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“Ten seconds to go, we’re thinking we’re national champs, all of a sudden a kid makes a shot, and we’re not,” Calipari said.
Coaches tell players to play until they hear the whistle. There’s a simple reason – the play isn’t over until the whistle. As long as the play is alive, anything can happen. It’s why Yogi Berra said, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”
Memphis’ coach Calipari didn’t tell his team that. Given the quote above, it’s clear he was thinking the same thing the players were thinking. “We’ve got this.” Not so fast.
The Tigers lost for many reasons. Missed free throws. Failure to run some clock with 16 second left. Failure to finish possessions with points. Failure to defend. It was their championship to lose – and they found a way to give Kansas repeated opportunities. Kansas, to their credit, took advantage and now they’re the champions.
Months of preparation. Months of competing. Lots of hard work. And Memphis comes up short all because they quit too soon.
Seth Godin’s “The Dip” speaks of this phenomenon. Many people struggle and toil, but give up too soon. If they’d just keep pressing forward through the dip they’d find themselves reaching the shores of greater success.
Why do people (and teams) stop too soon?
Perhaps primarily because they don’t really know how far or close they really are. Memphis thought they were closer than they really were. Instead, they found they had further to go than they first thought.
We know where we want to go. We can see the success of the far, yonder shore. We dive in and begin to swim. None of us know how far it really is. Some stop swimming too soon.
It’s difficult to know how close we are to reaching the shore. It’s also difficult to know if our continued swimming will propel us to the shore of choice. We see the shore and think we’re close. Thoughts of having landed run through our mind, but we’re not to the shore yet. Swim until you can put your feet on the shore. Don’t quit swimming too soon or you may drown.
Eggs need time to hatch. You never know when the chicks will emerge, or if they’ll emerge. Don’t count them too soon. The men’s basketball team from Memphis is merely the latest example of the very high price paid for quitting too soon.
