When Your Attitude is Right, The Facts Don't Matter

I am not certain about how this team accomplishes some of the things it does. Sometimes we look so lost that we couldn't find the direction down a way one street and other times, when we have that spark, that look in our eyes which implies a don't-mess-with-me attitude, we can achieve remarkable things. After a two game losing streak where we fought with our hearts but not our heads, we came back to win two in a row. That, however, is not the remarkable thing I'm talking about.

What I am talking about is that we won those games with one and a half healthy post players. The one healthy post is freshman Kali Cuttaia and the half is 5'7'' guard turned post, Marilene LaPierre. Ericka Rousculp, the leading rebounder in the nation, was playing on an injured ankle and Shelby Stokes was out with another injury. In the game against Ohio Valley, we started with Tiffany Scott, but lost her to a head injury in the first two minutes of the game. So we played two games with one and half healthy posts. Now this is a daunting task for a good team to overcome, but for a young team, it should have been almost impossible.

I'm still not quite certain how we pulled it off, but this team has some never-say-die quality about them which makes them think they can do anything even if they have never done it before. In our last game, we set a school record for the highest second half shooting percentage in a game netting a blistering 74% from the field. This was after a rather disgusting first half where we looked as if the game was simply too fast for us and we couldn't find a way to put the ball in the basket even if it was a uncontested lay-up. How does a team who normally shoots below 40% pull that one off? And how does it pull it off when another starter goes down in the first half after plowing into the wall leaving a trail of blood in her wake? Oh, Nichole did come back and play in the second half. In fact, she played her best half of basketball in her young career scoring all 17 of her points in the last 20 minutes of play. (From this lesson, the coaching staff has deduced if she is not playing well, we should slam her head against the wall.)

Most teams would have quit in the circumstances above. They would have bought into the belief that all was going against them, but this team didn't. Nope. They just kept playing. Maybe it is their innocence, the freshmen naivete, which kept them from thinking the sky was falling, but maybe, just maybe, they have been listening to us tell them that when your attitude is right, the facts don't matter.

PLAY HARD. PLAY TOGETHER.