What March Madness is teaching you (if you’re paying attention)

Now, if you're anything like me, there's a good chance that you probably watched a lot more college basketball the last few days than you'd like to admit. Thursday through Sunday of last week, I spent a lot of hours glued to whichever TV was in front of me, and pretty much for four straight days with some breaks mixed in between. I'm watching March Madness. So now that I've watched over 30 games, I want to give my two biggest takeaways so far. These are things that I think every serious player needs to pay attention to, not just as a fan, but as a student of the game. The first thing that jumped out to me that I think every player needs to take into account is the importance of late game situational iq. March Madness exposes players who don't understand how to make the right decision depending on the situation that them or their team is in. You've probably seen some examples of the stuff that I'm talking about, but a late foul when they can't pick up a foul, turning the ball over because they weren't prepared for a press or didn't know how to handle a press when they saw saw it, or a shot that didn't make sense of the situation that they might have been in. A lot of times it's these small moments that are the difference between moving on and going home and having your season or your career end. And a lot of teams and a lot of players learn difficult lessons about this on national television. And it just goes to show, as much as we train our physical skills, shooting, ball handling, finishing, passing, defense, all that sort of stuff, you having the understanding of when to do, do what, especially when it comes down to late game situations, is so important. It needs to be a major focus when it comes to you developing yourself as a player. So this means watching and studying different situations, asking yourself what worked, what didn't work, what could they have done differently? Trying to almost put yourself in those same situations so that when you actually are there, you know the right decision to make. Always being sure that you're aware of the time, score, matchups, game, game plan, the momentum going either way, all that stuff is super important. The question you have to ask yourself is how prepared am I for the big moments? And this is a super underrated area of focus for players. But the best part about it is that it's 100% something that you can control, you can work on whenever you want, as much as you want. The second big takeaway that I had after watching the first two rounds of March Madness is that nothing matters if you can't shoot the ball. You can be athletic, you can be strong, you can have Kyrie Irving and Allen Iverson's handles combined, but if you can't put the ball in the basket, if you can consistently make open shots, then it's going to get exposed sooner or later. And as great as you might be in other areas, your overall impact and the extent of what you can do is going to be limited. We saw plenty of times where the difference between a team winning or losing was a role player who hit a couple threes or a starter who got hot, or a starter who missed a bunch of shots. I think a great example is looking at St. John's St. John's got upset by Arkansas in the second round. Their best player wasn't playing very well and they didn't have anybody else who could step up and consistently make shots. And they shot about 28% overall and an even worse 9% from 3. And in those moments, if you can't make shots, you can't put the ball in the bucket, then as talented as you might be in as great a season as you might have had, it can be over in an instant. Because of that, Colorado State is another team that experienced it. They went into the half against Maryland on upset alert up seven and then they came out and shot two with toll from three in the second half and ended up losing on a buzzer beater. And the difference between them being really the big Cinderella team in the Sweet 16 this year and them having their season ended was the fact that they didn't make shots in the second half and Maryland did. Shot making is what wins games and stretches the floor. It creates driving lanes. It makes you incredibly valuable to your team because you're not just able to score, but you impact the entire defense and you make it easier for your teammates to score as well. Shot making covers up so many mistakes, and so when you don't make shots, all those mistakes get exposed and it becomes really, really hard to win. So as you approach this offseason, shooting needs to be a non negotiable focus for you. I think most players should be spending 80% of their time working on their skills and specifically focus on shooting the basketball. Because nothing matters more than can you make this open shot or can you not? And when you have that, the world is open to you. When you don't have that, you're always very limited. You can be schemed out of a game. The mistakes that you make become way more amplified. You have to be almost perfect to make the impact that you're going to want to make. I've taken a bunch of other notes throughout March Madness, and I'll probably talk about some of the other stuff that I've noticed, but these are the two biggest things that almost throughout every single game, these are the difference between winning and losing. And I think that if you're a serious player, these are things that you've got to make sure you're focusing on every single day. Now, if you want something that's going to help you to get a lot better at these areas, I've got a free guide down below that's going to take you step by step how to get better twice as fast as you currently are getting better. We talk about understanding situational IQ and having an overall deep understanding of the game and then developing yourself as a shooter. These things that we talk about inside this guide, and it's definitely going to help you to take that next step and to level up as a basketball player. Like I said, link down below completely free. Make sure you check that out. Talk soon. Peace.