Iowa’s Loss To LSU Began With Their Win Over South Carolina

The next time your account team gets surprisingly chosen to make the pitch to the Big Account and the CEO tells you, “Well done!” or the next time the CEO summons you into the corner office to tell you you’ve been “killing it” and deserve a Big Bonus, smile and express incredible thankfulness with as much humility as you can muster. On the way home from work, feel free to pick up a celebratory bottle of something cold to celebrate the little win with your partner.

Just don’t overdo it, literally or metaphorically, because tomorrow is another day and you have to get back to work to actually win the Big Account where it matters most — in front of the prospective client — or prove that the Big Bonus should become standard operating procedure. In other words, know the difference between a win and the win.

When Iowa beat South Carolina 77-73 in the semi-final game of the NCAA Women’s Final Four game on Friday, everyone playing the game or watching it understood the enormity of Iowa’s achievement. Yes, Iowa has perhaps the country’s best collegiate player in Caitlin Clark, but South Carolina was 36-0 leading up to the game and a prohibitive favorite. And not only that, the Gamecocks were the defending national champions and top-seeded team in the country, with a bench as deep as the waters off the Carolina coast.

And while Clark scored 41 points, her Iowa Hawkeyes were out-rebounded on the offensive glass to the tune of 26-5, which in most basketball games should have been indicative of an incredibly one-sided contest…in favor of South Carolina. Statistically, everything pointed to South Carolina winning, but in the post-game celebration Clark said, “We never hung our head. We just kept coming.”

Clark and her teammates kept screaming with elation long after the game had ended. The transcendent Clark ran up and down the court acknowledging the fans. She ran over to the Iowa cheerleaders and high-fived them. She jumped up and down with her teammates. And then, right in the middle of the celebration, she lay down flat on the floor and had to receive massage therapy because she was cramping.

The victory celebration achieved what beating the consensus best team in the nation could not do: it literally sent her crumpling to the floor.

Clark recovered, with a little help from her teammates, and two days later went on to score 30 points in the Championship game against LSU. But Iowa was not quite the same team as the one that had defeated South Carolina on Friday; they lost the final 102-85 to an LSU team that had been beaten twice by South Carolina earlier in the year.

After the loss in the Championship, Clark conducted herself with the utmost sportsmanship by congratulating the LSU team for a game well-played, but the disappointment and, perhaps, mild shock of getting so close and failing seemed to weigh heavily on her already drawn and exhausted features. Was it just possible that she was ruing her team’s treatment of Friday’s miracle on parquet as the victory rather than holding in check the feeling of absolute, “job done” joy for two days longer?

Trying to answer this question would be sheer conjecture, of course, but the lesson is clear enough: each win and loss should be looked at in the context of the larger goal. It may sound simple, but delaying gratification doesn’t come very easily for most people. In fact, it’s a real point of struggle for the vast majority of competitors in sports or in life.

An edge is a difficult thing to sharpen, but it’s even harder to keep sharp. This is why coaches and players talk ceaselessly about “focusing on the next game” during post-game pressers. This doesn’t tend to make for riveting interviews but it serves an important psychological advantage of keeping that engine running and ready to go.

One of the great underdog stories of our time was the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team’s 4-3 win over a supposedly invincible Soviet Union team in the medal round of the 1980 Winter Olympics. The power of the “Miracle on Ice” has stood the test of time as one of American sports most iconic events, in no small part, because Team U.S.A. finished the job two days later, thanks to coach Herb Brooks’ ability to keep his young team focused, by beating Finland for the gold medal. If the United States had lost to Finland after dispatching the Soviets, the achievement would not have been forgotten, but it would have been diminished.

And if you are an Iowa basketball player right now, you might just be thinking that by all means, let’s recognize and seize the next opportunity when it comes our way. But this time, let’s resist the urge to mistake an opportunity for the achievement, itself. The fans will still be there, and their cheers will be all the sweeter after the final Championship whistle!