Hard Work by Roy Williams & Tim Crothers

Author:Roy Williams & Tim Crothers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2011-02-16T16:00:00+00:00

IN 2002 I HAD called Coach Smith from Kansas and told him that I thought we had a chance to win a national championship but that I was discouraged about how we were doing such a poor job boxing out on the boards. He said, “Make them sign a pledge that they’re going to box out.”

I said, “Coach, what do you mean?”

“Make them sign a pledge that they’re going to box out on every possession.”

And so everybody on our team signed a pledge and they seemed to respond well to the peer pressure that it created. We took care of business on the backboards all the way down the stretch that season.

In the first round of the 2005 ACC Tournament, our team played so poorly against Clemson that I threatened to take them back to Chapel Hill to practice that night. The next day we lost to Georgia Tech in the semifinals. Then in the NCAA Tournament we beat Oakland and then Iowa State, and then we outscored Villanova and Wisconsin, but we were awful defensively. I mean really awful. I thought we needed something to motivate our guys, and my assistant coach Joe Holladay said, “How about we make them sign the pledge again?”

I thought that was a good idea. We did it that Monday before the Final Four. An hour before practice that day I wrote this pledge up on the board:

I pledge to my teammates and my coaches, that I will give 100% mentally and physically on every defensive possession these next 7 days. I cannot imagine letting my teammates down on this nor can I imagine the hurt I will cause myself

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