Jack’s Blog

If someone’s interested in deep, thoughtful and knowledgeable insight about what’s happening in the world of sports, talk radio is about the best source going.  If you’re driving.  Alone.

I admit it’s more than mildly entertaining when people from all over the country call in and speak so passionately about the things and people they love or hate, but don’t really know at all.  Occasionally, shows get out of hand but, I imagine, that’s not exactly a negative in the world of all sports, all the time.

One topic I heard debated (actually, it wasn’t exactly a debate because the host just pontificated, only mentioning his friend’s agreement) on my 2 1/2 hour return trip from Monterey was the host of the show talking to a friend of his (another sports jock) and how they both felt the NCAA tournament is making the regular season in college basketball irrelevant.  That all that matters is where teams are at the end of the season.  Teams load up their schedule early with cupcakes in an attempt to win big and stay healthy so, come March, they’ll be running on all cylinders.  He was even ranting that teams like Gonzaga and Butler and VCU will be seeded high when other schools have been playing bigger, better competition all season.  Shouldn’t what teams did in the entire season matter just as much? he exclaimed.

It is pretty much the same argument the BCS has been using against having a football playoff.  When I mentioned this observation to a friend of mine, he told me he listens to the same show during football season when he travels and the host is one of the biggest proponents for a playoff!  Why?  My buddy said he states how the teams should battle in a one-and-done format to see which team comes out on top.  That, that team should be declared the winner.

It reminded me of the saying some politicians employ:

“He’ll stand for whatever you’ll fall for.”

Finally out of that intense Las Vegas heat and back to Fresno - where, just to remind us of the fun we had in Sin City, the thermometer is well over 100.

Younger son, Alex, and the undermanned AAU team of kids from Central Cali (Organized Chaos), represented the Valley well, going undefeated (3-0) in their pool and winning two games in the “Championship” bracket (including a 77-51 trouncing of D-1 Sports of NC, led by Quincy Miller, rated by most as the #2 rising senior prospect in the nation) before dropping a two-point decision to Urban DFW in a contest in which OC led most of the way.

Other than getting a chance for my wife and I to watch our son and agonize over every missed shot and turnover, cheer every basket and assist and “help” the officials (some parents more than others - they know who they are), the trip gave me a chance to catch up with some old coaching friends I haven’t seen in a decade or longer.  NCAA rules preclude coaches from talking to parents of prospects at such an event but, because I have what’s referred to as a “pre-existing relationship” with so many of these guys, I enjoyed speaking, without fear of them getting in trouble, with many of the coaches whose profession I used to call my own.  Heck, I’ve known these guys a whole lot longer than I’ve known my son!

To paint a picture of what last Wed-Mon was like, there were three or four tournaments in Las Vegas involving high school prospects.  The one our kids played in (the adidas Super 64) had 40 pools of 4 teams in each pool.  160 teams!  Following pool play, teams were placed in “championship,” “gold,” “silver” or “bronze” divisions, depending on their record against the other three teams in their respective pool.  Then, single elimination tournaments began.  The other events were similar, although their numbers weren’t quite so high, more like 30-60 teams. 

One day, I received a call from a friend and former colleague who I had actually helped get into the business.  He’s currently an assistant coach at a school in a league that would be referred to as mid-major.  He called while travelling from one of the 20 or so sites.  The pace is hectic, as coaching staffs try to see (and be seen by) as many of their “top-line” prospects as they can, evaluate those players they’ve heard about or received interest from (but have yet to see play) and, especially in the case of low-to-mid-majors, maybe find an as yet unknown player whom they’d have a shot at successfully recruiting.

This coach remarked to me that he was fully aware his job was to get players, players who, in coaching parlance, “could play,” i.e. make their team better, win more games and get his team into the NCAA tournament - or get fired.  For the most part, that’s the prevailing attitude that exists in Division I now.  Why?

