Tyler Springs

One of my favorite moments of the past season!

It is often underestimated in the media landscape how much fans actual want to learn about the sports and athletes they’re watching. There is a place for both this and your standard takes content.

ESPN just showed a graphic, only 4 double digit seeds in WBB have ever won in sweet 16 game 1/2 of those upsets come from Kelly Graves' teams. 2011 Gonzaga 2017 Oregon Sheesh! (Others were Lamar in 1991 and Creighton 2023). #ncaaw

Whoa!

Say it again for the folks in the back!

Very Belichickian “take their strength away” type of approach. HARD TO DO.

If you’re looking for praise for Hana Haden, you don’t have to go far or wait long to find it from media or coaches.

.@MemphisWBB will be engaged & serving in our community! 1. We give back because we’re blessed 2. A great way to spend time 2gether 3. We want to get to know our community & for them to get to know us! People support those that they connect with. Can’t wait! See yall soon! Ⓜ️

Conference losses for Hana Haden’s teams, by year: Ga Southern 2026: 2 Ga Southern 2025: 12 Ga Southwestern 2024: 2 MACC 2023: 2 MACC 2022: 3 MACC 2021: 3 MACC 2020: 1 Moberly Area CC 2019: 3 Lamar (asst) 2018: 1 Harris Stowe 2017: 9 Harris Stowe 2016: 8 Mama mia!😮

USF WBB is the best job in The American. Every league HC/candidate sees those numbers & Curry’s pedigree knowing that’s their competition. Critical that the Tigers either match some of those resources, or get an HC who competes regardless. (Or both!)

For Memphis fans, the critical details of Mitchell’s Kristi Curry-to-USF piece (which you should read in full): *800K for HC *700K for assistants *800K for roster build Known candidates had recent NCAA tournament bids (some with multiple), including a sitting American HC!

St. Joe’s, Princeton, Oakland, Liberty, Eastern Florida St (NJCAA) & Bucknell are the sub-P4s represented here.

Most people are getting this wrong. It's not being coached hard or soft...it's a coach saying the right thing at the right time to get them out of a spiral. And focus them on what matters. When you're in that spiral, your attention scatters. You're replaying mistakes, drifting into the future, losing the moment. Frese disrupted it in two ways. First, she walked directly to Okanawa, locked eyes, and forced her to focus and connect with her in the present. Second, she gave confidence AND agency. "I believe in you...But you've got to want this moment." This isn't my story..." She didn't say, "What are you doing...get your head in the game." Those feed the spiral, giving your brain evidence that it's all going wrong. Akin to telling a nervous person to "just relax." In our lowest moments, we need a signal that someone still sees what we're capable of. And then gives us the agency and challenge to go get it. She scored 7 points in the third quarter after that exchange, added 6 more in the fourth, and finished with a team-high 21. Maryland still lost. But Okananwa showed up. It was a brilliant display of snapping a player out of everything scattering towards catastrophe: "Really what that was, was a regroup moment for myself and her telling me she believed in me. Sometimes that's really all you need to hear." Research backs this up. Psychologists at the University of Amsterdam found that whatever emotional state coaches expressed predicted their players' emotional state and subsequent performance. Angry coaches produced frustrated players who made more errors. Another study of basketball players found that low to moderate anger targeted at a specific problem could improve performance. Raw, undirected intensity made things worse. Targeted intensity that was aimed at something solvable worked. Texas A&M football coach Mike Elko put it this way: "My job is to be calm and collected when they're frantic. My job is to create intensity when they're not intense. My job is to always be opposite the moment." The leader's job is the counterbalance. Frese saw her star's attention drifting when the moment called for focus and controlled fire. So she brought the intensity Okananwa wasn't generating on her own. Most people see the intensity and think that's the important takeaway. It's not. It's just one tool used in a specific moment. Frese said it herself after the game: "You can't have those conversations if you don't have a relationship with them." It's the relationship underneath that gives you the ability to use the right tool at the right time. Sometimes that tool is direct eye contact and I believe in you. Other times, it's taking a calm breath with and a reminder that I value you as a human, not just an athlete. Or, as I had one athlete request one time, "Just cuss me out in the last 400. Tell me it's worth dying for..." Sometimes you pull out the crazy if that disrupts the cycle. Know your athlete. Build the relationship. Then know when to disrupt the cycle and focus them on the work at hand.

Rick Pitino on Dylan Darling's game-winner: "Bells comes up to me, and says run (a play for me). So I walk away like, wait a second, he hasn't scored a bucket and he wants to run a play for himself. And I'm thinking, but he's Bells!" 😂

In grad school when I began reading critical sports studies scholarship, I became skeptical of claims like this from Seth Davis. Many scholars I read saw sports as either a symptom or a cover for all that is wrong in society. They rejected the idea that sports could bring people together in a positive way. There was always a nefarious purpose operating behind the scenes. And for a brief time, I moved in that direction too. But the more I’ve studied sports, the more I’ve come to have a deeper appreciation for sports and its place in society. It’s not that sports are perfect or that they can solve every problem. They can’t fix the serious challenges and divisions we face. There are clear limits. But while sports can’t do everything, they can do something—and I think that “something” is more important now than ever before. They are a space where the full range of human emotions, from joy to sorrow, can be experienced in a collective way. They are a space where community is enacted and formed, where people from a variety of backgrounds and identities actually share a common experience and a common story. They are an embodied activity highlighting and celebrating human creativity and possibility. All of that was on display in the Nebraska / Vandy game last night. And it’s why I still believe that, for all of the imperfections, sports still offer us something beautiful and human and real. It’s why I think this is exactly right:

Stewardship: one of the best parts of amateur sports!

@UrbanEliteGirls @SkinsHoops86 I’ll second what Urban said: I worked the game where Langley’s Rice team beat Ole Miss (and Coach Yo) to win the WNIT in ‘21, and they were COLD! Happy for her. Equally important for UW was allowing her time. Some change things overnight, some don’t. A longer leash can work!

@SkinsHoops86 She did the same thing at Rice

Nice thing about Washington WBB's success is they've done it the old school way. Mostly through HS recruiting. They didn't lose a single player to the portal last year. Even the portal adds they have, its often kids they were runner-up for in HS, not just chasing players in bulk

This is a political trick of identifying a nebulous problem (mid major scheduling) then pushing a solution that doesn’t directly address it while ignoring other, less disruptive, ways that would. If they had a good reason to expand they’d say it.

Before the days of YouTubeTV quad box, we found a way. Kinda miss these days

I’ll give a different angle: Some (not all) HM rosters that think they’ll get in/believe they deserve it are checked out once they learn they’re out. That’s one reason you see opt outs/refusals from the WBIT, coaches don’t wanna lay an egg against a MM that’s hungrier than you. It’s Notre Dame missing the CFP all over again. (I know I’m not solving anything by saying that — not trying to. If it were the MMs getting crushed, people would be saying the opposite, ‘Ah yeah, they never deserved a look.’ MMs just gotta keep winning regardless of conditions! And many do!)

McNeese WBB goes on the road and beats Texas A&M 68-48! WOW Man people really tried to say TAMU WBB was NCAA tourney team 😂😂 TAMU was on bubble at 14-12!!! McNeese 28-5 no chance at at-large bid WINNERS WIN! Reward winners. #ncaaw

WNIT/WBIT results interesting ... UMES WBB goes on the road and beats Wake Forest by 11. Torvik had Wake as 16 point favorites. Yikes Utah WBB was bubble team but loses by 14 to EKU. EKU 25 wins ... we overrate the HM bubble teams. MMs with 25+ wins more deserving #ncaaw