Everything Is Different
Every coach is trying to figure out the formula. How do you get your team to play their best in the post-season? It's a great conversation, one I have with countless coaches in the off-season.
One thing I learned that impacted the way we prepared for the post-season was that everything was going to be different. It's one of the oddities of college basketball when you get into post-season play. I'm not just talking about the stakes, the pressure or the intensity - of course that is different as well. But the structure of the post-season is different. You cannot stick to your usual routine, and that is something you can prepare for.
The NCAA dictates just about everything in the post-season. They tell you when you are leaving and how you are getting there, along with limiting how many people you can "officially" bring. They tell you what hotel you are staying in, when you get practice times in the arena, and when you have to be available for the media. They have open practices that you have to be at for 45 minutes to an hour the day before the game, usually right in the middle of the day. They dictate the times that are available for the shoot around on game day and they limit the time you have. Our option in Chicago for the Sweet 16 was only 30 minutes, when normally we'd have an hour, and it was later than we wanted to shoot. And it didn't matter that the arena was open earlier and we were fine going earlier, we couldn't do that. We had to go at our prescribed time after Kansas (as the higher seed) chose their time. We went to Illinois-Chicago to shoot that day rather than the United Center.
Think about it for a minute. On the day before the biggest game of their lives, North Carolina, Duke, Kansas and Villanova had a public practice in the Superdome that was free for everyone to watch. Then they had to go somewhere else (or maybe they were coming from somewhere else) find a gym, and actually get a practice in to prepare for the game. That's all driven by the NCAA and I understand why. But it couldn't be more different than what you are used to doing in preparing for a big game.
When you arrive for the game you only get 60 minutes to warm up. They literally guard the basketballs to make sure no one touches them before the 60 minute mark. Normally for a game guys are on the floor getting shots up at least 90 minutes before tip, but that isn't the case in the NCAA Tournament. Everyone has to get the same amount of time across the country, so if Duke is only getting 60 minutes in San Francisco, Providence is only getting 60 minutes in Chicago. There is no getting shots up early in the arena.
The time outs are longer, and there are more of them (10 media time outs, as opposed to 9). Halftime is 20 minutes, not 15. The anthem is done earlier, the lineups are announced differently. The games take longer. Everything is different.
At the Division III level you face the same challenges. I realized this the first year we went to the NCAA Tournament at RIC. Every game was played with media timeouts in the DIII tournament, which most schools didn't do all year. Therefore you got less timeouts to call. For a team that played a lot of guys and liked to wear teams out, that impacted the game. Teams that had a short bench got more rest for their starters. There were no open practices, but your practice on the game court was regulated and limited to 90 minutes - a pretty tight window to go start to finish for practice when you include stretching, shooting and the scout. It all felt different because it was the NCAA Tournament. But the structure of your routine was much different. You had to to adjust to a new approach for the biggest games of the season.
Preparing your team to play well in the post-season is preparing them for something that is very different. After our first trip at RIC, I realized if we wanted to continue to have success in the NCAA Tournament we had to prepare for the unexpected during the regular season. We intentionally changed our routine consistently. We made our kids uncomfortable at times, having practices at different hours or giving them a short window to finish drills. We created some distractions, whether it was music playing during drills or practicing in our schools recreation center with other students around to increase focus. We changed our approach to practice, sometimes forcing them to stretch on their own in the hallway before practice so they stepped on the floor ready to go. We would sometimes practice with everyone in the same color, forcing them to adjust and communicate in a different way. The point was to constantly mix things up on them. We were intentional about getting them used to different situations, because we knew in the post-season it was all going to be different.
Getting ready to win in the post-season starts with a mentality borne out of the way you operate every day in the regular season. You will not be able to control all the variables in the post-season - even before you play the game. You will have to get out of your routine. Doing things to get your guys out of their routine during the regular season will prepare them when March comes around.