I posted a blog on 11/28/07 entitled The Biggest Problem in College Basketball Today.  My number one answer?  Colleges are paying coaches too much money.  Whether you agree or not, the blog is well worth reading and I suggest you check it out, keeping in mind I wrote it nearly three years ago.  The game - and profession - have progressed but, often, with progress comes problems.  Or in the case of today’s college basketball scene, increased pressure.  While what Gonzaga has done, i.e. seeing them in a Top 10 poll is no longer shocking, is remarkable, the presidents and athletics directors of the other seven teams in the WCC (Gonzaga’s conference) adopt a feeling of “If they can do it, why can’t we?” 

The WCC is a league of eight church-schools, six in California and the University of Portland, in addition to the Zags, so resources would seem to have been relatively equal throughout the league when Gonzaga began its ascent.  Don’t think the prez’s and AD’s don’t have egos.  When their counterparts from Gonzaga walk into WCC meetings, the “have-nots” begin to wonder, “Why not us?”  Changing the coach often becomes the answer.  So, while my friend’s statement about “get players or else” might have seemed a little dramatic, it’s become reality.

Yet, coaches love their profession.  Some for different reasons than others, but working long hours - and many days on the road - is just part of the job.  Consumed is the word that’s used when the coaching profession is discussed.  As a sort of personal experiment, I asked my friend if he knew who Shirley Sherrod was.  Although hers was the lead story in nearly every paper in the nation, he told me he didn’t.  In fact, when he called, he was in the car with an assistant coach from a high-major program (BCS) and he asked him if he knew about Shirley Sherrod.  Same response. 

I am not including this story to disparage nor criticize my friend and his associate.  It’s mentioned because, when I was an assistant (between 1972-2002), I wouldn’t have known about a front-page story like Shirley Sherrod either.  I don’t mean to infer that every coach on the Division I level is ignorant of the Shirley Sherrod story.  It’s just that, because of the consuming aspect of the job, there’s a feeling that nothing else matters other than what you ought to be doing to make your team better and advance your career (or keep from derailing it).  In addition, you get the (absurd) feeling that while you’re reading about that A-1 story, you could be calling a prospect or seeing another game.

My late, brilliant mentor, John Savage, used to say there were some people at opposite ends of the spectrum.  Most coaches were the latter in his statement:

“Some people are a mile wide and an inch deep, while others are an inch wide and a mile deep.”Â

As the world knows by now, this is the “Year of the Free Agent.”  Never before has there been so much proven talent available to NBA teams.  Although LeBron James is the pearl of this free agent class, followed by Dwayne Wade and then Chris Bosh, there are several other players who have put up BIG numbers.  And those stats weren’t accumulated during high school, college or even in an overseas professional league.  These figures come out of the NBA office.

Some of the gaudiest totals belong to Amare (excuse me for excluding the accent, but I’m not nearly familiar enough with the fonts, etc. to figure out how to include it) Stoudamire.  Basketball people, media members and fans have often compared Steve Nash and Stoudamire to John Stockton and Karl Malone.  Each duo is composed of a crafty (relatively) little white guard and a physically imposing, skilled black forward - with both of the pairs executing pick & roll basketball to perfection, winning way more games than they lost, yet unable to win a championship.  The comparison is an understandable one.

To briefly make my point (and for those who know me, being brief will be more shocking than had I put the accent in his first name), a major difference I’ve observed between the Stockton-Malone combo and the Nash-Stoudamire pair is that Karl seemed to appreciate John a whole heckuva lot more than Amare does Steve.  “Why?” you might ask.  Since I spent 30 years in the world of college basketball, I tend to overemphasize the importance of “the college experience.”

For quite some time I’ve felt that guys who made the jump directly from high school to the NBA (excluding Kobe Bryant whose “out-of-high-school” education came from growing up in a foreign country) haven’t been exposed to enough of a variety of people, be they of similar age (fellow students) or older (coaches, professors, secretaries, staff, etc.)  While it may not necessarily be the determining factor to greater maturity, in my experiences, those youngsters (for the scope of this blog, from the U.S.) don’t seem as socially ready for NBA life.  This is not to infer that attending a university will mean a college player who enters the NBA will be fully (or, in some cases, even partially) mature, nor will the year(s) spent on a college campus eliminate selfishness from a player.  The counterexamples to that statement would be a figure that could be expressed in scientific notation (with 10’s exponent being a positive number for those technical critics).  It’s just that the social experience, if nothing else, adds a little something extra to a person’s life.

