Volume V was supposed to be “Playing to a Standard”, but since I was taking eight years on that one and inspiration struck sooner than I could get that posted, I’ve bumped it down to Vol. VI.
A few different things inspired this post about ownership. First was Robyn Fennig’s post about “beasting everything”. Another was (because you knew they’d be in here somehow) me thinking about what a great job the UConn women are doing with such a young, inexperienced team.
Let’s start with that last thought. This season UConn is no longer the powerhouse that it has been the last few years. While still among the favorites to win the National Championship, they are no longer the overwhelming favorite they once were. Without bringing graduated players into the conversation, the idea of starting a season with FIVE freshmen on a roster of only 11 players is pretty daunting. Then take away your returning starting point guard, your team’s quarterback, lost for the season with a torn ACL. Drops you down to ten eligible players, half returners and half rookies. You bring back two starters and two reserves who got limited playing time last season. In the middle of the season, you lose another player to transfer. Nine eligible players. One freshman has just come off consecutive knee surgeries and doesn’t have her legs back yet, while another just isn’t ready for major minutes. So you have a steady rotation of seven players. And just about two weeks ago, it was announced that Heather Buck, the only backup post UConn regularly plays, will be out a few weeks, and possibly the rest of the season, with a stress fracture. Eight players dressed and a steady rotation of six.
I support my team to the end, but I have to admit — prospects seemed dubious. I was nervous about how UConn would make it through the post-season with such a short and inexperienced bench. Even with the best player in the country in Maya Magnificent Moore, foul troubles or an off-shooting night can take players out of the equation with a swiftness. Never mind the post-season, how would the Huskies make it through Big East play unscathed? Geno said he’d be surprised if the team didn’t lose a Big East game this season. But since that loss to Stanford back in December, UConn’s ripped off twenty straight wins, with half of those games coming against teams ranked in the Top 25 (five games against teams in the Top 10). They ran the table in the Big East, and won the regular season championship. During the Big East tournament, they played 3 games in 3 days, with two blowouts in quarters (Georgetown, 59-43) and semis (Rutgers, 75-51) and a much closer championship game (Notre Dame, 73-64). They won their 17th Big East tournament title last night.
The road “post-Stanford” certainly wasn’t easy. The Big East is one of the toughest — if not the toughest — conferences in the country. UConn also played three out-of-conference games against then-#3 (and then undefeated) Duke (87-51), then-#10 North Carolina (83-57), and then-#12 Oklahoma (86-45). When tournament play started, as mentioned, they played three grueling games (the games were more physical than the scores may let on) with a short bench in three consecutive days.
So how does that happen, when the odds are seemingly stacked against you, as I’ve so tediously and superfluously detailed?
Of course, the quality and talent of your players helps. Maya Moore is the best player in the country. Simple. (Although even she is human, as evidenced by an anemic shooting night against G-Town, 2-12 for 6 points.) Having a stellar coaching staff helps too — coaches that can keep players focused and can help prepare players for the rigors of the college season.
To me, the missing third heat is ownership — that is, a player’s ownership of the team’s success and a player’s ownership over their own effort. Especially on a young team, “ownership” can be crucial to how soon a player “gets it”. Bringing young players into an established program isn’t easy. They’ll either do things just because they’re told to do them, without understanding them or truly appreciating them, or they’ll question everything that’s asked of them and everything they’re doing. I’m not saying there’s no room for change or new ideas in winning programs, I’m just saying that there’s a reason why good teams are always good, and there’s a reason why they do things the way they do — there’s a method to the madness.
A player takes ownership when they buy into the program, when they understand why they do what they do, and when they put the work in to do it. With a team whose history is as illustrious and Charlie Sheen-approved winning as UConn, it’s easy to fall back on tradition and old names, and it’s easy to hang your head when you don’t live up to them. “I’ll never be the next Diana Taurasi/Sue Bird/Tina Charles/Rebecca Lobo, etc. etc.” It’s harder to say, “Nah. I’m gonna do me.”
The player who I believe best epitomizes the concept of “ownership” on the UConn team is freshman center Stefanie Dolson.
(Wow. I’m really cussing long-winded. It took me that long to spit that out, when I could have just told you up front that I thought Stef’s a champ. Welp, if you’ve read this far, sorry ’bout it.)
