What Arizona Planned For
Today’s blog was inspired by this postgame quote from Arizona Head MBB Coach Tommy Lloyd after their Sweet 16 win. This time of year always creates an internal wrestling match for me as a coach.
March Madness is so tempting.
When you watch success on the biggest stage in college basketball, it is incredibly easy to start trying to steal whatever you think led to that success. Was it the BLOB with five seconds left? Was it the halftime adjustment to go zone instead of man in the upset game? Was it the roster construction of the Regional Champs that now suddenly becomes the blueprint — length above everything else, shooting at every spot, veteran guards?
Part of me always wants to study it like film and immediately ask, What do I need to take from this for my own program? And another part of me wonders if sometimes it’s okay to just sit back and enjoy the game for the entertainment it is, without immediately turning every possession into a coaching clinic. That back-and-forth lives in me every March.
But this quote from Coach Lloyd hit differently because it was about emotional regulation. It was about planning for the human moments that can lose you a game just as quickly as a busted coverage or bad late-game set.
He talks about how they had identified moments during the season where games started to tilt toward a melee, where emotional chippiness could derail what they were trying to do, and how they built a plan for responding to that.
That, to me, is refreshing.
So many coaches will have twenty late-game “special situation” packages and rehearse those over and over. But Arizona correctly identified that getting emotionally triggered into a stupid foul, a retaliatory shove, or a technical was just as vital to winning as a late-game home run set. And they built reps around it. They planned for it. They practiced it.
That’s exactly the philosophy behind our Meet The Moments work at TeamsOfMen.
We have built an entire Meet The Moments progression for teams to use in the first three weeks of any season so your staff is thinking about these exact kinds of non-scheme situations that still decide games.
What happens when a player gets taunted?
What happens when the officials miss three calls in a row?
What happens when frustration spills into confrontation?
What happens when a player wants revenge more than the next possession?
Because character under pressure is just as trainable as execution under pressure.
Kudos to the Wildcats for showing on a national stage that values, preparation, and emotional readiness are not separate from winning. They are winning.
Coach Prompts
What emotional moments in games repeatedly hurt your team?
What do you rehearse that isn’t Xs and Os?
How do your players respond to taunting, missed calls, or chippy play?
Player Prompts
What game moments make it hardest for you to stay composed?
How do you usually react when an opponent tries to get under your skin?
What helps you reset after a frustrating play or call?