I’m not saying that they learned it at Gonzaga and Louisiana Tech, respectively, but Stockton and Malone seemed to have a unique mutual respect for each other, kind of like, “Sure, I could go it alone and be successful, but I’d never reach the level of proficiency I have without you.”  Maybe it’s my personal prejudice against guys who made the leap directly into the league that’s obscured my hearing but I don’t recall Stoudamire being anywhere near that appreciative of Nash.  While I’m not saying Nash claims he can’t survive without Stoudamire, keep in mind that Amare isn’t the first player for whom Steve has gotten easy looks, i.e. while they’re dynamite together, I believe the big guy needs his current partner more than vice versa.

Stoudamire is reportedly miffed that no one (to date) has offered him a max contract.  Whether my theory is the reason he isn’t receiving the love (and money) he feels he has “earned,” it would still be wise for him to follow the advice of Dr. Christine Northrup:

“Feeling grateful or appreciative of someone or something in your life actually attracts more of the things that you appreciate and value into your life.”Â

As I’ve told my former colleague (we were members of the University of Oregon staff in 1975-76), Jim Haney, currently the executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC), one of the biggest problems in college basketball today is coaches make too much money.  (See my blog from way back - 11/28/07).  I’m not saying this because I am bitter because I coached at a time when coaches’ salaries were lower because I’m perfectly happy with what I’m doing - and with what I did - and what I made (OK, sure, who couldn’t use a few extra bucks)?

I can’t think of anybody who got into coaching when I did (the early ’70s) who did so because they wanted to make a ton of money - because there wasn’t any.  Not that we were pure as the driven snow.  There were a great many who entered the profession for the “glamor” of the job.  But most guys wanted to be a college coach because we wanted to do just that - coach. 

Don’t get me wrong.  Coaches in that era were upwardly mobile too, but the moves were usually made because a bigger job gave the coach a better chance to get into or advance further in the NCAA Tournament, maybe win it all.  Today, the almighty dollar has become, possibly, the greater reason for changing employers.  Which the same reason professional players don’t stay with teams like they used to.

The major problem with chasing the buck is guys leave their comfort zones.  Exhibit A: Todd Lickliter is an alum of Butler University.  After coaching at the high school ranks, he eventually became an assistant at his alma mater, rising to the head coaching job in 2001.  Success was immediate (granted, he took over a solid program, but he was a major reason it was solid) and in six years he won three league championships, went to the postseason four of those years and compiled an overall record of 131-61.  He won 53 games in his first two years, third best mark for any coach in his first two years.

He left to take the job at Iowa, replacing Steve Alford, another coach who had great success at Manchester College and Southwest Missouri State - where he went 74-48 and got to a Sweet Sixteen.  Iowa lured him with a big contract, only to show him the door eight years later.  Maybe because Lickliter’s name didn’t carry the cachet that Alford’s did, he was pink-slipped after only three years.  Alford resurfaced at New Mexico and has found success.  Lickliter is 54 years old and looking for a job, a good coach at a tough age.

It also happened to Jerry Wainwright who had great success at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, after being an assistant at Wake Forest.  He moved to Richmond where he won, but not as much.  It was hard to blame Jerry, as fine an individual and as tough a guy (he nearly died in a car accident, but came back stronger than ever) as you’ll find, for taking the DePaul job (he’s a native of Chicago).  He lost his job this year - not because he forgot how to coach, but mainly because DePaul isn’t what it was when Ray Meyer was there.  It’s just that the people at DePaul don’t want to face reality.

