On the heels of some preseason basketball bytes a couple of weeks ago we ran some basketball comments that got lost in the shuffle the other day that may be worth checking out. (Link)
With basketball approaching, we thought that you would enjoy this quick conversation between David Glenn and Billy Packer. Billy Packer has always been a polarizing figure in college basketball, but before you descide to try to chime in here with some criticisms we plead with you to click here.
I particularly liked Packer’s comments about the differences in conferences that are highlighted below. I used to say the EXACT same kind of example back in the mid 1990s related to ECU football when the Pirates would play well in a couple of games against a top conference and then feast on a host of lesser names. This was particularly appropriate when ECU held independent status before joining C-USA and didn’t have to deal with the pressures of traditional conference battles (no matter how ‘bad’ the program).
DG: You’ve talked a lot about confidence being one of the “hidden factors” that can work against middle-tier teams in the ACC and other major conferences, and in favor of the mid-majors. What do you mean exactly?
Billy Packer: This is one of the reasons I often side with the coaches from the major conferences who were on the borderline but didn’t make it. We can argue about a team’s conference record all day long — is 9-7 in the ACC automatically good enough? — and we can crunch numbers and look at schedules. That’s all fine. But what we often forget is that the road you travel in the tougher conferences can damage you in ways that extend well beyond the actual wins and losses.
Take Maryland (an NIT participant) and George Mason (an at-large NCAA team) last year. If you took Maryland and put them in George Mason’s league, and you took George Mason and put them in Maryland’s league, by March the Maryland team probably would have been the more effective team than George Mason. Why? Because it would have been Maryland that gained confidence and gradually built into something that was much better than what they became in the ACC. George Mason would have been beaten up in the ACC and probably started to doubt themselves. Maryland would have won a lot of games and built some genuine confidence heading into the postseason. That’s human nature.
That confidence level is extremely, extremely important in March. If you learned, night-in and night-out for two months, that you weren’t very good, there’s no way you’d have enough confidence to survive in March. If you win most of your games — even against lesser competition — you may be able to enter March thinking you can conquer the world. That’s maybe the best example of how playing in a tough league like the ACC can hurt you beyond the wins and losses.