In Reply to: Re: agree, it's unseemly posted by SehornBlew on January 08, 2025 at 09:12:35
Thanks for the comment. Okay, to clarify what I'm trying to say and why I believe it:
I used the word "fight" meaning you have to stop the big guy from just pushing past you; you have to stand your ground and keep him from moving freely across the key with little or just token opposition; you have to step out and get in the face of hot shooters and force them to have to get their shot off more quickly than that would prefer or to have to move a step or two to get a look or just keep them from getting the shot off in the first place.
On offense, you have to attack them and force them to have to play defense, to expend energy on the defensive end, hoping to wear them down.
I mean playing the way we did during that hot run we had to catch up and pull ahead. And we have to do that from early in games. When you put yourself in an 18 point hole early, it costs you a lot more energy just to fight your way back and if you're tired then and you relax and figure you can just go back to playing the way you figured you could play - just play a little basketball - then you crash and you burn (forgive the unfortunate metaphor due to much more important issues currently). As we did.
And by "soft" I mean doing the opposite.
Early on we tried to finesse things, During our big run we had guys driving right into Golden and Wolf, right into their chests, and forcing them to have to defend us. That resulted in some points and got both of them into foul trouble. After our run we sat back and reverted - perhaps conditioning, perhaps just what happens when a team has to fight that hard just to catch up but not get very far ahead.
The way we played - in the first section of the game and again after we finished our run - I define as "soft." The middle section, during our run, we were after them all over the floor on defense and were playing a lot more aggressively on offense, I define that as "fighting."
During my time at UCLA, the start of the 60s, we started up a fencing team. One of my roommates was on the team and another friend as well. We had a meet hosting a good team from the Air Force Academy. Ironically, they flew out for the meet that morning and their plane had a mechanical problem so they had to land somewhere - Arizona? Utah? - for repairs. Meet was for 10 am so we were there at 8 am getting ready. They didn't arrive until late afternoon.
We'd been sitting on our backsides for six hours waiting for them. They swept in, did their calisthenics and were ready to go.
First round they beat us 9-0. Second round they beat us 8-1. I lost both my first two bouts and still had to face their team Epee captain in round three.
We were all pretty mad by that point. We wound up beating them 9-0 third round (UCLA finished ahead of them in the national championships.) Anyway Epee is a simple weapon - no right of way rules - first touch scores a point. First one to score five points (touches) against the opponent wins.
Their team captain decided he could overwhelm me so he decided to just attack. Word for a running attack is from the French for "arrow."
The Epee is a triangular shaped blade. In other words if you flex it a certain way it bends. But if you do NOT allow it to flex that way, it's pretty darn solid.
I saw him coming and instead of retreating, I took a stance and lunged right at him with my hand coming up so the blade did not flex when he took it head on into his chest. Point for me.
That repeated twice and my close friend on the team (he fenced sabre) shouted out "Think, Barry, think!" and I yelled back "Think, hell; fight!"
The smallish crowd all laughted - we were in the old B.O. Barn. But it was the point and my audience was really myself.
I wound up beating the guy 5-1 and his only point was on a point where we struct one another simultaneously so we each got a point scored against the other guy.
The lesson I took from that was that sometimes the answer is aggression - just grit your teeth and tell yourself this guy is NOT going to take me that way and go for it. Skill is vital, skill is great. But sometimes the winning factor is going all out and giving it your absolute all.
It's an important lesson and I think it was well illustrated last night. We set out convinced we could beat them with our skill level. (Cronin may harp on fight and all that but we've heard it before.) It didn't work. We got mad and after Mack showed us the way late in half 1, we got super aggressive and energetic against them and we showed we could beat them. Then some time passed and we lost that edge.
It's just that, with the obvious personnel deficiency for playing every game in the Big Ten rather than the Pac-12, that edge, that level of aggressiveness is required. It just is.