High Performing Teams - Win Anyway

The Characteristics of High Performing Teams - Part 4

High performing teams refuse to make excuses. They cultivate an environment where excuses simply aren’t accepted. This can start with the coach, but eventually the caretakers of this mentality are the players. Everyone is uncomfortable when excuses or rationalizations come into play, to the point where it just stops happening. The players make each other uncomfortable when they start hearing excuses.

The phrase we used with our teams was Win Anyway. A lot of stuff happens during a season, big and small. Everyone deals with some form of adversity. You know what your job is? Win Anyway. You are missing a couple of starters due to injury? Win Anyway. The bus showed up late? Win Anyway. The officials are calling it too tight? Win Anyway.

Nobody wants to hear about the labor pains. They just want to see the baby. Everything that is happening to your team is happening to every team you play. Injuries, bad calls, unfortunate luck, a bus driver who gets lost. At the end of the game, there is a winner and a loser. And you know who cares about what happened to you or your team along the way? Nobody. Not one person. There are no accommodations made in the league standings for misfortune.

In 2010 when I was coaching at Rhode Island College we were playing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at Oswego State in New York. We played very well and handled Penn State - Behrend in the first round, and we were set to play a really good Oswego team on their home floor the next day to go to the Sweet 16.

When we were sitting down for breakfast the morning of the game, our starting center limped in with only one shoe on and said “Coach, I don’t know what happened, but my foot is killing me.” He was a first-team all league center, and probably the best player on any of the four teams in the bracket that weekend. Our entire team looked at him in disbelief. He played the entire game the night before without an issue. He didn’t know what happened. But he woke up that next morning and could barely walk.

We got on the bus to go to shoot around and I felt awful as well. Everyone had the same feeling. How are we going to win this game without our best players? He tried to put his shoe on and said he wanted to play, but it was clear he couldn’t. Our guys were kind of sleepwalking through the shoot around, everyone feeling the air had left the balloon. So I called the guys together.

“Do you guys know what is happening next Friday night? Can anyone tell me?” They looked at me puzzled. “The Sweet 16. Next Friday night there are going to be 16 teams left with a chance to win the national championship. We are either going to be one of them, or we’re not. But nobody is going to be talking about who played and who didn’t. They are still going to play the Sweet 16 games, and either us or Oswego is going to be there. So who’s it going to be?”

“Mike isn’t going to play tonight. Carl will start, and Darius will play the 5 spot. What are we going to do? We’re going to Win Anyway, just like we always do. Everyone has to be prepared to play out of position and guard up. Mike is hurt. It happens. There’s nothing we can do about it. But we are going to the Sweet 16.”

You could see our guys perk up and their emotions change. We were all feeling sorry for ourselves, myself included. It was a huge blow. But we took pride in the way we competed and never making excuses. We played probably our best game of the season that night and beat Oswego in front of their home crowd going away. We laced them up the next weekend in the Sweet 16.

No one cares what happened to you or your team. Win Anyway.