Guy Reams (00:01.678)
Today's day 166, teaching them to reset. So yesterday I went with my daughter down to the Pauley Pavilion at UCLA to witness the NCAA, first round of the NCAA tournament for women's college athletes.
So this was very interesting because I've never been to one of these. And it was the first round that we got to see Creighton play the UNLV Rebels. And then right after that, we got to see the UCLA Bruins play the Cal Baptist Lancers. Now, this was Cal Baptist's first time ever in an NCAA tournament. And this was their first season being Division I. So they were clearly starstruck.
But it was fun. My daughter and I got to see the world, the house that wouldn't built. And obviously it's new and fancy, but it was really fun to watch the two games. I learned a lot while I was watching the games. First off, both UNLV and Cal Baptist were clearly outmatched by Creighton and UCLA.
It wasn't that they didn't have enthusiasm. They certainly had talented players, but you could just tell the level of skill set was just significantly better, both from a shooting mechanic is passing and team play as well as just the the coaching talent. I mean, clearly the two teams were well rehearsed, well coached. They had a significant staff there and their shooting percentages were.
way higher than the other team. I mean, the games from a talent level were pretty close. I mean, except for for Cal Baptist, they were clearly shorter than UCLA UCLA's average height was probably above six feet. And and there's probably maybe one or two members of the Cal Baptist team that were above six feet. But but you know, so Cal Baptist had to play a whole bunch. They had to play like a four guard rotation against.
Guy Reams (02:17.517)
a much taller, much more athletic team. However, they did try hard. They played very good. Cal Baptist got it close a couple of times. UNLV had a great center who dominated the game. But even then, just the ability to shoot the basketball and make baskets as well as running plays and clock management, all of those things were just far superior than the other teams. And they just started to pull ahead.
And that's what happened. They basically won the game, which taught me a lesson about, you know, in life, if you want to be better than the competition, you got to remember to just do the basics really well. I mean, you just cannot be more successful than others unless you really focus on the basics. Well, I took that lesson away, but that wasn't the big lesson that I learned.
During the UCLA game there were a couple of times when Cal Baptist pulled it close. They got within 10 points and in both cases in both cases the the coach coach close of the UCLA Bruins went ahead and called a timeout. So during the timeout I thought I saw something that was very interesting.
She would have, her staff would immediately put out five chairs, which the Bruins would all gather, sit on, and they would huddle close. And this coaching staff would ignore the players. They would go to the middle of the court and they would stand and hold court, and the coaching staff would talk amongst each other and take notes, but they wouldn't really interact with the players, which I thought was interesting. And then after the timeout was over, the players would go back out on the court and,
Both times the Bruin players immediately ran two or three plays that immediately got them extra points. They hustled harder, they got a couple really key turnovers, and they ran three or four plays, and next thing you know, they were up by 20 points again. I mean, both cases, that's what happened. So I was thinking, what's going on here? I mean, it's not like the coaches told them much. So it's like, what's happening? Well, it was after the game,
Guy Reams (04:30.349)
My daughter and I listened to the post game show where Coach Close talked about the game. And there was one point there where she, and I'll read the quote, she says the following, both timeouts that I had to call, we responded out of those and had big runs out of both of those timeouts. And my challenge to them in the locker room was, can you do that on your own? Can you do that at a dead ball or after a free throw?
Can you connect and make that response quicker and not wait for a timeout to make those things happen? So I went back and looked at the game this morning and sure enough, during the second half, there's moments where there's a timeout, like the dead ball occurs or a foul or something happens where there's a pause in the game. And sure enough, the five Bruins all gather together right there in the court and they kind of hold a little conference together.
players and and I thought this is interesting that's what they're doing they're resetting they're resetting their minds and where they're at because Cal Baptist was just disrupting they were being very aggressive and and very you know they hustling right so UCLA kept getting pulled away from their game plan but here they were gathering together by themselves and resetting I thought this is interesting that coach close was teaching them
as a strategy both in basketball but as well as in life to handle distractions by not having to have a big major reset like a timeout or a vacation but to remind yourself all throughout the course of the gameplay you can stop take a deep breath and reset yourself and get yourself back into the motion that you were in that was winning and so that's what's happened so i thought that was interesting
What a powerful strategy. Can you reset yourself? Can you reset yourself throughout the day? Whatever distractions occur, things don't go quite according to plan. Can you take a deep breath, reset yourself, and go right back into the action with your game plan? So that was my observations after watching the first round of the NCAA tournament. Thank you.