With a minute left in yesterday’s game, I turned to my wife and said: “You know, sometimes you just play down to the level of your competition and you lay an egg. They’re still a good team.” She chastised me for giving up too soon, but you all know how I felt. In the broader fabric of my life, I am an optimist and certainly not a quitter. In the smaller context of Seton Hall basketball, however, I had been conditioned to think this way.
We’ve all seen that bad movie a couple of dozen times over the last 35 years. The tragic script is always the same. A double digit lead is squandered to an inferior team. The game turns ugly with a capital ug. Average players on the other team seemingly grow three inches and start to play like NBA all stars. As the leads shrinks into single digits, it feels like the game clock is no longer moving. The circumference of the rim we are shooting at shrinks a few inches and then apparently forms an invisible lid. The breath of our defenders touching the opposing guards is interpreted as personal fouls and of course they are in the double bonus. As we get hacked on the other end, the refs swallow their whistles. A slow motion train wreck pours out of the television screen or radio speaker. In a final indignity, you spill salsa on your Marco Lokar jersey.
It all seemed to be happening again yesterday, and then suddenly it was not. Our players did more that keep calm. They steeled themselves. Just enough foul shots were made. Just enough defense was played, and we escaped.
Our troops retreated back across the Cuomo-Christie line holding their noses and clutching a foul smelling but critical victory.
Maybe it was just the laws of probability kicking in and throwing us a statistical bone.
Just maybe though, this represents a more substantive change. Tectonic plates shifting. Demons being exorcised. Perhaps the mists of kharma are now swirling around our program in a different direction.
One can only hope.
We’ve all seen that bad movie a couple of dozen times over the last 35 years. The tragic script is always the same. A double digit lead is squandered to an inferior team. The game turns ugly with a capital ug. Average players on the other team seemingly grow three inches and start to play like NBA all stars. As the leads shrinks into single digits, it feels like the game clock is no longer moving. The circumference of the rim we are shooting at shrinks a few inches and then apparently forms an invisible lid. The breath of our defenders touching the opposing guards is interpreted as personal fouls and of course they are in the double bonus. As we get hacked on the other end, the refs swallow their whistles. A slow motion train wreck pours out of the television screen or radio speaker. In a final indignity, you spill salsa on your Marco Lokar jersey.
It all seemed to be happening again yesterday, and then suddenly it was not. Our players did more that keep calm. They steeled themselves. Just enough foul shots were made. Just enough defense was played, and we escaped.
Our troops retreated back across the Cuomo-Christie line holding their noses and clutching a foul smelling but critical victory.
Maybe it was just the laws of probability kicking in and throwing us a statistical bone.
Just maybe though, this represents a more substantive change. Tectonic plates shifting. Demons being exorcised. Perhaps the mists of kharma are now swirling around our program in a different direction.
One can only hope.
