“When I was at Northeastern, we beat teams like Fresno State and St. Joseph’s in the [NCAA] tournament,” Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun recalled. “It was a lot more difficult for them than us because they were the favorites. I tried then and try now to keep my teams loose by telling them the tournament is a reward.”
For St. Joseph’s, it’s seeing the movie about an undersized horse with the gangly gait that few thought could win a race.
For Connecticut, it’s the picture in the locker room of the opening tip from the 1999 NCAA title game against Duke.
For Kansas it was a stuffed monkey.
For some, it’s a movie or bringing in a former great player . . . for another, it was bowling.
But not everyone believes motivation is a tournament essential. Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, whose team won last year’s tournament, believes motivation is overrated.
“There’s no such thing,” he said. “People who say they watch this movie or do that . . . I don’t believe in it.”
Different strokes for different folks.
“Isn’t that the beauty of the tournament?” asked Ronny Perry, a former Holy Cross guard and current Big East Conference TV analyst. “You’re dealing with young men on the game’s greatest stage. Anything that can motivate, focus your mind, is great.
“Sixty-four teams, each believing anything is possible. What are you going to use to try to get that winning edge?”
The Biscuit
St. Joe’s coach Phil Martelli had his team watch the movie “Seabiscuit” on the team bus during its trip from Massachusetts to Rhode Island last month. He believes his team resembles the inspirational racehorse of the Great Depression.
“People say we’re undersized, like Seabiscuit,” Martelli said. “And we don’t have an inside game. There are those who say we can’t win. But I’ve repeated these lines to my players from the movie. Some guy declares, `Oh, that horse can’t be anything.’ And the reply is, `It’s not the size of the horse, but the size of the heart in the horse.’
“That’s us. No one can question our heart.”
Martelli said the Hawks might watch “Seabiscuit” again during their stay in Buffalo, site of the first two rounds.
“If not, I’ll be sure to talk about `the Biscuit’ again,” he said.
The monkey
Three years ago coach Roy Williams was weary of answering questions about Kansas’ inability to get past the second round.
So he got the monkey off his back with a monkey.
Kansas had lost three consecutive second-round games before its 2001 Midwest matchup with Syracuse.
The night before the game Williams showed his team tapes of the 1991 and ’93 Jayhawks, who went to the Final Four. He had an idea when he ran out of tapes. He’d had his wife, Wanda, buy a stuffed monkey.
Williams took the purple-red monkey out of a bag and put it on his back. Players took turns knocking the monkey off his back.
The next day Kansas trounced the Orangemen 87-58.
The former player
Providence coach Tim Welsh values firsthand experience when it comes to the tournament. That’s why Ernie DiGregorio, a member of Providence’s 1973 Final Four team, spoke to Welsh’s team three years ago.
“Ernie talked about being in the Final Four and that you carry it with you the rest of your life,” Welsh said. “The pride of doing that was evident. Even today, 31 years later, Ernie says he’s still stopped every day by people who want to talk about that Final Four. If you’re a player, you look into his eyes and see what the tournament means to him. If that can’t get you fired up, nothing will.”
Green party
Sidney Green played in the 1983 NCAA tournament when he was a senior at UNLV, and then coached in the tournament when Florida Atlantic qualified by winning the Atlantic Sun Conference tournament in 2002.
Jerry Tarkanian was Green’s coach at UNLV.
“He prepared us extremely well,” Green said. “His message was to enjoy the moment. The problem was some people enjoyed it too much and didn’t come ready to play.”
After getting a first-round bye in 1983, UNLV faced Jim Valvano’s North Carolina State Wolfpack, which had beaten Pepperdine in double overtime in the first round.
UNLV lost 71-70 to N.C. State in Corvallis, Ore. The Wolfpack went on to win the tournament, upsetting Houston in the championship game.
When FAU made the tournament, the Owls were a heavy underdog, seeded No. 15 and facing No. 2 Alabama.
“My message to the players was the same, to enjoy the moment, but I remembered what had happened and was very cautious about making sure they got rest,” Green said. “It worked, because we came ready to play.”
FAU had a halftime lead and the game was close before Alabama finally pulled away.
Follow the script
Even Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski gets into the motivational act.
“The best was when the movie `Gladiator’ came out,” senior guard Chris Duhon recalled. “Coach cut off all the lights, and there was a part where they shoot the arrow in the air with the fire to let us know that it’s time to go to war. He lit up a piece of paper and from the other side of the room threw it in front of us, then came out and stomped it out so we wouldn’t actually have a fire in the room, and then cut the lights on and was like, `Let’s go to war.'”
But not even Coach K is always a genius.
“We won a really hard-fought game in the semifinals against Florida,” recalled Duke assistant coach Chris Collins, who was a sophomore on the 1994 Blue Devils team that advanced to the Final Four. “The next day you have a practice, so we got on the bus but didn’t go to the arena. Coach took us to a park in Charlotte. We sat on benches next to an outdoor court and did all of our game preparation for Arkansas outside as a refresher instead of going to the gym.
“It was a beautiful day, sunny, 75 degrees. Coach said, `Look, we’re going to get some fresh air.’ For so many months you get in the same routine, so it was like a re-energizer for us.”
It didn’t work. Duke lost 76-72.
Smile for the camera
Connecticut senior guard Taliek Brown is sometimes fascinated, but always inspired when Calhoun talks during the tournament.
“He has quoted the coach from `Hoosiers’ [Norman Dale], Plato, Machiavelli, Bill Parcells, a whole lot of other people,” Brown said. “The way coach comes out . . . everyone just believes what he’s saying and what we can do.”
If that doesn’t work, there is a constant reminder in the locker room.
“When I walk in, I look at this picture on the wall,” Brown said. “I’ve seen it so many times. It’s Jake Voskuhl of UConn and I think Elton Brand of Duke just before the opening jump ball of the 1999 championship game. UConn went on to win it all. I want to be in the next picture when we win it all back in San Antonio.”
Bowling ’em over
If all else fails, go bowling.
In Bruce Weber’s last year as a Purdue assistant in 1998, the coaches began taking their players bowling the night before games.
“We kept winning,” Weber said. “We kept bowling.”
The Boilermakers bowled their way into the Sweet 16.
“We lost in the Sweet 16, but it got us to that point,” Weber said.
