Minnesota 96 — Michigan State 90!

WOW! What a game! I have written about my affinity for my alma mater's Men's Basketball Team on occasion on this blog before, most notably when they won the NIT tournament last winter. That was a fun five-game run to a national championship in the second best tournament in the annual rite of college basketball's March Madness.

Now, I want to post my last post of February with the Gopher's big overtime win over #25 ranked Michigan State last night in the Breslin Center in East Lansing, Michigan. It was an extremely thrilling game when the Gophers looked like they were not going to win the game as they had a substantial deficit with only seconds to play in regulation.

With two three-pointers in the last 12 seconds, Carlos Morris had a chance to win the game with a free throw and could not convert to win the game 79-78. I do not understand how these young men can shoot three-pointers under pressure and cannot make free throws under equally pressurized situations!

Actually, I do understand and believe the three point shot should go the way of the dinosaur, but that is never going to happen because it makes game endings very exciting. There is a basketball axiom, "You live by the three and you die by the three." It is very true and everybody forgets how to shoot free throws because they are practicing their three-point shooting.

The Gophers have had a rough season losing six games by two possessions or less, so by beating Michigan State who is 19-9 this season, in the upper class of the Big Ten, coming off a four-game winning streak and playing at home against a statistically poorer team they thought Minnesota should be an easy twentieth win and fifteenth twenty-win season for coach Tom Izzo in his 20th season as the head coach in East Lansing.

Neither team shot free throws very well, as was evidence in the overtime when both teams missed crucial free throws and the missed free throw at the end of the game by young Mr. Morris.

I always have to remind myself when I watch college basketball games these student/athletes are only 18 to 22 years old. What ultimately won the game was their senior leadership shown by Andre Hollins and Mo Walker.

Click on the image to make it larger:

Go Gophers! At 17-12 on the season and 6-10 in the Big Ten conference they need to do well in their last two conference games against Penn State and Wisconsin to get a better seed in the Big Ten Tournament in two weeks in order to get to twenty wins to think about even going back to the NIT. That will not be an easy task since Wisconsin is leading the Big Ten and among the elites in the nation. Although, Wisconsin has shown they can be beaten because Iowa beat them yesterday.

Many analysts believe the Big Ten Conference is the deepest and most competitive conference in the country because any one team has not stood out as a dominant force since they all keep beating up on each other. The Big Ten Tournament will be an interesting and exciting five days to watch the first part of March Madness!
 
I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Bob Hurley's Commitment

Since my NCAA College Basketball Pool is shot, I want to go down a level of my favorite sport, basketball, and talk about high school basketball. Last Sunday 60 Minutes showed a piece I want to share.

Basketball is alive and well at tiny St. Anthony Catholic High School in Jersey City, New Jersey. Coach Bob Hurley is running not only an incredibly successful winning basketball program, but turning out student/athlete leaders as well. The coolest part of this whole school is every student goes to college!

It is an incredible story! If you have not already seen it, check it out:

Do you agree with me? My favorite quote from Coach Hurley's interview was, "I think I'm where I'm supposed to be."

Can you say that about yourself? Are you where you are supposed to be? If you are, good for you. If you are not, what can you do to get there? Can you get there? There may become a time when I can say that about my current health situation, but not yet. However, When I am addressing an audience and they appear to be hanging on my every word, I can say, "I'm there!"

I know why I got hurt. I am supposed to try to make a difference in peoples' lives. Like teachers, I do not get a semester, or whole school year, or a lifetime like a parent does with her/his child(ren). I may only have a group for a half hour, an hour, or maybe more. So, I have to do a good job in my short time with them no matter their age.

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Finally, A Post Not About Me

In most of my recent posts, all I have been addressing is me. It is time to change that. I want to introduce you to a teaching website about positive values. I believe the lessons are relevant and good reminders for people of all ages. It is called Values.com.

For you teachers, there is a lot of good information you may find useful in your classroom. Positive attributes like leadership, friendship, courage, honesty and respect, to name just a few are featured throughout the site. There is also a great deal of information for the rest of us. I know I have spent quite a bit of time already perusing the site. I even see a few potential handouts for future schools, conferences and possible pages for my Materials page on my website.

I first learned of them while watching television in these last long months of being bedridden; and seeing this commercial several times. You can watch the commercial by clicking here:

I do not think I would have handled the situation the way this young man did. For you student/athletes, what would you have done in this or a similar situation? For everyone else, what would you have done in this or any of the other scenarios they show?

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Fairmont TARGET Workshop

Mark Hernes runs the Fairmont TARGET Group at Fairmont High School in Fairmont, Minnesota. I spent six hours on August 29th with about 100 student/athletes of his leadership group. He has a program that covers ninth through twelfth grade. We spent a six-hour day in a hot church and had several amazing experiences.

I put together a leadership packet of about twenty handouts, and did several small group and large group exercises. I'm only going to discuss one of the exercises.

One of my favorite exercises is having a group line up by birth date without speaking. They need to figure out alternative ways of communicating and sometimes that can be a difficult task. No matter the size of the group, usually someone thinks they are on the right spot only to find out later they are not. With these young leaders, everyone was exactly where he or she needed to be. They got creative and communicated by writing their birth date down and using hand signals. However, no one pulled out his or her driver’s license. When I asked them about it, several replied, “I don’t have one.”

To which I smiled and replied, good reason then, huh? Rarely is it, especially in a group that large, does everyone gets to the right spot.

The next part of the problem is they need to multiply their birth date by their birth month. They are supposed to line up by smallest number to largest. Then I give them more directions on how to break a tie. The first tie breaker is they add up all of the numbers in their home telephone number, and the largest home phone number goes first and works its way to the smallest phone number. If there is still a tie, the second tiebreaker is their home address. The smallest home address goes first to the largest last. In a group this size, we had several ties. Two of the tiebreakers went to the second tiebreaker.

As soon as I started giving all of these directions to the entire group, inevitably people start panicking and looking for a calculator, or paper and pencil, even if they are not involved with a tie.

They scored 100% on that part too. I was impressed. This is the first time I have every done that exercise in a group that large when everyone got to the right spot. Oh yes, this time they are allowed to talk. What usually happens is they lose their focus; start talking about all kinds of things and make mistakes.

What stuck me about this exercise was watching several of the leaders take charge and direct people where they needed to be. That’s when I know the person running their program is teaching leadership skills. Mark Hernes is running a good program and I commend him for his efforts.

That exercise was representative of the whole day. Kudos to Mark, his staff and especially the student leadership in his TARGET program!