I remember Stef Dolson’s second collegiate game, against 6’8 Brittney Griner’s #2 Baylor on ESPN2. Rough imagining that as your second collegiate game, huh? She looked nervous and pale as a ghost prior to tipoff, and she was a mess for basically all of the game. She’d get a tough rebound and show flashes of talent, but then she’d turn around and miss a point blank, wide open layup or she’d travel or throw it away. She scored 2 points on 1-6 shooting with 2 turns, and she played twelve minutes total. She fouled out of the game with 7:24 left in the second half. You couldn’t really blame her for her poor performance, but it was hardly an effort you’d want to hang your hat on.
At the start of the season, we heard about Stef getting benched or pissing Geno off because she wasn’t working as hard as she could at practice or she didn’t have the right attitude. She got called out by her teammates and the coaches for not rebounding more, despite being the tallest player on the team. The name “Tina Charles” kept coming up, and you’d start feeling sorry for the kid (and it didn’t really help that she picked the familiar #31).
But instead of hanging her head and saying, “Aww shucks, I’ll never fill Tina’s shoes” and feeling sorry for herself for the rest of the season, Stef went to work. Unforch, I am a cheap doucher and refuse to pay for a HoopStreams subscription, so I only get the UConn games that air on national television, which is to say that I don’t get to watch a whole lot of games through the course of the season. But almost every single time I’ve watched them play, Stef has gotten better by leaps and bounds, whether she’s impressing me with her 15-foot jumper or icing free throws on the road against Notre Dame in a squeaker or blocking shots/picking pockets or running the floor or showing some nice post moves … I can go on and on. The kid looks better and smoother on both ends of the court every time I watch her play.
The story goes that after UConn’s loss at Stanford, Chris Dailey threw down a challenge for Stef — told her that she needed to up her game, and it started with conditioning, endurance, and weight training. So Stef got to work. She has a few extra conditioning practices a week in addition to her normal practices, and during normal practices, she runs more than the other players. I’ve read that on rebounds off misses, other players will take off down the court immediately while Stef has to run to the foul line, and then from the foul line to the baseline before running down the court to catch up with the action. I love that quote from Stef at the end, about finally realizing that she couldn’t fill TC’s shoes, and that she had to start making a name for herself. It was like she realized, “Hey. This team needs me to contribute, and they need me to be at my best for the team to be at its best.”
The work that she’s been putting in is extremely impressive and completely evident in her game now. Her conditioning has changed so much, and you can just tell that she’s running so hard all game long, even if she’s not “running fast”. I remember in the first couple of games or so she played 15-20 minutes, usually not more than that, and she always looked gassed or ready to give up. Now, she’s playing 30+ at a high level. It’s incredible. She looks like a completely different player in all facets of her game. I used to get nervous when they’d throw the ball down to her in the low post, afraid that she’d either miss a layup or travel with the ball. But now Stef has got the turnaround hook over either shoulder, nice footwork to get around/under players, and a really great eye/passing touch. She’s got the nice soft J from 15, and I’ve even seen her handling the ball a little bit, too! I remember when 6’5 Stef was getting out-rebounded by 5’11 Kelly. She gets after those boards now! She doesn’t give up on balls, and when she gets offensive boards she can go up strong with them. Even when she doesn’t get the ball she looks good. She’s constantly working in the post, always moving, always working to get position. Notre Dame’s bigs could not keep her out of the post last night. On one possession, I even heard her calling for the ball on TV. She’s totally owning it right now. On defense at the beginning of the year, it was like she couldn’t even look at a player without picking up a foul. But now she’s moving her feet better, blocking shots, picking pockets, not letting her girl get in position, and most importantly — not fouling.
Her transformation was physical and seemingly mental, too. The Stefanie Dolson I saw in the first few games was nervous and tentative. She looked like a walking turnover. (But not like the “Dang it, you turned it over again!” kind of walking turnover. More of a “Oh, bless your heart!” kind of walking turnover.) The Stefanie Dolson I see now is a beast. Legit. Calling for the ball. Straight up dominating the post. Confident. Fired up. Not afraid to swing some elbows when other teams try to hack her after a rebound. It’s been amazing to watch.
