okansas.blogspot.com

okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Regaining concentration

It happens to every orienteer. You're doing well. Concentrating on what you're doing. You boom a control. Then you start thinking. "I boomed that one, gotta make up for it," or maybe, "had a good run, dumb mistake, dumb, dumb, dumb." Next thing you know you start running too fast and reading too little. You make another mistake and lose more time.

That's sort of what happened to Kansas in last nights basketball game. The started the game playing amazing basketball and got to a lead of 40-12. At halftime the lead was 44-27. Kansas was like an orienteer concentrating perfectly and running fast.

Then something happened - like an orienteer booming a control. North Carolina outscored Kansas 27-6 to start the second half and cut the lead to 4 points.

"We made dumb plays," said the Kansas player Sasha Kaun. Like an orienteering trying to make up for lost time and booming another control.

Suddenly, after a time out, Kansas looked like everything was back under control and Kansas pulled away over the last 8 or 9 minutes of the game to win by 18. Like an orienteer who regained concentration and ran the rest of the course concentrating well and running fast.

When I was watching the game on TV I wondered what a coach would tell the team at that time out. So I poked around the web and found a quote from a Kansas player - Darnell Jackson - about what the coach said during that time out:

“Coach Self said, ‘Everybody take a deep breath; do it with me,’’’ Jackson said, indicating the players actually exhaled with Self in front of the bench. “We were fine after that.”

There is a lesson there.

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posted by Michael | 3:48 PM

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