The “show me the money” game nearly did in Dan Monson, who inherited the Gonzaga job from the late Dan Fitzgerald, took it to never-before-been-experienced-heights, only to bolt for the mega-cash at Minnesota.  He got the boot at UM and, after a brief hiatus, wound up at Long Beach State - while his assistant at Gonzaga, Mark Few, elevated the Zag program even higher.  Possibly due to what he saw happen to his friend, Mons, Few has stayed in Spokane despite being wooed year after year.

I’ve used it before but the most poignant quote regarding changing jobs came from Jim Valvano (who himself moved from Johns Hopkins to Bucknell to Iona to NC State).  He’d mention this to every coach who asked him about whether or not to move from one job to another.  His only question to the coach was, “Are you happy?”  Most would reply in the affirmative.  His response was:

“Don’t mess with happy.”

Each year at this time, there are certain things that we can be assured of seeing and hearing: arguments over who got in and why; arguments over who was left out and why; first round upsets or near upsets; big games by relatively unknown players, and … sportswriters and sportscasters, led by the incomparable Dick Vitale, talking about a successful coach of a low- to mid-major team whose club just pulled off a major upset in the Big Dance, catapulting himself onto the short list of every school where there’s a coaching opening (and even on some who had a coach but there were rumors that …).  When questioned, these coaches will usually say something like, “Well, it’s awful nice to be thought of by someone else” (especially in a business where there is noooo job security), “but right now, all my efforts are centered on our next game.  There’s nothing more important to me than that right now - except for my family.”

The last part of that last line is said almost as if it was genuine.  Any coach who says that is, more than likely, trying to say to all the athletics directors that they shouldn’t rush into anything because should we lose this one, give me five minutes with my what will soon be my former team and then, anytime - day, night, weekend, holiday - just give me a call and we’ll talk - the sooner, the better.

There’s also a group of coaches (a group that I longed to be a member of, although I never was presented with the opportunity) who sincerely want to stay at their job and see how high they can build it.  Jerry Tarkanian was one.  He agonized over the UNLV offer when he was at Long Beach State and came oh-so-close to staying at LBSU (where he’d had incredible success) until an administrator made some disparaging remarks about the type of person he would consider Tark if he decided to leave.  The NBA offers that came when he was achieveing all that success at UNLV caused Jerry more angst.  He never did leave and, went to the Final Four on four different ocasions, eventually winning one.  Note: After he was out of coaching, the San Antonio Spurs hired him but that stay lasted all of 20 games. 

Another coach in this neighborhood is Mark Few.  Although he’s had numerous opportunities to leave Gonzaga, he has, to date, turned all of them down.  There was a time that people, mainly the talking heads, questioned him about the wisdom of not accepting an offer from one of the “big” schools so he could have a chance to win a National Championship.  Instead, he stayed with the Zags and made them National Championship contenders.  His friend and former running mate at Gonzaga was Dan Monson.  Few and Monson were assistants to Dan Fitzgerald in the early ’90s. 

Few must have learned from his buddy, who had in his contract that he would be the head coach when Fitz decided to retire.  Once he did and Monson took over, he made sure it was written in Few’s contract that, should Monson leave, Few was guaranteed the head coaching job.  Note: Few’s contract has a provision that assistant Leon Rice be named the coach when Few leaves.  Wise move.  How hard do you think that assistant is going to work, knowing that if he performs his job well enough, his boss might get one of those big paying jobs, where he’d make a enough dough to retire on (when he wanted)? 

Although Fitz was a heckuva coach in his own right, the program took off when Monson took over.  He was offered the Minnesota job and took it.  It was in a bigger league, he made a ton of money and … became miserable.  Ultimately, he was let go by UM and is currently the head coach at, coincidentally, Long Beach State.

Monson should have known that chasing the dollar (and, after all, that’s the real reason these guys are leaving) was a bad idea after his father Don, who had enjoyed tremendous success at the University of Idaho, took the Oregon job, where he had some success, but not nearly as much as he would have had if he stayed.  His mentor, Jud Heathcote, left a great program at the University of Montana for a down-and-almost-out head coaching job at Michigan State.  Don eventually got fired at the school where Nikes were invented.

