Land The Plane Safely - Part II

A couple years ago, Brendan Suhr gave us a list of his Top 10 Chuck "Dalyisms."  There were many great quotes on his list, but there was one that stuck out to me more than the others.  The quote by Coach Chuck Daly was,

"Coaching is like flying an airplane.  There is going to be a lot of turbulence, but your job is to land the plane safely."  

It's that time of the season again when teams are finding out who they really are.  When you look at teams this year like Kansas, Duke, and Arizona you see teams filled with young players that are beginning to mesh together and play their best basketball of the season.  On the other hand, you have teams like Oklahoma State that seem to be going further and further down the hill as days go by.  It is interesting to see the coaches of these teams handle success and failure in very different manners, but one thing is for sure: They all are beginning their descent towards the NCAA Tournament and their #1 goal is to "land the plane safely."

Last season (our first season with a basketball program) we finished with a record of 6-24, losing in the first round of our conference tournament.  Any time we could come out and compete last year was a victory!  This season is another chapter in our story.  Our team has had much success this year, but we have also faced adversity on many occasions.  As of today, we are 12-13 and have shown much improvement from last year, but we definitely are not satisfied with being a .500 team.  There have been many games this year that we should have won, but due to some adversity and friction within our team we were unable to pull out the W.  As a coaching staff we knew that our responsibility was to get us back onto the right track and put our guys in the best possible situation to succeed.  Our players have responded with amazing attitudes and have really bought in to what we are doing now!  They understand the importance of taking care of the "little things" both on and off the court.  With only five regular season games left before our conference tournament, our staff and players need to understand the importance of "landing the plane safely."  If we are unable to have a proper descent into the runway (positive momentum going into tournament time) then we will not be able to land the plane safely (make a run in the tournament).  Positive attitudes along with a lot of energy and effort will be the determining factor in the remainder of our flight!

You can click here to read a previous blog post that I wrote two years ago on this topic.

Coach Andrew Wingreen - @CoachWingreen

Coach Brendan Suhr - @brendansuhr