Predictions

Making Regionals/Nationals predictions is a tempting, but usually unhelpful process. For a member of a team participating in Nationals, predictions can be a meassure of confidence and a measure of hope, but if the predicted standings become the source of confindence for a player or a team, those people are bound to be frustrated if and when he/she/they start to fall short of their goals.

I get worried when I hear my teammates making these kinds of 'outcome-based' goals. "I just want to beat TEAM-X," or "We're going to make it to Yth place." Some of this is good, I know... to live in that moment, or visualize success. But otherwise these types of goals are shallow and unnecessary to have as serious, top priorities. The way I see it, a team's or an individual's outcomes in sports should be a result of having and accomplishing specific skill, strategy, performance-type goals. Knowing you can beat another team is not enough. (This is an outcome based goal.) Because when the opponent scores a couple points, the person who just knows they can win gets frustrated and will often "lose it" (mentally, then physically, then for real). "God! I know we can beat them!!!"

Knowing HOW you can beat another team will proove a better strategy going into a game, and you know how to beat a team when you look at your team's strengths and assign performance based goals. Concentrating on optimizing your team's performance and capitalizing on your team's strengths will lead to the outcomes that you desire, and you won't waste time thinking about who you should/could beat in such an ambiguous way. This time when the other team scores a couple of points, instead on concentrating on what should be happening, you'll be thinking "This is how that happened and this is how we'll fix it."

Ok. With that being said, I know, and I know how Moe can beat at least 2 teams on Thursday. I don't know enough about Brass Monkey (besides that they're the 1 seed) to say if our know-how will be good enough. Hopefully we'll have the advantage against a team that probably just "knows" they can beat us. Beyond Thursday, I think we'll know how to play and win a couple more games at Nationals. And that's as far as I'll get with my predictions.

One game at a time, one throw at a time. Let's go Moe!