 At a level below Division I is coaching legend Don Meyer, currently the head coach at Northern State in Aberdeen, SD.  Don started his head coaching career at Hamline (MN) University, then moved to David Lipscomb University in Nashville, TN and enjoyed unparalled success there.  One day, he was told the university was making plans to move into Division I.  Don thought it was a foolish move and said so.  The president (or director of athletics) told him their crosstown rival Belmont was doing it and so were they - with him or without him.  In a previous blog, I ended with a quote that said, “Anytime you say, ‘It’s this or else, be prepared for all else.’”

Don left, Northern State couldn’t have been happier and a flurry of wild events happened next.  First, Don got into a terrible car accident and doctors were forced to amputate his left leg, just below the knee.  Don, being Don, got discharged from the hospital and is now  …  coaching at Northern State.  On January 11, Northern State, and its coach, Don Meyer, won a basketball game, making Don the all-time winningest mens collegiate basketball coach.

These guys worked.  Job offers came their way.  But, in other places, guys can’t wait to move and one day, many of them get that opportunity, but not because their offensive or defensive strategy is talked about nation-wide, but because they have to.  They just got fired.  The reason: Usually it’s a combination, but the main one is a syndrome in the making. 

My former boss and current mentor and friend, George Raveling, used to say of these guys:

“Some guys work harder at getting their next job than they do at the one they have.”Â

If you want to make a lot of money on winning NCAA Tournament pools, you might as well read this blog.  Not because I’m going to tell you how, but because no one else knows, so don’t even bother looking.  Stay here and enjoy reading an entertaining post before you waste your time elsewhere.  Nobody, repeat NOBODY, has a method, philosophy, strategy, special vibe, all-knowing dead uncle who speaks in code, or any other method  of predicting how things will shake out - and that includes the guy in your office who picked 94% of last year’s bracket correctly.  Follow him this year (just make sure you ask him before the games are played) and, if form holds true, he have bubkas after the smoke clears.  Joe Lunardi can tell you who’s getting in, but he has no more knowledge than your pet goldfish as to who’s going to win or lose.

Everyone who’s ever participated in filling out a bracket, or simply picking winners in March Madness, knows the key is finding the upsets.  Anyone can pick the favorites all the way through, and if their entry wins, they’ll be sharing the pot with about 25% of the other contestants.  It’s when you pick the winner by going “against the chalk” that separates your selections from all others.  The best indicator, although I’ve not done a formal poll, just an observation from following this competition since the mid-60’s: is how the teams are matched up will be the most telling factor in tournament success.  Back when I started watching, it was a heckuva lot easier.  You’d start your pool by picking UCLA all the way through and crown them National Champions and then fill in the rest. 

Now, no one’s nearly as dominating as UCLA (unless you count what Memphis does in Conference USA or Gonzaga in the West Coast Conference), so there actually can be a difference of opinion regarding which team will cut down the nets.  There are so many factors involved, and the more of them there are, the more difficult a task you’ll have deciding which squads advance.

Injuries always play a vital role.  If you don’t think so, ask St. Mary’s, who’d be sitting with a fairly decent seed at the moment, had Patty Mills not been lost for several games, causing him to come back (maybe a little) too early and exposing how much his team relied on him.  The manner in which they lost to Gonzaga in the WCC Tournament Finals did the Gaels in as much as the games they lost during the season when he was out since it looked like his injury was far from healed.  However, no team is going to tell the straight truth about injuries - and this one time - they can’t be blamed, because if they did, their chances of getting the seed they wanted would be non-existent.

Case in point: During the 1999-2000 season, I was Director of Basketball Operations at Fresno State.  We had won the WAC Tournament and received a #9 seed in the West Region.  We were paired up with #8 seed Wisconsin in Salt Lake City, the winner of the game to play the winner of the game between #1 seed Arizona against (excuse me for forgetting whichever team was seeded #16 and lost to the Wildcats).

