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= Another UK Win!
All season long coaches and teams have been trying to find the formula to beat UK. Indiana found success against UK by adding a secret weapon to their arsenal: an arena full of everyone wearing the same t-shirt! Laugh at the silliness of my post but think about it for a minute. Indiana fans all wore t-shirts stating UK lost to Indiana the day of the game. We all know what happened, it worked. No team, that I recall, has had an arena full of fans wearing the same t-shirt again until, that's right, last night.
Rick Stansbury's program tried to use a formula of their own to beat UK combining elements of other teams such as Ole Miss' physical play and Vandy's will to win plus Indiana's secret ingredient of t-shirts. Chevron supplied t-shirts with the company logo to all the MSU fans with the intention of first, advertising of course, and second turning the whole arena white for a full white-out. It worked well and somehow they managed to do like Indiana and keep UK fans out. I only spotted a handful of UK fans in attendance (at least over TV). Nothing any team has tried has had as large of a negative effect on our team than t-shirts so there you have it. If UK loses again this season it won't be because of them having a really bad day or the other team playing out of their minds. It will be because all the opposing fans wore the same shirts.
In all seriousness though, last night's game was a really, really good one. Stansbury should definitely be commended for having his team ready to play us and believe they could win. They very much did have a chance to win, and one could argue they were the more deserving team to win since they led up until the last few minutes of the game. Our team was faced with its worst 'back against the wall' position since Indiana and the fact we clawed back from a 13 pt deficit in the final minutes to win, and not only win by one or two but by nine, shows how this team has matured and become a very, very dangerous team.
Some have argued that maybe losing last night would not have been that bad of a thing since like Calipari has stated, it's easy to get complacent and we don't want our team to think they are invincible. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, a loss can be good at times to give a team a realty check that no matter how much they may have progressed since their last loss, they can still be beaten. On the other hand, sometimes a loss can do more harm than good for a team and negatively affect them instead of motivating them. Just look at the UK hoops team that last 3 straight after going through half the SEC unbeaten.
Whether or not a team needs a loss or could benefit from one prior to tournament time really would depend on the mentality of the team. Teams that tend to be more showy and sometimes more self focused then team focused could benefit from a reality check. Some could argue that Calipari's first UK team was unified, but had a few strong personalities too and maybe an extra loss prior to the NCAA tournament might have had them better prepared mentally for West Virginia. A team like the one we have this year though that is very unified and doesn't really seem to have anyone that is self focused over team can probably learn just as much from a close game like last night's as they would a loss. They don't have to have that reality check.
The bottom line is, every team is subject to a bad game at some point. The question is if any such time occurs in the NCAA tournament. Top teams in the NCAA tournament aren't going to be that affected by prior losses and will mainly be subject to luck determining more than anything whether they can go all the way or not. Twenty-two teams have entered the NCAA tournament as the number 1 team in the country and won the tournament with the latest being North Carolina in 2009. It can be done and this team has a very good shot. Never underestimate the luck factor though since the best team in the tournament doesn't always end of the winner. Don't look so much into the future to the tournament that you miss out on the fun that comes from watching what this team is doing right now.
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