Diary Series: Jack Castleberry, Asst. Coach - VMI

I hope everyone has had a good start to 2012.  The Keydets celebrated the new year by getting into the meat and potatoes of conference play.  After suffering four road losses to conference opponents Coastal Carolina, Charleston Southern, Asheville and Winthrop, we’ve worked our way back to .500 with wins this past week over two Radford and Presbyterian. 

For a coach the basketball season can be an emotional roller coaster.  It’s easy to get caught up in the most recent game or the inconsistent play of a few players, particularly if you have high expectations for the year.  Thus far we are 9-9, 4-4 in the league.  We’ve lost some games we should have won, which is something I’m sure most any coach in the country can say, and we’ve had our fair share of growing pains.  But what is most important this time of year is whether or not your team is getting better.

Any coach will tell you that you learn more from a loss than a win.  Hence why people tend to think an undefeated team losing a game at the end of the regular season can be a good thing.  The main reason for this is after a loss you have more of your players’ attention.  A loss typically indicates that there are problems that need to be fixed, something like a check engine light in a car, it immediately gets your attention.  Winning can mask a lot of mistakes because the bottom line was reached.  You may get away with these mistakes against weaker opponents but eventually, the bottom will fall out.  College kids don’t always understand why if they won, they’re still getting critiqued by their coach.  The fact of the matter is that a coach looks at his team’s 40 minute performance in a more complex way than whether it was simply a win or a loss.  Did we guard?  Did we execute our game plan? Did we communicate?  Did we have 40 minutes of good effort?  Winning is important, but performance is equally so.  Are we performing better?  I believe we are.

Another key aspect of each season is the meshing of a team.  Early in the season coaches are trying different lineups to see who works well together and to see who’s ready to get minutes at the college level and who isn’t?  Who’s willing to buy in and play team basketball and who will not?  Players meanwhile must get used to their roles, some will be filling the same as the season before while others are tasked to give a little more.  This adjustment is rarely smooth and even more rarely takes place overnight.  This time of year you hope you’re starting to mesh and seeing progress each game.

Herm Edwards said it best when he sternly stated: “You play to win the game.”  This is always true.  But the season as a whole is about progression, from the coaching staff to the players to the managers, are you getting better?  It’s a marathon, not a sprint.  It’s a process that you hope culminates with you playing your best basketball in February and March, and eventually holding up a trophy.