Immediately prior to the tournament, U of A’s 7-foot center, Loren Woods, suffered a spained ankle.  With him, the Wildcats were a legitimate threat to go to the Final Four and maybe even, win it all.  Many of us knew Woods wasn’t going to be able to play, even when ‘Cats head coach Lute Olson maintained he would.  And why not?  They were nowhere near the same team without him.  But the committee bought it and gave Arizona a #1 seed.

I distinctly remember speaking with the Wisconsin coaches (upon arriving in Salt Lake) and it was unanimous among us that the winner of our game would advance to the Sweet Sixteen - which is exactly what happened.  Both of us, i.e. the staffs at Fresno and UW knew that without a healthy Woods, Arizona was not only extremely beatable, but he was such a game changer, we started to check who we might have to play after we left Salt Lake so we wouldn’t be scrambling after whichever one of us won.  So, injuries, and their severity always will play a major role in the outcome of a game.  But that’s true in every game where each team needs to be at full strength to win (after all, Woods didn’t play in ‘Zona’s first round game and they won).

All in all, the way the teams match up is what will determine a game’s outcome.  Several factors are involved in the definition of “match up.”  Before I even start, let me reiterate that, taking everything into account, the team looking to pull the upset still must have enough talent to beat whomever it is they’re playing.

First, in no particular order, is the style of play.  Take Pitt for example.  Every game they lose, DeJuan Blair gets into foul trouble.  This means if a team can get him out of the game, the chances of beating Pitt soar.  Therefore, look for a team who has a big man who can score inside off of a variety of moves or has the ability to take Blair outside and put the ball on the floor, forcing him to guard away from the basket - something he’s not nearly as comfortable doing. 

Two other things enter into the picture.  This team 1) must have guards who can at least get to the three point line to initiate a pass into the post (if he’s open, but the guards are forced 35′ away from the basket - which Pitt’s guards will attempt to do - it doesn’t matter if you have Kareem in his hey day, he won’t see the ball) and 2) a coach whose philosophy is to pound it inside.

Another factor is the match ups down the road - especially for the teams with the highest seeds.  As I mentioned, Arizona won its first round game without Loren Woods - and chances are, they probably would have won it without a couple of their other starters as well.  But who looms next?  For Arizona in ‘00, it was either us (we had the nation’s leading scorer in Courtney Alexander and a good post player in 6′10″ Melvin Ely, then a sophomore).  Why, then, didn’t we win?  Because Wisconsin had a shut-down defender and got the ball to their best shooter twice, late in the shot clock, when we went to our amoeba zone defense and our guy was a step slow in closing out.  Note: We were one of the featured teams for the March Madness Show that year and I had so many people tell me that Jerry Tarkanian’s face dropped when they announced our opponent was Wisconsin.  You don’t win as many games as he did and not know when you’ve drawn a bad match.

Location also plays a role.  Is the match up in one team’s backyard where the majority of the crowd is going to make it like a home game, so should the game get really tight near the end, the local fans will do whatever in their power to get the guys a little more pumped up so they can fight through the fatigue better than their opponent, who had to travel half way across the country (or farther) to play?  It wouldn’t be any coach’s choice (if he had one) to play Michigan State in Detroit in the Final Four or, I imagine, nobody’s licking their chops at the thought of playing North Carolina or Duke in Greensboro or Villanova in Philly - especially with today’s economy dictating to many, “Maybe this year, we’ll just watch it at home.” 

Is one team primarily a zone defense team?  They’d rather play a poor outside shooting team, than one who, all season, relied on the three.  Does the coach like to call plays each time his team has the ball?  If so, they’d rather play a man-to-man team whose philosphy is playing from “the basket out” as opposed to one who wants to presure the ball and try to take a team out of its offense.  The former team may try to be physical and limit the opponent to one shot, but if the offense is well-executed, they ought to at the very least get good looks, whereas if they’re super quick and pressure so much patterns have to be broken and shots have to be created, the team’s effectiveness has been drastically cut.

