Gotta Have Faith
Posted by DontBendDontBreak | Filed under Failing To Deliver
We may never know how many people fill out March Madness brackets each year. Tons of people who haven’t watched a single game get in on the action. Heck, it probably draws a lot of people who couldn’t tell you any of the rules of the game other than you try to get the ball to go through the net.
So most USC fans would have still been able to join the fun regardless of what happened during last weekend’s PAC-10 Tournament and Sunday’s selection show. But now that the Trojans will be fighting for a chance at the national championship, we can truly be invested in the excitement of the upcoming weeks.
And it’s all thanks to the genius and tenacity of Tim Floyd, USC’s basketball coach. After the team’s incredible performance against Arizona State on Saturday, I imagine many of you had the same thought as me:
Finally, a USC coach who makes good second half adjustments:
At halftime USC was down 15 points, and all seemed lost. A lesser coach would have gone through the familiar motions: motivational speech, couple of substitutions, switch up some defensive assignments. But Floyd went much, much further.
He had his players run the full-court press even though they had NEVER practiced it before. They’d barely even practiced playing AGAINST it.
How’s that for confidence in your players? Letting your guys know that this is what they need to do in order to win and that you believe they can do it. Not to take anything away from the great plays made by the athletes, but one of the main reasons they played so well in the second-half is because Tim Floyd let them know he believed they could.
Then, on the other side of campus, we’ve got Pete Carroll, who’s famous for relying on his best players and taking away some of the responsibilities of others, which only erodes their confidence, rendering them incapable of coming through when they are needed in the clutch.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. Sometimes Carroll BENCHES his best players when it matters most. Recall the infamous 4th & 2 against Texas in the Rose Bowl. Heisman-winning running back Reggie Bush was on the sidelines. Heisman-winning quarterback Matt Leinart was relegated to simply handing the ball off.
I’m not trying to disparage Lendale White. He’s a great player, and 9 times out of 10, he’d have gotten that first down. But when the game is on the line, the opponent is going to step up. So instead of running the exact play they expect, a play that’s already been used countless times during the game, why not have the faith in your players to execute something new?
Put both Bush and White in the backfield and run the wishbone for the first time ever. Or let Bush run the wildcat, with the option of running, lateraling to Lendale, or passing to a tight end.
I could go on and on naming plays that would have been better than the one called, mainly because ANY play would have been better. But the point is, Carroll only trusted his players to successfully run what they’d trained over and over and over. That’s not good coaching. That’s the theory of probability.
Dwelling on it won’t change the past, but it’s a genuine concern. Maybe Carroll should start hanging out with Floyd and learn a thing or two. Another lesson Floyd could teach him is how to get your team in the position to win it all.
Without college basketball’s playoff system, USC would be nowhere near the championship game. But it’s not Tim Floyd’s fault that the system exists. He’s just working within it, and now he’s gotten the Trojans within 5 wins of playing for the trophy.
After USC beat ucla on Friday night, many pundits were saying that might be enough to get them into the dance. But did Floyd sit on his laurels and hope for the best? No. He made it a guarantee that they would be playing for all the marbles. He could have easily lost to Arizona State and then made excuses about how USC should have been given a spot in the tournament. But Floyd doesn’t make excuses. He makes history. The first USC basketball coach to win 20 games in three straight seasons and first to get USC to the tournament three years in a row.
Carroll, on the other hand, doesn’t make history. He repeats it. You can practically set your calendars to the once a year that Carroll complains about NCAA Football not having a playoff system, extolling how great the team is playing right now and what a shame it is that they don’t get to show that talent against some other great teams.
If Carroll wants to change the system, he should join a committee. If he wants to become a good coach, he should start hanging out with Tim Floyd.
But I wouldn’t hold my breath. Floyd worked miracles over the weekend, but helping Carroll reach any kind of success would require magic that only exists in fairytales.
So we’ll just have to live with what we’ve got. An up-and-coming basketball team coached by a man who will go down in history, and a slowly fading football team coached by a man who will also go down in history…for sinking an elite program into total irrelevancy.
Tags: Lendale White, Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, Rose Bowl, Texas, Tim Floyd