As I am writing this, there have been 10 “upsets” so far in the NCAA basketball tournament. These include #13 North Texas knocking off #4 Purdue, #15 Oral Roberts knocking off #2 Ohio State, and #14 Abilene Christian shattering #3 Texas’ dreams of winning a tournament game anytime soon. Everyone loves an underdog, but how does that even happen? How does a team that is not as physically gifted pull off an upset?
Malcom Gladwell explains it beautifully in his book, “David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants”. One chapter he dives into a high school girls basketball program that went all the way to the state championship. The team was not the biggest or fastest team by any means. They decided they needed an edge: full-court press, all the time, no exceptions.
A full-court press is when the defending team pressures the offense the entire way up the court. It can be a very effective strategy but is extremely tiring. In order to keep up that kind of pace, the team would have to give maximum effort all of the time. The team would also have to be in great conditioning shape and able to outrun the other team. This is a risk worth taking as the underdog.
That high school team used their size and their heart to their advantage. They might not have scared anyone walking off the bus, but they certainly fought extremely hard. Their efforts took them to the national championship when nobody thought they could!
If you can’t out-talent or out-physical the team, you must find other means. Abilene Christian basketball was the smallest team in the entire field for the NCAA tournament. Texas was supposed to make the run to the final four. Rather than wear their fate, ACU took the underdog mentality and outworked Texas. There is no telling how far any of these “Cinderella stories” will go. I certainly wouldn’t want to be a higher seed playing one of them. The scariest teams are the ones with nothing to lose, willing to put everything on the line, every minute of the contest.
