Here’s What These NCAA Tournament Losses Can Teach You About Winning
The worst job in all of sports journalism is to be assigned interviews in the loser’s locker room. As a reporter, you dread tiptoeing around the emotional landmines that typically surround the losing leader… until this week when I saw two defeated head basketball coaches “win” their postgame interviews.
In the NCAA Tournament, we just witnessed Coach Scott Drew make good on an 18-year promise by leading Baylor University to the program’s first national championship with a dominant 16-point victory over previously unbeaten Gonzaga. Of course, each tournament game results in one basketball team reacting to the final buzzer with hugs and high-fives, and the other team with tears and the gut-punching realization of shattered dreams.
Defeat stings, but proper perspective rings louder than any missed shot or buzzer-beater.
Two nights before Baylor’s big win, UCLA men’s basketball coach Mick Cronin put on a post-game clinic after his team’s Final Four overtime loss to Gonzaga. Rather than wallowing in sorrow and complaints, he shifted the focus away from the game-winning halfcourt bankshot made by Gonzaga’s NBA prospect Jalen Suggs, and reinforced what his team accomplished.
Full disclosure: I was mentored by the late UCLA legendary coach John Wooden so I’m partial to the Bruins’ storied history. Still, Cronin’s losing locker room interview was so good I watched it three times and recorded it so I could force my kids to listen to it the next morning.
“I sit in Coach Wooden’s seat. When you sit in his seat, you have to channel the things that he taught. True Greatness is giving your best effort. What else can you ask from those guys? I can’t ask anything more—obviously, I can ask for a different result,” said an unflinching Cronin during his live post-game broadcast.
“My message to those guys… is to not let that shot ruin what they have done. We might not have cut down the nets but we’ll get another chance at that, God willing. They gave me everything I could possibly of asked of them… Just an unbelievable effort by my guys; I’m just so proud of them.”
So much of what Coach Wooden valued was in Cronin’s response. At the peak of Wooden’s Pyramid of Success is Competitive Greatness. He always emphasized the ability to be great when Greatness is required of you. Even in failure, there’s still an opportunity to show up and prove that your outcome does not define you.
That is a point that should be relevant to all of us. We may not always get the desired results. We may not reach our quarter goal or land our biggest client, but if we did everything we are capable of, then we are better for it. That approach to our most significant challenges ensures that we give our best effort. And that perspective to our setbacks and disappointments, when we give our best effort, makes us more determined to reach winning results in our next challenge—and there’s always a next challenge.
The night after Cronin’s great interview, Stanford University and iconic coach Tara VanDerveer captured the women’s NCAA title—her third championship in 31 seasons. As the Stanford team was blanketed mid-court in confetti, another coach named Adia Barnes fought back tears and consoled her University of Arizona players deflated moments earlier by a 54-53 loss. The Lady Wildcats battled hard to reach their first-ever national title game only to fall one point short. After wiping away the tears, Coach Barnes walked into the losing team’s press conference and shined bright when it mattered most.
“I’m not ashamed. We made it to the championship game. We came within a basket of winning a national championship, so I am proud,” said Barnes, who led her alma mater to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 16 years. “I remember when everybody around the country didn’t believe in us, counted us out. We believed in each other. We did that.
We celebrated each other.”
These amazing coaches turned a loss into a teachable moment. That’s how you find success despite disappointment.
The Bruins fought their way to the Final Four and won five tournament games before their season ended with a (20-10) overall record. But I’d argue that once the heartbreak subsides, loss number 10 will go down as perhaps Coach Cronin’s biggest win of year—simply by fielding a typical losers’ locker room question and answering with a focus built for Competitive Greatness.