Basketball is a game where one team wants to do something and the other usually wants to do the polar opposite.  Talent being (relatively) equal, whoever executes better will win.  However, if one team finds its game plan is one in which they’re attempting to do what their opponent hopes they will, one of the two participants is either stubborn or foolish.

When the game ends, most coaches who knew going in (like Tark vs. Wisconsin in 2000), they had a bad match won’t talk about for a couple of reasons.  One is that it’s too late and the other is one of Lou Holtz’s lines:

“No one is interested how rocky the ocean is, they just want you to bring the ship in.” 

 ¼/p>

Portland State 77   #7Gonzaga 70  (Portland State?)

Butler 74   #14Xavier 65  (at Xavier!)

Michigan 81   #4Duke 73  (need we say more?!)

Whatever happened to a sure bet?  How are unranked teams, such as these, beating not only ranked, but cream of the crop clubs for the 2008-09 season?

First of all, it’s not against any kind of NCAA rules for these teams to win.  But for a possible explanation, let’s probe a little deeper - or earlier - as in one game earlier in the schedule.  Each one of these upsets happened in the game following a contest that was ballyhooed for its importance.  One at a time:

First, Portland State against Gonzaga.  The game was played at Portland State, unquestionably the biggest game on the Vikings’ schedule (and not nearly the biggest for the Zags).  However, what is of greater significance (and the basis for this blog) is the fact that it was the first game Gonzaga played directly following their prime time match up against #2UConn, a game that the #8 (at that time) Zags were in control of and, I’m certain, feel they could - and should - have won in regulation.

Secondly, the game preceding the Butler contest for the then #7Musketeers from Cincy was their battle with #6 Duke, a game in which the Muskies had high hopes, only to get throttled from beginning to end by the Blue Devils, in what had to be a major disappointment for several reasons.  Number one, they were behind 22-3 before they got their first basket.  Number two, Duke was up 31 at the half.  Number three, Xavier was undefeated (9-0) entering the game, giving some justification for a swagger, even if they were about to take on one of the most storied programs in college basketball.  Numbers one and two de-swaggered them in a hurry.

The third upset was Duke losing to Michigan in Ann Arbor, but whether it was the biggest game of the year for the Wolverines is highly debatable, what with Michigan State and the rest of the Big Ten coming in for visits later in the year.  The game before this one?  How about one of the most talked about up-and-comers in Purdue (although up-and-comer is relative since it’s not like Gene Keady didn’t achieve success during his long tenure in West Lafayette).  The two teams were billed as mirror images of each other - and the game was in Mackey Arena, as loud a venue (and this is from first hand experience of my 30 years spent in intercollegiate coaching), as each of the following: Rupp (Kentucky), the “Deaf Dome” (LSU), the Erwin Center (Texas), the Marriott Center (Utah), Williams Arena (Minnesota) and the McKale Center (Arizona).  (Note: MacArthur Court, Oregon’s home court, is in a category of its own).

Yet, Duke destroyed the Boilermakers by just absolutely “shutting off their water.”  It was a defensive clinic and the crowd was never able to become a factor.  The way Duke played that day, it would have taken an all-star team (or one dressed in sky blue, but isn’t that redundant) to keep up with Coach K’s guys.

After these games, especially a win like Duke experienced, it’s so difficult to immediately refocus (usually in just a matter of days) to reach the level necessary to maintain peak performance.  Everybody on campus and around town the players are running into are all talking about the game just played and how a ref’s call (Gonzaga vs. UConn) or “if we had played them on any other day” (Xavier vs. Duke) or, worse, if the team won (like Duke vs. Purdue), “man, you guys merked ‘em,” “you locked them up” and other compliments.  In no case, does anyone, other than the coaching staff, talk about getting ready for the next game.  The players are either beating themselves up (Gonzaga re: UConn), questioning themselves (Xavier vs. Duke) or celebrating (Duke vs. Purdue).

As legendary football coach and master psychologist, George Allen, always mentioned at clinics:

“The most difficult game to play is the one right after a big emotional game.” Â