I guess we put this thread on ice until the next game, huh?
No, this is the problem: were playing basically the same type of basketball every game. I truly don't understand why people get so up and down, because this looked just like the way we played against Seton Hall, Butler,Providence and Depaul. The fact we won tonight and at Providence, and lost the others is not cause for extreme reactions. We're actually a very consistent team lately, with the exception of a few threes that dropped a gains the friars.
You either like what you've seen, or you dont. This game to game reaction stuff is nonsense.
+1,000.
The question isn't whether we win or lose a particular game, or even whether we play well or not in any particular game. The question is whether as a whole we play good basketball and are building an identity as a program.
Whether we get crushed by Duke, or come out with an inspired effort and pull the upset, or (most likely) hang tough for 20 or 30 minutes and then fade won't change the big picture at all.
Every game circumstance is different. We could have easily lost last night, just as we could have easily won vs. Butler or DePaul or Seton Hall. I'll take winning and not playing optimally, over losing and playing well. Unless there is a D1 college coach here on Redmen.com who knows better, I'd say the strategy yesterday worked because we won. Using Amar to provide meaningful minutes was a good call, and had he been shuffled off the floor in time to avoid foul #4, he'd have been serviceable in the first half.
In terms of Harrison's shooting, I don't think he would make the excuse that he had a sore leg. HE wasn't limping, and certainly while it was wrapped in the second half, to start the game he shot just horribly - something we've seen before from him. I can't say it was his injury, and to assert that it was is just presumptuous with basis and nothing more.
Credit Vince Lombardi:
“Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while; you don’t do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
“There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that’s first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don’t ever want to finish second again. There is a second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win.
“Every time a football player goes to play his trade he’s got to play from the ground up – from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That’s O.K. You’ve got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you’ve got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you’re lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he’s never going to come off the field second.
“Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization – an army, a political party or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win – to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don’t think it is.”
“It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That’s why they are there – to compete. To know the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules – but to win.”
“And in truth, I’ve never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head to head combat.”
“I don’t say these things because I believe in the ‘brute’ nature of man or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour – his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear – is that moment when he has to work his heart out in a good cause and he’s exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.”
Vince Lombardi
