I wouldn’t consider myself a sports fanatic;
however, I enjoy watching football from time to time–namely, the Missouri
Tigers. Mizzou is not the greatest team in college football, especially now
that they don’t have a really good quarterback, and even more so once they move
to the SEC. Like any sports fan, I have my dreams of seeing my team go to the
BCS championship. More likely than not, however, the end of the season greets
me with disappointment and I tuck away my Mizzou car flags behind a stack of
tools in my garage until next year.
But, before I count the whole year as a
loss, I take a glance at how we’re doing in basketball. Usually, how this goes
is after we have an unfulfilling football season I pull up ESPN to see how
college basketball is going. Usually, I see a God-awful win/loss column, and
turn off the TV and wait to see how next year’s football is going to go. I
don’t enjoy watching basketball, especially if my team is losing.
When I looked up Mizzou basketball this
year, what I saw was quite unusual: Missouri was 7-0 and ranked #10. Missouri
was ranked! After an irksome 8-5 football season, where Mizzou did little more
than fall short, it looked like basketball was going to be this institution’s
redemption.
Missouri wasn’t expected to amount to
anything in basketball this year because of their four-guard structure. Also, very
few of the players were very tall, by basketball standards. The reason they
were so successful wasn’t because they had a playmaker carrying them throughout
the season, like you see in so many teams in college basketball, but because they
worked together as a team. Frank Haith came into this organization and took the
same players that had a 23-11 season last year, and transformed them into one
of the most dangerous teams in the NCAA. In this team, the ball didn’t go to a
playmaker; it went to the open man. The results where staggering. Missouri
ended the season 30-4 overall, losing only to conference rivals. Their offense
averaged 6th overall, with 80.3 points per game. They lost the Big
12 regular season championship (the only championship that doesn’t matter) to
Kansas, but dominated their opponents during the Big 12’s post-season
championship.
By the end of the season I was waging
bets with friends. I just knew they were making it to the final four–if not the
National Championship. After all, a team would have to score 80 points against
Missouri in order to beat them. Unfortunately, a team did just that–86 points
to be exact–in the first round of March Madness. The score was 84 to 86. The
team was Norfolk State–some no name 15th seed. And again, I have to tuck away
my car flags and wait until next year.
Ultimately, though, this year has taught
me so much about the power of teamwork. To take a team that was supposed to
suck, changing nothing about the players but how they interact as a whole,
Frank Haith created, without a doubt, the most cooperative team in this year’s
basketball. He thereby created the most dangerous little-man offense in the
NCAA. Even though it would have been nice to see my team in the National
Championship, leaving the Big 12 as conference champions is enough for me.
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