Good to get back on track

[Coreyc04]

Utah basketball played well.

They only turned the ball over 9 times which is the goal for most teams.

The refs tried to give this game to cu by slowing it down and calling fouls and getting our best players in foul trouble. We persevered and beat the buffs.

This team has more heart than most give them credit for and deserve your support until the season ends. 

Utah needs to win out and Cal needs 2 of their last 3. Cal is currently on a 3 game losing streak.

We outscored cu when kuzma was on the bench. That has to give Utah a lot of confidence going forward.

Players looked looser than they did in previous games. They were trying to win and instead of trying not to lose the game

Either way we win out we get the 4 or 5 seed.

[Minnesota Ute]

I am simultaneously happy with a gritty win, but also worried about Kristko, Daniels, and whole team chemistry thing.  I watch Larry and he seems p**sed off all the time.  It’s a long season with a lot of road games and late games, it’s a grind.  So I worry that he isn’t giving them enough positive reinforcment to keep their emotional tank filled.  I’m encouraged by what appeared to be a postiive response from the team regarding Devon’s suspension, but at the same time, I worry because sometimes these things take a while to sink in.  I hope the team is on board and feels the suspension was rational & justified, because if not that alone can be exhausting.

I related in a post earlier this week about a local high school coach with that issue.  His team has now lost 7 of their last 9 to drop to 10-12, and coincidentally my wife bumped into one of the players parents the other day, and without her saying a word, he unloaded about how his kid has lost confidence, feels like he can’t do anything right, in dog house all the time, playing tentative, and he described several other players in the same mindset.  Says the coach just rides them down all the time in the locker room and in the huddle.  Made it sound like a lot of the players are just anxious for the season to be over.  This was the exact same feeling my son had when he played for this coach for the last 3 years.  It’s exhausting, and a little positive energy can go a long ways.  Not knowing anything other than what I see, I worry about Larry in this vein.

[PlainsUte]

Big difference between some high school kids playing for fun and a little HS glory vs college kids recruited to a P5 school getting a full ride scholarship, etc.

That said, I agree that for every kick in the ass the players do need some positive reinforcement to grow, so that is why some of the best teams have had the good-cop, bad-cop coaching combo, where the head coach pushes the team hard, but an assistant or two is there to reassure the players that they have skillz, getting torn down by the coach is not the end of the world, etc.

[Minnesota Ute]

I used to think so too, but the more I see and learn, the more I believe that people are people.  They react the same way to negative feedback vs positive feedback, but individually some are more suceptible to negativity.  But my perceptions, heavily influenced by watching my kids grow up, are that their suceptibility is more heavily related to their personality than their age.  And add to that that these might be great D1 Athletes, but they are still kids.  I have two boys that are the same age as most of our players, and I can tell you, they are definitely still figuring s**t out.

I will also say that I’ve lost my belief in the good cop/bad cop strategy.  Might work well for getting a information/confession out of a criminal, but my experience over the last two years is beginning to make be believe that criticism and harsh judgement just doesn’t work.  Corrections are necessary, but they should be done in the most positive constructive way possible, and only after you’ve already acknowledged several things the person is doing right.  I train our employees on how to do this in a work setting, and I took it home with me and really started committing to it with my kids.  The difference and the results were frankly unbelievable.

I really am starting to believe that this is the fundemental difference between the elite coaches of today, and the rest of the pack.  They have figured out how to keep their kids playing at the highest level by keeping their emotional tank full.  Of course all of this makes me reflect on Majerus and wonder what his magic was?  We all heard the same stories about things he’d say and do, but at the same time, many of his players loved him.  We all also remember cookie gate, and him buying a player (was it Andre) the plane ticket, and being there for KVH.  I often wonder if he wasn’t a lot more postive than he was portrayed, and whether he cultivated that image a little in order to appear tougher than he was.  Regardless, so far I am not seeing that love for Kristko like I saw for Maj.

All interesting to speculate, hard to ever know for sure what goes on inside an organization.

[PlainsUte]

Good point, maybe the negative aspect is not needed (as much).  Yes, wish I really knew what was going on with the Utes in the lockerroom, on the team plane, with repect to Daniels, etc.