In Reply to: The Ducks forgot to duck posted by lafong on January 01, 2025 at 15:51:10
The wisdom of John Wooden is unfathomable. But to me the most profound thing he said was the dual proposition that a long winning streak creates pressure on a team that diminishes its performance which makes it hard to keep winning, and the corollary that as such at times a streak breaking loss is a good thing that acts like a reset. In today’s single elimination playoffs that means don’t come into the playoffs unbeaten or on a long winning streak. Of course it seems unAmerican to not want to win all your games. But playoff history is replete with examples of this, from Kentucky’s unbeaten basketball super team a decade ago to more recent examples in the BCS with undefeated Alabama, Georgia and LSU teams not prevailing.
It also seems strange to see this idea from Wooden, whose basketball teams had some epic winning streaks. Those streaks can be explained by the fact that those Bruin teams were so superior to their opposition that even a lessened performance was enough to keep winning. So once in a while a team can have a perfect season. But not very often.
Coupled with Oregon’s win over Ohio State earlier in the year and the adage about the difficulty in beating the same team twice in a season, I certainly gave Oregon no chance of winning today.