruth and pointed to the seats.

Then he swung and launched the oddly shaped ball of tape-covered paper deep to right center, toward Section 110.

“Grand slam! Grand slam!” Skinn said as he rounded the bases.

Welcome to unityball, perhaps the king of coach Jim Larranaga’s upbeat motivational ploys. Thanks to Coach L, the Patriots will not only be the surprise team in the Final Four of the NCAA tournament this weekend, they will also probably be the loosest.

“Everybody in the country that I’ve heard from — in voice mails or e-mails — has recognized a significant difference in our approach,” Larranaga said. “We’ve always been this way, but it’s just now that some other people are recognizing and wondering maybe, ’Is that a good way to be?’ We don’t judge other programs, we judge it for ourselves, and we like who we are.”

Unityball is guards vs. forwards, and this was the third straight Tuesday the game has been played to wrap up a practice. The big guys won before the team left for the first- and second-round games in Dayton, Ohio, but the little guys got even last week before the regionals in nearby Washington.

In retrospect, the Patriots had to make the Final Four — because the tie had to be broken. In fact, Larranaga’s final message before leaving the locker room before Sunday’s game against Connecticut was, “I want to be playing baseball on Tuesday at the Patriot Center.”

For the record, the guards won the rubber match. The big guys never recovered from Skinn’s slam.

“We have fun with it,” guard Lamar Butler said. “The team loves it. It’s a way to get away from basketball. It’s what we do as a team to get closer.”

Just as noteworthy was the fact that unityball — as well as the entire practice that preceded it — was played before reporters, fans and anyone else who wanted to watch. As the players took the court, they were given homemade door-hangers with messages from their youngest fans: “I hope you pass the ball and don’t lose it,” was one child’s advice to Skinn.

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That makes Larranaga a contrarian in an era of paranoid coaches who secure the doors and won’t allow anyone to watch a single minute of practice. George Mason’s workouts are always open.

“People consider this a distraction,” said Larranaga, looking at the horde of reporters and cameras at the edge of the court. “I consider it a challenge to stay focused. If you look at it from the positive side: If our players can’t play in front of a few hundred people, how are we going to play in front of 40,000 fans in an arena and another hundred million watching on TV?”

That’s Larranaga’s philosophy through and through — everything is turned into a positive. “Clap for mistakes” became one of his mantras after he realized that players just got more uptight if he stood with hands on hips and scowled. It is, without a doubt, the overriding reason why the Patriots weren’t intimidated against Michigan State, North Carolina and Connecticut, even when UConn forced overtime with a buzzer-beating shot.

“We go out there with no worries,” Butler said. “That’s how we play.”