The past three games really sold me on Stefanie Dolson. (I’ve decided I have to stop declaring “favorite players” on UConn. Every time I declare one, I get a new one about a day later. So they’re all my favorites. Every last one of ’em.) She scored 60 points and grabbed 26 boards over the course of 3 games — 24 and 8 against Georgetown, 12 and 9 against Rutgers, and 24 and 9 against Notre Dame. She played all forty minutes in the championship game against Notre Dame and never gave up, no matter how tired she must have been. She was named to the All-Tournament team, and should have been named Most Outstanding Player, too. It’s been amazing what UConn has been able to do this season, and it really couldn’t have been possible without the contributions of players like Stefanie Dolson. Pretty far cry from that hot mess we saw on TV back in October (or whenever that Baylor game was, hell if I remember).
Go on with your bad self, girl.
Phew.
Okay, if you lived through my UConn/Stef Dolson gush-fest (at this point it has become abundantly clear to you that I really only used this post as a guise to j my p’s over how awesome UConn is and you feel cheated, like you’ve been taken on a farcical ride, and of course all I have to say is you should have known better, and sorry I’m not sorry), then you can see me try to feebly relate it to the building of a winning program.
It’s hard to bring new, young players into a program, especially so when there’s a big age difference in the group or when the numbers aren’t generally pretty even (i.e. even numbers of players in each class). Like I said, young bucks either go through the motions without understanding what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, or they want to question everything. But doing something halfheartedly almost doesn’t count as doing it at all — if you’re gonna show up to play with only half of you, you and your team are probably better off if you just didn’t show up at all. A player reaches their full potential only when they take ownership of their efforts, and when they realize that they have something to contribute to the team’s success.
While I don’t entirely think the concept of “playing for someone”, for example playing well to get a group of seniors out on top (i.e. UConn with Maya and Lorin), is stupid, I prefer the concept of playing to the best of your ability for the good of the team goals. After all, how’s that saying go? You’re only as strong as your weakest link? The whole is only at its best when its individual parts are at their best, bringing in the idea of “beasting everything“. It’s obvious that Stef has been beasting practice. She’s been beasting her conditioning. She’s been beasting the weight room. All of that work and all of that beasting has found its way to her game on the court, and all that has translated to team success.
I had a lot of great leaders to look up to during my time at Illinois. One (hilarious) example that stands out to me is my buddy Murrles Kim. We had such a stud senior class that year. Even if Mary had decided to play it safe and not attempt to come back from her ACL tear as early as she did, we still would have had plenty of talent in the stables. But instead of saying, “Aww, it’s okay, we have a bunch of ballers who will step up and show out, they don’t need me”, Mary worked hard to get back into playing shape. She still came to all our practices and tournaments even though she wasn’t able to play. She took ownership of her contributions — she never sat on her can back at her apartment getting drunk and watching trashy television (not during practice time anyway, ZING!) and she never sat on the sidelines watching us work at practice, she worked too. She took ownership of her role on the team and came back to help anchor our handling core with Felly Foster for Nationals. It was inspiring, and it was awesome to have our teammate back on the field with us.
I don’t know if I can stress how important each individual is to a team, from the starters all the way to the Rudy walk-ons. Your work may not show up in the box score, but it manifests itself on the field and court all the time. Records may not show that you made your team’s star cutter work for his/her catches at practice last week, but it shows when he/she is tireless and relentless in their cutting on the field. It’s so important that each individual give it their everything and their best all the time because it really, truly does translate to team success. Not every single player on your team can win a tournament MVP title, but everybody on your team gets a ring when you win a National Championship.
And y’know, while I’m at it, an attitude I’ve always found to be completely asinine is the “We’ll be good in X years/seasons” attitude. This isn’t grade school anymore. You don’t get “better” at basketball just because you grow a couple inches from one summer to the other. It’s not about the passage of time, it’s about the work you do during that duration. It’s true, you may well be a good team in a season or two (case in point: the Illinois women’s basketball team), but you “get good” by working. It’s an oft heard phrase in college athletics that you see the biggest jump in improvement between a player’s freshman and sophomore years, and it’s because they’ve learned what’s expected of them, not because they simply grew one year older. They’ve learned what they need to do, what they need do better, and how to properly prepare and train. And you don’t get good just because you just get older — that’s not what they mean by “experience”. “Experience” means that you’ve learned something and you’ve worked at it.
Take ownership of your development. Take ownership of your work and your contributions to the team. Take ownership of your team, and recognize that you have a stake in your team’s failures and successes. The team can only be at its best when every individual player is at its best. Winning programs continue to win because its players understand the roles they play and the work they must put in.
—————————————————————–
If you’d like to read more about what I believe creates a culture of winning, click on the label “culture” for the “Winning is a Culture” series.
